Every year, around this time, I grab a pen and notebook and head outdoors. I find a peaceful place to sit and start writing. It’s when I set intentions for the new year. What are my goals? How do I want to feel each day? What needs repairing- and how can I do my part? Writing gives a sense of clarity to the thoughts that would otherwise just swirl around in my head.
A long time ago, around this time of year, Moshe grabbed a couple of stone tablets and a chisel, and set out to a very special place to write. The circumstances were a little different than my own pre-High Holiday journaling practice. In the Torah, Moshe had already received the first set of tablets, inscribed with the Ten Commandments, and smashed them upon seeing the Israelites worshiping the gold calf. In the beginning of the month of Elul, Moshe ascends Mount Sinai for a second time. He returns to receive the commandments again, to inscribe new tablets to replace the broken ones. He is up on Mount Sinai for another 40 days, returning with the new tablets on the 10th of Tishrei – the same date on which we observe Yom Kippur.
On that day, when Moshe returns with the new tablets, the Israelites can be fully forgiven for worshiping the golden calf. Those 40 days have been spent repairing the relationship with God, paralleling the 40 days between Rosh Hodesh Elul and Yom Kippur, which are a time of teshuva, of repentance and repair, for us today.
The second tablets are not an identical replacement of the first set. The first tablets, the Torah records, were given to Moshe, complete, carved by God. The second tablets are inscribed by God, but carved by Moshe. The second tablets are written in partnership between God and Moshe. But this is not the only difference. A midrash in Exodus Rabbah teaches that while the first tablets had the Ten Commandments written on them, with the second tablets, God gives us midrash, legends, and legal interpretations. As Rabbi Jill Hammer writes in The Jewish Book of Days, “The second tablets somehow mystically contain all the future commentaries of the Jewish people. The first tablets were fixed; the second will grow as the people grow.” The second tablets are not only a collaboration of God and Moshe, but between God and all of us. The midrash reminds us that Judaism is not something static which we simply receive from on high. Rather, we are active co-creators of our Judaism.
Throughout the High Holiday liturgy, we frequently invoke the image of God writing in a book. It is the Book of Life, in which we hope to be inscribed and sealed, for a year of life and good fortune. When I picture this scene, God often feels far away, and high above me, as if on a distant mountaintop. But what if this book is not like the first set of tablets – set in stone and handed over only once it is completed? What if it is more like the second set- an invitation to collaborate with God, and an opportunity to tell our own stories?
This Elul, as we reflect on the past year, and each doing the teshuva that needs to be done, we also look ahead to the coming year. What stories do we want to tell about ourselves and our lives this year? Where do we want to grow? When challenges inevitably arise, how will we rise to meet them? What do we want our Judaism to look and feel like, and how can we make it more our own?
Whatever your preferred method of personal reflection, I encourage you to take some time for yourself to consider these questions, and your own. As I get to know the Temple Emunah community better, I’d love to hear from you, and connect about what’s alive for you now and your dreams for the coming year. May we all be inscribed and sealed in the Book of Life.
-Rabbi Willis
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