It’s Elul!
The last month in the Jewish calendar (click here to learn more about the Jewish calendar). The month of teshuva – the process of healing and transformation, returning to ourselves and acknowledging the ways we have missed the mark. Elul is my favorite month. It is a month of turning inward, of turning to God and of taking an inventory of my personal relationships. It is also a month of warm summer nights and changing leaves – which is a nice touch too!
I want to share with you some spiritual tools that I find helpful to prepare for Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippor. Some of them are traditional and some are my own renditions. This is my first installment.
There are three additions to morning prayers.
1. The recitation of selichot, penitential prayers, before traditional morning prayers. It is largely a series of beautiful piyyutim – liturgical poems.
2. Reading/singing psalm 27 at the end of a morning service.
3. Blowing of the shofar to close a morning service.
Ok, more to come on how to do teshuva and how to make all this creative and interactive!
