A Time to Rethink
Nowadays, especially in crowded urban areas, we don’t often get to experience walking in darkness. Even in the dead of night, we are accustomed to illumination, to seeing where we are going. But on the rare occasions when we do walk in the dark, there are two different problems that we face. First, and perhaps more obviously, we don’t see the dangers that lurk. We can’t see the tree or pole in front of us that we can crash into, and we don’t see stones or potholes on the ground that we can trip on. But secondly, when we walk in the dark, inanimate objects appear as people. We might see a shadow and assume it’s a person who could help us, when in truth it’s just a street sign. These are our two challenges in the dark: we don’t take notice of what we need to take notice of, and we take notice of that which we really have no reason to notice.
This is true of life, as well. To one extent or another, we are all guilty of failing to see the pitfalls in the path we follow, and of paying too much attention to things which are worthless and insignificant. We see bad things as good things, and good things as bad things.
We all have our routines, our habits, our basic lifestyle, and our general way of doing things. We feel comfortable with who we are, and we generally assume that we are right. And this is, for the most part, how it should be. We cannot be constantly questioning and reassessing ourselves and our lifestyle, never feeling comfortable or secure about what we do. The month of Elul, however, is the time when we need to open our minds, to listen, to reconsider, to rethink, to reevaluate and to reassess. It is the time to give serious thought, openly, honestly and unbiasedly, whether our routines and habits are right, and where we might need to change.
The King Knocks on the Door
The Book of Shir Hashirim allegorically depicts the relationship between G-d and the Jewish People as a deep, loving relationship between a man and a woman. The story told is that of a king who had a beautiful, devoted, wonderful queen whom he loved and cherished. At one point, however, the queen did something terribly wrong, and was driven from the palace.
The pasuk in Shir Hashirim describes how the queen slept one night: אני ישנה ולבי ער – “I sleep, but my heart is awake.” She tries sleeping, but her heart palpitates with love and longing for her husband. And then, after she drifts off to sleep, קול דודי דופק פתחי לי – she hears her husband knocking on the door, begging her to open it and let him in. He explains that he is cold and damp, having made his way all the way from the palace to her door in the chill, rain and gloom of the dreary night.
We might have expected her to run to the door and let her husband in so they can at long last be reunited. But this is not what happens. Instead, the queen says, פשטתי את כותנתי איככה אלבשנה, רחצתי את רגלי איככה אטנפם – she had already changed her clothes and bathed, and so she does not want to have now get dressed and get her feet dirty. She is too comfortable in her bed, and she does not want to have to inconvenience herself to go open the door for her husband the king.
Desperate to enter, Shir Hashirim continues, the king thrusts his hand through a hole in the door, trying to unlock it from inside, but to no avail.
Finally, the queen gets out of bed. But by the time she opens the door, דודי חמק עבר – the king has left. She looks all around, but she cannot not find him.
The queen missed her chance. She was too comfortable where she was, and so she stayed put. By the time she got up, it was too late.
This story serves as a powerful analogy for the month of Elul. During this month, the special month of compassion and forgiveness, Hashem comes knocking on our door. It does not matter what mistakes we’ve made or how far we’ve strayed during the year; He is now coming knocking on our door and inviting us back. But what happens? Too often, we say פשטתי את כותנתי איככה אלבשנה, רחצתי את רגלי איככה אטנפם. We are already comfortable the way we are. We’ve grown accustomed to doing things a certain way. We’ve fallen into certain patterns and routines. We don’t want to have to “get out of bed” and “get dressed,” to have to start again thinking about what we want to be and what we want our lives to look like. We’ve settled into a certain lifestyle, and we’re happy the way things are. We don’t want to have to bother going through the trouble of “opening the door” – meaning, of opening our minds, to rethink and reassess the way we do things.
But if we fail to open the door now, when Hashem is knocking, we might miss this precious opportunity. Hashem is giving us a special chance for change, and we must not squander it. There is nothing wrong at all with settling into certain routines and habits, but now is the time to reassess those routines and habits. Are we sure that the way we raise our children is correct? Are we confident that we treat our spouse the way we should? Do we dress the way we are supposed to dress? Are we maintaining a proper level of kedushah in our homes, or are we perhaps too loose in allowing electronic devices? Do we, like the nighttime traveler who mistakes a pole for a human being, mistake vanity for something important? Are we investing too much time and energy in things that have little value, thereby neglecting those with great value?
As mentioned earlier, we cannot do this exercise every day throughout the year. If we constantly second guess ourselves, we cannot live a healthy, stable life. But Elul is the time for second guessing, because Elul is when Hashem comes knocking on the door. He is ready and desperately wants to help us make a fresh beginning, but we need to arise from the comfort of our “slumber,” of our habits and routine, and see where we can change.
“Yosef is a Very Quiet Boy”
And yes, we are all capable of changing, and of changing significantly.
I once spent a Shabbat with my parents in Deal, together with my siblings and their families. At one point during Shabbat, a nephew ran over to me excitedly and gleefully announced that he found a file in my parents’ home of my old report records. He presented them to me, and I got a chance to review what my teachers wrote about me when I was a small child.
I was amazed by what I found. My preschool teacher wrote the following note to my parents: “Yosef is a very quiet boy.”
I can be called many things now. “Quiet” is not one of them. Not by a long shot.
I then saw my report card from first grade: “Yosef is doing ok, but he could do a lot better. He doesn’t really participate in class, and he’s very disruptive.”
In just two or three years, this “very quiet boy” became “very disruptive.”
And just a couple of years later, I became a very good student.
This is not just true of schoolchildren. It is true of us adults, as well. We have the capacity to change. And this is precisely why Hashem knocks on our doors. He knows that as comfortable as we are, we have the ability to arise and open the door, to be better, to improve, to grow.
Elul is the time for us to rethink and reassess, to open our minds to ideas and possibilities that we never considered during the year. It is the time to listen carefully to other people’s advice, to hear more Torah classes and to honestly and humbly expose ourselves to different options. We might very well conclude that in many areas of our lives we are, in fact, doing the right thing and have no need to change. But this decision must be made after an honest, openminded process of thought and consideration, humbly listening and learning to other perspectives and viewpoints.
The Chimney Sweeper
The story is told of a chimney sweeper who spent his days going into people’s chimneys and cleaning the soot. Most of the time, he was covered with filth from head to toe, and always looked dirty. On the other hand, he was extremely fortunate to work this profession. There came a time when the governor wanted all the chimneys in the area swept, and this sweeper was hired, thus becoming very wealthy.
As a result of his wealth, when the time came for his daughter to marry, he was able to find a wonderful match from a wonderful family. The problem was, he could not possibly show up to the wedding and march his beloved daughter down the aisle when he and his clothing were all covered with soot. And so he devised a plan. He would stop working several days before the wedding, and thoroughly and frequently bathe until the wedding. By the time his daughter would be ready to march down the aisle, he would be perfectly clean, as befitting the father of the bride.
However, two days before the wedding, the governor summoned the man and told him there were twenty chimneys that urgently needed cleaning. There was no way out. He was bound by his large, profitable contract to clean all the chimneys. He had hoped to at least finish the work by the day of the wedding, but there was simply too much to do. Even on the wedding day, there were still several chimneys to sweep. He swept and swept, and by the time he finished, the wedding ceremony was ready to begin. He raced to the banquet hall, covered with dirt, and stood alongside his beautiful daughter who wore an exquisite, white gown.
This story is told as an analogy to what unfortunately happens to so many of us during the weeks leading up to Rosh Hashanah. Elul begins, but we have a plan: we won’t worry about it now, but we will stop to think, reflect and make changes in the days preceding Rosh Hashanah. And so we push it off. But what happens then? We get busy. Things come up. There are problems at work and with the kids. We’re over our heads. Rosh Hashanah comes, and we run to the synagogue all covered with the “filth” that collected over the course of the year which we did not have a chance to clean off in time.
Let us not make this mistake this year. Let us begin right now, when Hashem is knocking, and give serious thought as to whether we are truly living the way we should, and start preparing now to enter Rosh Hashanah in a state of pristine purity, so we can start the new year right and be worthy of being inscribed in the book of life, joy, peace and prosperity, amen.