Is it August Already?
All over my social media feeds, people are incredulously asking this question.
It seems like after a 2020 that dragged on forever, 2021 couldn't move faster!
But what felt even more jarring for me was that next week Ellul is starting!
Ellul is the last month on the Hebrew calendar and is seen as the month of preparation for the High Holidays.
There are a number of things we do to help us prepare and put us in the correct mindset: we blow the Shofar daily, there are extra psalms we add to our prayers, Sefardim wake up early and say Selichot.
But before everything else, the month of Ellul is a month of Cheshbon Hanafesh, or self-evaluation.
We know that from our work lives where, in addition to the regular 1:1 meetings and team retros, we have annual performance reviews and evaluations. During these annual reviews, we take stock of the previous year, see how we matched up against the goals we set up for ourselves, and identify the areas we did well in and the ones that need improvement.
In a similar vein, the month of Ellul is a time for us to take stock and see how we performed over the last year as Jews, as members of our communities, and as a society.
We do this for a month so that by the time Rosh Hashanah arrives, we will be ready with our report. When we stand before G-d and crown him as king, we can confidently say, "this is how I was the previous year. I may not have been perfect, but here is my plan to improve next year!"
Shabbat Shalom,
Yechiel && Ben
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