This coming Shabbat and Sunday are Rosh Chodesh, and we'll welcome in the month of Elul, the month that leads us to Rosh Hashanah. There's nothing really notable or distinctive about the month of Elul, but that's purposeful. Its goal is to give us the expansiveness we need to be in the right mindset as we approach Rosh Hashanah.
Rav Soloveitchik, a prominent 20th century Modern Orthodox scholar, was known to have said, "eyn kedusha beli hachanah - there's no holiness without preparation." This phrase keeps coming back to me as I wonder what this upcoming month can be for myself and for all of us. Of course, there are the preparations that I go through to prepare for the services we'll have together, but more than that are the spiritual preparations that hopefully each of us go through. While I hope that many of us will have peak spiritual moments over the High Holy Days, we can't expect that simply showing up will grant us those moments.
Rav Soloveitchik's phrase means that attaining a sense of holiness requires real effort. But what I love is that because holiness looks different for each of us, that preparation is going to be different, as well. For some of us, that might be a daily meditation practice. Or perhaps it's making sure we speak to a few people from whom we've become disconnected. We come together for the High Holy Days, all of us hoping to achieve a sense of holiness, but we've each done our own individual work leading up to that. We start the Jewish New Year not with resolutions that we will do better, but already having started that process before it begins.
May this Shabbat be the start of that for each of us.
