Rabbi Marc D. Rudolph

This week we begin the Jewish month of Elul. It is the month leading up to the New Year, Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement. It is the month when we engage in heshbon ha-nefesh, an accounting of our strengths and our weaknesses, our struggles and our failures. It is a time when we take stock of the impediments that prevent us from being more loving, gracious, compassionate and humble; a time when we seek to address our negative and destructive tendencies and to embrace that which is positive and good in our nature.

Once we identify things we need to change about ourselves, we engage in the process of Teshuvah. Teshuvah is the process of return. We forgive ourselves for our shortcomings and our mistakes, we forgive others who wronged us, we ask forgiveness from those whom we have wronged. We ask God to forgive us. We return to the best version of ourselves, and we turn to God with gratitude and hope for the New Year.

 Our Torah reading for this week includes commandments about our conduct in war. In Deuteronomy 20:19 we read, “When in your war against a city you have to besiege it for a long time to capture it, you must not destroy its trees. For are trees of the field human beings that they are able withdraw before you into the besieged city?” 

The 13th-century biblical commentator Ibn Ezra interpreted the first clause of this verse not as a question, but as a statement: “For the trees of the field are human beings.” Which begs the question, “How is a human being like a tree of the field?”

 A gardener removes the excess wood from a tree in order to give the tree space, form and light. This strengthens the flow of nourishment to the central branches and gives the tree balance and beauty.

The process of teshuvah works the same way. T’shuvah is about removing the layers that distract, that entangle and that confuse us. T’shuvah is about getting rid of those aspects that block out the light of our true Self. T’shuvah is about creating harmony, wholeness and peace within the entirety of our being.