Getting Back Up: A Bite-Size Blessing for the New Moon of Elul

On one foot: We fall. We feel. We climb back up. That’s Elul.

Built into the word “forgive” is an ancient meaning of giving away. If only giving away our anger, hurt, resentment, and all the rest were so easy. Isn't it funny how many people – including ourselves – we can judge during a morning walk for coffee?

How do we find peace amid the broken places in our lives and our world? How do we truly give away our pain, forgiving the world – and ourselves – without becoming passive or blind? In Jewish tradition, this week's new moon, kicking off the Hebrew month of Elul, marks the day Moses climbed back up the mountain after the sin of the Golden Calf. The day he heeded the call to try again. Today, we'd call it getting back on the horse, back on the wagon. In essence, across the millennia, we call it getting back up.

Up. Again. Across the metaphors – mountain, wagon, horse – there is something we're meant to climb. Something we've already climbed before.

Maybe part of why falling down and feeling down is so painful is the distance between the pit of our inner struggle and the lofty views afforded by that "higher perspective," visible to our "higher self." We know it's possible to feel peaceful and whole, even in a world on fire. We've had glimpses. We've been lucky enough to know love.

With this new moon of Elul, may we be blessed with the very beginning of a climb back up to familiar ground. May we touch forgiveness not by denying our pain, but by reclaiming our God-given capacity for affection, even awe (including for ourselves!). There is so much we can't fix. By choosing, still, to live another day, another year, another chapter, we embody the belief that there is something worth living for. With this new moon, may we inspire one another: each one of us privately haunted, no doubt, by our own bruises and blunders, and still, day after day, choosing life.

— By Yaakov Ginsberg-Schreck, Founder & Executive Director