ELUL

ELUL

by Mayer Preger

There is a beautiful parallel between the month of Elul and the forty days Moshe Rabbeinu spent pleading for the Jewish people after the sin of the Golden Calf.

The thirty days of Elul, together with the ten days from Rosh Hashanah through Yom Kippur, make up forty days. These correspond to the final forty days Moshe was on Har Sinai, begging Hashem to reconsider His judgment and grant the Jewish people complete forgiveness.

And when we think about what they needed forgiveness for, it is almost impossible to comprehend.

Hashem had taken them out of Egypt, liberated them from slavery, fed and protected them in the desert, and given them an entirely new existence in a way the world had never seen before.

Then came Matan Torah.

For the first time in history, an entire nation experienced a direct revelation of G-dliness. They heard Hashem speak, received the Torah, and committed themselves completely.

And then, just a short time later, they built the Golden Calf.

In one moment, they seemed to throw everything away.

Moshe pleaded for the Jewish people, and ultimately Hashem said:

סלחתי כדברך.

I forgive.

But that forgiveness revealed something much deeper than merely overlooking a terrible mistake.

After everything they had done, Hashem was saying: Our relationship is not going anywhere.

There can be failure, distance, even crossing what seems to be the ultimate red line. But underneath it all is a bond that cannot be broken.

And perhaps that was the greatest discovery of those forty days.

Torah and mitzvos do not create the bond between a Yid and Hashem. The bond is already there. Torah and mitzvos allow that bond to become revealed, expressed and lived.

That is why these forty days contain such an extraordinary spiritual energy.

Which raises an obvious question:

If these forty days are so special, why is Elul not one long Yom Tov? Why do we continue working and living ordinary life?

The Alter Rebbe answers with the famous mashal of the King in the field.

Normally, the king is in his palace. To enter requires preparation, protocol and merit.

But once a year the king decides that he wants to see his people.

So instead of waiting for them to come to him, he comes to them.

He goes out into the field, and anyone can approach him.

Not only the important or accomplished people. Anyone.

Because at that moment the king is not there to judge his subjects. He wants to see them, and he wants them to see him.

Perhaps we can add another dimension.

Normally a citizen has obligations to the government. There are taxes to pay, rules to follow and responsibilities to fulfill.

But when the king comes into the field, he is not asking:

Where have you been?

Why haven’t you paid your taxes?

What happened to everything you promised?

That is not the purpose of the visit.

The king came because he wants to see you.

And the person realizes that his relationship with the king is not merely based on what he owes him.

Yes, there are responsibilities. Yes, things may need to be corrected.

But underneath everything is something more fundamental:

We belong to each other.

Perhaps this is why Elul remains an ordinary month.

Hashem does not ask us to stop being ordinary people. There is no Yom Tov clothing and no prohibition against work. We remain in the field.

Hashem is saying:

I want to meet you there.

Not only the Yom Kippur version of you, dressed in white, fasting and standing in shul all day.

I want the person who goes to work, who struggles, who gets distracted, who is standing in the mud of his own field.

There is a beautiful story about a chassid who was a farmer. Whenever he went to Lubavitch to see the Tzemach Tzedek, he would change out of his work clothes, put on his kapote and dress like a proper chassid.

Eventually he felt dishonest.

He thought, I’m fooling the Rebbe. Most of my life I’m in the fields dealing with animals and mud, and then I come here dressed like some holy chassid.

So the next time he came, he appeared in his regular work clothes.

The Tzemach Tzedek saw him and sighed.

In effect, he told him:

Do you think I didn’t know what you did for a living?

When you came dressed like a chassid, I saw what you wanted to be. I saw that underneath the farmer was a Yid who wanted to become something higher.

But now, by saying, “This is who I really am,” you are almost saying that you no longer want to become anything more.

There is a time to dress differently and enter the palace. That is Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur.

But first comes Elul.

First the King comes into our field and says:

Come as you are.

And you don’t need some enormous transformation in order to approach Me.

Just come.

That small movement itself says everything.

Because when a person hears that the King is nearby and comes just to see Him, he is revealing something very deep:

This relationship still matters to me.

Maybe I have things to fix. Maybe I have been far away.

But I still want the King.

And the King sees that.

The mashal continues that afterward the King returns to the palace and the people follow Him.

That is Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur.

First He comes to us.

Then we go back with Him.

And perhaps there is an even deeper reason why the King comes into the field.

Maybe the King does not want to return to His palace on Rosh Hashanah and find only a handful of supposedly deserving people there.

He wants everybody.

But He knows that some people will never believe they deserve to walk through the palace gates.

So He comes out first.

He goes looking for them.

And once they see that the King came all this way just to see them, something inside them moves.

Maybe only a little.

But they come.

And once that deepest point is awakened – I still want this relationship – everything else can be worked on.

There are things to repair. There are obligations and changes to make.

We’ll get to them.

But first comes Elul.

First comes the King smiling in the field.

First comes the realization that after everything that may have happened during the year, the relationship is still there.

And once we know that, we can follow the King back home – not as outsiders begging to be admitted, but as HIS people returning with Him to the palace.

And from that place, every Yid can truly enter the new year deserving of a happy, healthy and successful year.