Elul 1 - 40 Days to Become a New Person
You're listening to Rabbi Aryeh Wolde, Director of TORCH, Torah Outreach Resource Center of Houston. This is the Jewish Inspiration Podcast.
All right, welcome back everybody to the Jewish Inspiration Podcast. We're gonna do a short and sweet segment to start off our summer classes about the month of Elul. Today is Rosh Chodesh. Rosh Chodesh is the beginning of the month and we celebrate the beginning of the month. Our sages tell us that the power of Rosh Chodesh is like a Rosh Hashanah,
just like you have the beginning of every year where we can take a time to introspect, a time to look forward to changes we're going to apply to our coming year. So till we have Rosh Chodesh to our coming month, we can take the time to evaluate and look forward to our new year as what's gonna be different this coming year. We have that every single day, the beginning of every day. We start off with Mo Dani giving thanks to Hashem.
That's also a little bit of like setting the stage for a new day, that it should be a magnificent day, a day of goodness. So the month of Elul. The month of Elul is a very important month. It's the most important month. So firstly, it's the, I believe, the fifth month since the beginning of the Jewish calendar. So we have Nisan, Ir, Sivan, Tamuz, sorry, the sixth month, Elul, the sixth month since Nisan, which our Torah commands us
to begin counting the months from Nisan. But it is the 12th month if we count from Rosh Hashanah. So this is the last month of the year. And this is where we're closing it all out. Now we know that the name Elul, all the names of the months came from Babylonia when the Jewish people were in exile in Babylonia, that's where they adopted all the names. The Mazel, the Zodiac for this month is virgin. Why?
Our sages tell us because what we're trying to do in this month is reestablish our relationship with God and begin anew, start fresh. And our sages tell us that is the essence of this month. The essence of the month of Elul is to take a break from being busy. It's a plan. And to look forward to the coming year of how we're going to change. So it's not just another month, oh, we have holidays next month,
let's think about the brisket we're going to make for Rosh Hashanah. No, no, no, that's not what it's about. It's about really taking time throughout this month to awaken ourselves to what is the purpose in this world? What is my purpose? Why am I here? The Talmud says a very interesting thing. It says it's better to go to a house of mourning than to go to a house of wedding celebrations. You can go to a wedding, everyone's so happy and everyone's dancing
and there's great celebration, there's great joy. But you don't necessarily come out feeling like, you know, I really have to change my life. I have to do something with my life. I need to accomplish something. You don't get that feeling of leaving a wedding per se. But when you leave a funeral, everyone feels that way. Like this person just died. This person was a special person, but you know what, they have no more opportunities. Maybe I should think more about my opportunities
that I have in my life and utilize them, maximize them and be the best person I can be. It's time to change. Our sages tell us, therefore it is better to go to a funeral than it is to go to a wedding. It's a very important thing for us to realize that these days of Elul, it's not a funeral, but it's a time of looking into ourselves of how are we going to change? What am I weak on? What am I strong at?
What do I need to strengthen? What do I need to completely re-energize and restructure in my life? That's the time of Elul. But it's more than just that. Our Hasidic masters tell us that ha-melech ba-sadeh. It's a time where the king is in the fields and he's there ready to negotiate a deal with us. You know what, let's say we have a big package of sins. What are we going to do? I can't come to God. I'm going to ask God for forgiveness.
God doesn't want to hear from me. Me? He doesn't want to hear from me. You know what? Hashem is there. He's ready to negotiate a deal. One of my favorite analogies is I remember back in the 90s when Rudy Giuliani took over as mayor of New York City. I was living in New York City then and he cleaned up the city very, very beautifully. It was an amazing job he did to put New York City back on its feet. It was a disaster.
But one of the things he did was he created amnesty for parking and everywhere on the radio, on television, on the billboards, everywhere you'd see amnesty for parking. What was amnesty for parking? You see, what used to happen was people parked wherever they wanted and they got tickets, but nobody paid them and the city didn't come after them either. It was so incompetent the way the city ran that you can get tickets from today till tomorrow and you didn't have to pay them
because the city would never follow up. Well, as soon as he became a mayor, the mayor of New York City, he said, that's it. You gotta pay every single bill, every single ticket, but we're gonna give you amnesty. You can pay it at the regular fee that you got it as, no matter how long it was, with no administrative fees, with no interest, with nothing, but you have 30 days. Those 30 days are up. We're gonna throw all of the administrative fees and then some.
And you know what happened? Billions and billions of dollars came flooding into the city because you know what? There's amnesty. There's your chance. Go get it. Right now, the month of El begins tomorrow. Today is Rosh Chodesh El. It's the last day of the month of Av. It's a two-day Rosh Chodesh. So it's Thursday, Friday. Friday is going to be the first day of El. Tomorrow is going to be the first day that we blow the shofar.
We blow the shofar every single day. Why do we blow the shofar every day? The entire month of El, to wake us up. Now, it's also to commemorate what happened in the desert. What happened in the desert? If you remember, the Jewish people were taken out of Egypt on Passover. We were traveling for 50 days till we get to Mount Sinai. Mount Sinai, we have the revelation at Mount Sinai where Hashem gives us the 10 commandments. 40 days later, Moshe comes down with the tablets,
the physical, godly tablets, the divine tablets, and he sees a golden calf. That was the 17th of Tammuz. Moshe, what does he do? He takes the tablets and he breaks them. Moshe starts reorganizing, telling people, you got to correct your ways. You can't make these silly mistakes. You can't go for idolatry. You can't do all this nonsense. Rosh Chodesh El is the day that Moshe reascends the mountain to beseech the heavens, to seek atonement for the Jewish people.
And it's 40 days later, on the day of Yom Kippur, that God says, Vayomer Hashem salachti kidvarecha, where God says, I forgive you because you asked. What happened when Moshe ascended on the first day of Elul, the first day of the month of Elul? He says, guys, we have to make sure that the Jewish people stay awake, not physically awake and not sleep, but spiritually awake and not sin. Every day they should blow the shofar in the camps so that the Jewish people,
the sound of the shofar makes you shudder. It makes you fear. It makes you, you know, it puts a chill down your spine. Blow the shofar every day so that the Jewish people don't forget that this is not a joke. It's a serious thing. We're building our relationship with God. We're locking it into place for the coming year. We're going to stand on Rosh Hashanah. We're going to stand in front of the Almighty, our investor, in the boardroom, alone,
and we're going to say, Hashem, give me another year. Hashem's going to say like, why? Why should I? Why should I invest in you another year? And you're going to come back to Hashem, you're going to say, look, I used these 30 days before Rosh Hashanah to prepare myself, to change who I am, to change some of my bad habits, to accept upon myself something that I'm going to transform in my life. I'm a different person.
Yeah, it could be for 11 months from last Rosh Hashanah till the beginning of Elul, or maybe even till Rosh Hashanah, I wasn't on my best game. But guess what? I've made a resolution and I'm going to change. And that's why we have an incredible opportunity. These 40 days, 30 days till Rosh Hashanah, but 40 days till Yom Kippur to transform who we are. Say, just tell us that you need 40 days to become a new creation.
Imagine if we accepted upon ourselves to diet properly. You know, I tell you many times in our classes that our eating diet is very similar to our spiritual diet because it doesn't happen overnight. It's slow and steady progress. Small steps. You know, there've been many times where I said, you know what, I'm just going to work out till I lose 20 pounds right now. Doesn't work, right? It's going to take, it's a process. So you start today and then another day
and then another day with discipline. That's the way we grow spiritually as well. So the month of Elul is a time where Hashem is close, Hashem is amnesty, let's go, let's go. Any deal I'll take, I'll take any deal, any bargain, let's go. And we know the great words of our sages and the prophets, Ani l'dodi v'dodili, I am for my beloved and my beloved is for me. When I am dedicated to Hashem, when I show that I am there with you, Hashem,
I'm not taking any shortcuts. I'm there, I'm committed to this relationship. You know what happens then? Dodili, Hashem is there with us. Hashem wants that closeness. We're going to talk a lot in the coming weeks about the month of Elul, but it's very rare that we have the opportunity to have a class the day before Elul on the last day of the month of Av. We're closing out the month of tragedy, the month of calamities. We're starting a month of opportunity,
a month of vision, of transformation. Hashem should bless us all that we should all merit to have an incredible Rosh Hashanah, a new year that is filled with goodness, a year which is filled with great, great tidings that's filled with great health, with great success, with great prosperity. And then God willing, Yom Kippur, a day of atonement, a day of forgiveness for all of our past sins, where we're a new person. Hashem should bless us all that this Elul should be the greatest Elul we've ever had. Amen.
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