Elul and the Thirteen Attributes of Mercy

Each month comes with its special lights and gifts and energies.  And mostly we learn about the month from the correspondences presented in the Sefer Yetzira.  Each month has a letter, a special sensitivity, a part of the body and an astrological sign. The Sefer Yetzira informs us that on Elul:

המליך אות י במעשה, יד שמאל בנפש, בתולה בשנה

Hashem caused the letter yud to rule over [the sense of] action, the left hand/arm in the nefesh, and the astrological sign of virgo in the year.

And so, when the Sefer Yetzira reveals that “המליך אות י במעשה” (HaShem caused the letter yud to rule over action) it is basically informing us that in this “month of teshuva” we need to reflect on our life (how is it going? and where is it going?). This month is a time to harvest the lessons of the previous year and formulate a prayer vision for the coming year. That’s what it means “for yud (the letter of HaShem’s name which corresponds to the sefira of wisdom/chokhma) to rule over action.”  We should live a mindful life. People should look at our actions and say, כולם בחכמה עשיתה (“Wow, everything she does, she does it with such wisdom, such thoughtfulness”).

The labor of thinking these questions through, writing down concrete visions, and crafting resolutions is a מעשה/action in itself, and it is the primary work of Elul. This is the אב מעשה (the action behind all other actions) that will hopefully affect, uplift, inform and guide all the myriad of מעשים /ma’asim this coming year, so that they are coordinated and build upon each other to create a year of joyful forward motion.

So, what exactly does the work entail.  As explained, it is a two-fold task of making closure and creating vision.

• The first is a backward facing reflection on the year gone by. What went right and what went wrong? How did I contribute to its successes? What was my role in its failures?  What can I do to fix it? What needs to change, and what’s just fine the way it is?  This backward focused work also includes a more practical dimension of resolving conflicts, returning borrowed objects, paying off debts, making neglected apologies.  That’s one part of the work. To tie up loose ends, sort through the harvest of the previous year, leave the bad behind and extract the good.
• And then with all that under our belt, we need to now look forward and articulate our visions, prayers, hopes and resolutions for the coming New Year.

We should come to Rosh Hashana with a proposal in hand. As if to say, “HaShem it’s worth investing in my life, because this is what I’m going to do for you this year. The ROI (Return On Investment) is unquestionably worth your while. This is the contribution I intend to make to your global project of tikun olam. I’m going to improve and develop my property (my dalet amot) in the following ways (XYZ)…I’m going to contribute to the Jewish people and the planet in the following ways (XYZ). A small investment of blessings on your part will pay off in a bounty of tikun on my part. You will not regret your venture.”

Yet the energy of each month also derives from the formative Biblical events that occurred within its interval of time.  And so, one of these main formative events for Elul is that Moshe ascended Mt. Sinai for the third time, for the third set of forty days.  On the first forty days he received the First Tablets (luchot) and its תורה שבעל פה, it unwritten body of  interpretations and explanations that express Hashem’s intention behind each of the verses and words and letters and crowns of the written text (תורה שבכתב). This first ascent ended abruptly with the calamity of the Golden Calf.  The second forty days Moshe pleaded for forgiveness and prevailed.  The third forty days he received the Second Tablets and HaShem revealed to him the secret of the Thirteen Midot of Rachamim (The Thirteen Attributes of Mercy). And according to some opinions, HaShem disclosed this formula of prayer on Rosh Chodesh Elul, itself.

The passage is quite dramatic. HaShem conveys to Moshe (according to Rashi) that all the prayers for mercy up to that point were based on zechut avot (the merits of our ancestors).  And there is a lot of merit there. We are talking not just about the merits of our founding patriarchs and matriarchs—but also about the ancestors of all of our personal lineages.  The fact that we are here and Jewish is because they sacrificed blood, sweat, and tears for Torah, truth and Jewish identity. Yet HaShem, here, is letting Moshe know that there is, at least the concept that zechut avot could run out. It’s like money in the bank and we could spend it and exhaust it.[1]  HaShem was revealing to Moshe that if such a desperate moment should arrive, there is another string we can pull—a surefire and inexhaustible one—which is called brit avot (HaShem’s covenant with the Avot).  Brit Avot is HaShem’s commitment to the eternal survival of the children of Avraham and Sarah and to their messianic redemption, which He promised the patriarchs and matriarchs explicitly, verbally.  Brit avot is premised on HaShem’s commitment to His word. And, obviously, HaShem is true to His word.

לֹא-מְאַסְתִּים וְלֹא-גְעַלְתִּים לְכַלֹּתָם לְהָפֵר בְּרִיתִי אִתָּם:

I will not cast them away, nor will I loathe them, to destroy them utterly, and to break my covenant with them…[Lev. 26:44]

And it is that string that gets pulled when we recite the Thirteen Attributes of Mercy.[2]

The idea being that these thirteen descriptions of Divine compassion, when spoken in a prayer gathering, are always answered, are always potent to invoke mercy. The question is, How?

There are two ways to sweeten dinim (harsh judgements).

• By only bringing welcomed, joyful things (ie, revealed good) into the world.
• By stretching/expanding our capacity to see through the outer layers of life into the heart of concealed good that is always there. כל דעביד רחמנא לטב עביד. (Everything that the Merciful One does is good). In this mode of sweetening the dinim we are not praying for HaShem to change our circumstances (necessarily). Rather we are praying for HaShem to change and stretch our capacity to see and embrace the good in whatever circumstance HaShem brings.  We are asking for x-ray vision. [see story of R. Yochanan and R. Chanina ben Dosa, appendix 1]

And it is the latter mode of sweetening that is primarily effected by the Thirteen Middot of Rachamim. Kabbalisticaly these thirteen middot are the thirteen channels that link the superconscious root of soul (the keter) with the conscious layers of mind, with chokma and bina (Insight and Discernment, right brain and left brain)

The disparity between the expansiveness of the keter—the superconscious, radiant wellsprings of absolute good, versus the constricted (katnut) state of our chokma/bina (conscious mind) with its limited breadth and depth…the greater their disparity, the more we experience life as harsh and cruel. For the good that’s coming down (from keter) is too bright for us to see.  It’s a light that appears as darkness to our narrow, childish, short-sighted mind. And so its goodness is concealed, and sometime so profoundly so, that it appears as its opposite, ie bad.

In some deep sense (some kabbalistic sense) the more rectified prayer is not for Hashem to only bring welcomed things into our life, but rather that He/She/It should stretch our capacity to see and experience the good that is always hidden in the moments and circumstances of life.  The prayer is that HaShem should feel free to choose the speediest path to redemption, and that we should have the depth of vision (of x-ray vision) to see and truly experience (to whole-heartedly embrace) the good of it. Not because it’s the spiritually correct thing to do.  Not because of peer pressure.  Not because the mind is coercing and dismissing the heart’s experience.  But because we are genuinely and naturally engaged with the good at whatever level it be found. Because that is what we actually see.[3]

In Elul we say that the King is in the field.  On Rosh Chodesh Elul the sefardim start reciting the Thirteen Middot in their slichot. Generally we think of the “King is in the field” as conveying that HaShem is more accessible to us, ie to our prayers and our strivings.  But it is also true that we are more accessible to HaShem…that the channels of ruach hakodesh are more free-flowing in Elul. That HaShem is letting us know what He wants from us, and what He wants us to be praying for. And so it is a time of not just formulating and reciting our wish-list (which is important), but to also ask HaShem to help us grow in our capacity to sense/taste/and see even the slightest traces of good (טַעֲמוּ וּרְאוּ כִּי-טוֹב ה’ / Taste and see the HaShem is good.) HaShem is good and does good/ הטוב והמטיב. Having penetrating vision to detect even the slightest photons of “good” is a major key to quality of life and also, on a collective level, to healing the self-destructive habit of sinat chinam.

I was reading in Science News that they’ve discovered that bees have even more sensitive scent detectors than dogs, and they are training them to sniff out explosives, etc. We need to train our inner bees to sniff out tov.

There is a saying that flies are drawn to wounds, bees are drawn to honey.  So, be like a bee that detects even the slightest traces of tov (and since He/She/It is הטוב והמטיב), this is synonymous with detecting the slightest trace of G-d Presence. This skill and chush is not just a key to quality of life.  It is major tool for bringing mashiach now, for if the primary obstacle is sinat chinam, then becoming a master of detecting tov (even in the people that are hard to tolerate), is a major contribution to making this world, mashiach-friendly.

So I want to bless us, as individuals and as a community, that we open our hearts and our minds to HaShem’s communications to us at this time. That we catch His hints and turn them into holy prayers that pierce the firmaments and sweeten the dinim (harsh decrees) at their root. May the combined power of our prayers and visions transform our lives in ways that are only good. And may they create a vessel of vision and yearning that is big enough and strong enough to embrace our individual and collective destinies, and to pull mashiach into the world now.