E
very year when Elul comes around the image of the tightrope walker makes my heart sing as I look forward to all the gifts beckoning at the end of the line and the start of a new cycle: Rosh Hashanah Yom Kippur and Succos. It’s a subject I’ve written about in the past but just as Rosh Hashanah comes around again every year with perfect regularity I beg permission once again to bring up the image that fills me with hope.
Yes Elul is here again. Another year has gone by and once again we haven’t lived up to the Torah’s expectations or our own. If we even remember the promises we made last Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur we know we haven’t fully kept them. Of course we did teshuvah to the best of our recollection. At least we tried. But why is it that we never feel during the year that we’re maintaining the spiritual heights we attained on the Days of Awe although at the beginning of the year we sincerely believed that this time we could really do it?
And now once again the Yamim Noraim are fast approaching. As we look back on the receding year we see that we’ve carried out very few of our resolutions in actual practice. The holidays of Tishrei passed winter came and already we found ourselves pulled into the murky current of materialism. With every passing day our grand promises slipped further into the distance. This becomes more deeply frustrating as the years stretch out into decades. We wonder: Is there any point in repeating this yearly cycle if we never succeed in keeping our resolutions? It is Elul the month of forgiveness but we look back in shame and frustration perhaps even in anger at ourselves for being so weak. Worst of all we know that this year too we will make promises for real improvement in every aspect of our Yiddishkeit — yet no matter how sincere and determined we may be little will be left of it all by this time next year. It’s enough to make us feel like the mythical Sisyphus who was condemned to roll a heavy rock up a steep hill only to have it roll back down again repeatedly for all eternity.
Is this really our situation? A famous teacher of mussar says no. Precisely at this point when we feel a keen sense of having failed and might be tempted to give up trying the meaning of Elul comes to the rescue. It’s all about the tightrope walker.
