Rabbi Mendy Herson's Blog

This week, we entered the Jewish month of Elul, the month immediately preceding the High Holiday season. Each Elul, I’m reminded of, and moved by, Rabbi Yosef Yitzchak Schneerson’s (the Previous Lubavitcher Rebbe, who passed away in 1950) recollections of his youth in the town of Lubavitch in White Russia (Belarus). Rabbi Schneerson was a diarist, and he poignantly describes Elul in Lubavitch. There was an introspective smell in the air, he writes, an ambience of self-improvement. In fact, the young Yosef Yitzchak sensed a ‘self-betterment wind blowing’ through the trees. What does this mean in practical terms?

I think of it this way. If we observe ourselves and our judgments, we can all recognize that our emotional stance influences our cognitive one. For example, in this Shabbat’s Torah (Shoftim) portion, judges are warned against taking bribes for “a bribe blinds the eyes of the wise”. If a fellow is taking bribes, how can he be called wise? He’s an amoral thief, no matter how high his IQ!

The Torah is telling us that a person can be moral and cognitively sound, ‘wise’, and still be blinded by his subconscious emotional posture. The Torah isn’t talking about greedy villains who knowingly pervert justice for a few dollars. The Torah is talking about someone who wants to be just, who THINKS he’s being just, but is incapable of truly wise thinking because of a personal, subjective connection.

When a person is emotionally available, unencumbered, he is then open to true to intellectual progress. When a person is emotionally unavailable, when he is tied to a position by an extraneous force, he can not be objective; his cognition is impaired.

The Torah is teaching this to the righteous – the wise - among us, to illustrate the power of emotional availability.

I think that the same principle applies to Elul. We can all say we want to be better. We can even mean it. But are we there internally? Is our emotional posture ready for that? Are we emotionally available for real change?

It’s difficult to know, and it’s difficult to achieve. That’s why G-d gave us Elul. Life’s backdrop, the very rustling of the wind, is different these days. Ambience affects us, and the Elul ambience grants us rare emotional availability, which positions us for real change. We’re poised in the right direction; real change can happen. We just need to take the step.

Rabbi Mendy Herson