Rabbi Burt Visotzky, a jocund expert in Midrash (rabbinic commentary on Torah) who happens to be another family friend (so I’ll call him Burt) and has taught for more than thirty years at the Jewish Theological Seminary, tells me that daily scrutiny is necessary to upend our complacency. “When you go to the therapist, you don’t just go once,” Burt reminds me. “You keep going. The repetition of Elul allows you to open yourself—not all at once—to things you’ve closed off.”
What have I closed off? The realization that I still haven’t managed to turn compassion into action often enough. I spent a semester teaching memoir-writing to formerly incarcerated men (a powerful experience), but failed to find a way to stay in touch with them. I don’t see my parents enough. My aunt and I haven’t recovered from a rift four years ago. I still look at my phone too much in restaurants, though I hate when others do that. I tend to remind my son what he needs to finish, instead of just asking how he is.
I see the point of Elul, the necessary runway to spiritual liftoff. How can one start the new year without looking fully—exhaustively—at the one that came before? When else do we permit ourselves, or demand, a detailed self-analysis?
I ask Burt—in his book-filled office—how he’d respond to those who say forty days of navel-gazing is overkill before Yom Kippur. “You can’t walk into synagogue cold,” Burt fires back. “Let me use the shrink analogy again: you don’t just go into your therapy session without thinking ahead to what you want to discuss.” No one knows that better than Catherine, a therapist by profession.
We dive in. And the middot force me to zero in on pockets of myself I rarely turn inside out.
Anger: I get riled when I feel something is unjust. I need to pause before writing the curt email.
Courage: I both have it and lack it, and wish I had the guts to worry a little less about gaining consensus before doing what I think is right.
Cruelty: I don’t believe I’m ever mean, at least not consciously.
Forgiveness: I don’t forgive my own mistakes. I’m slow to forget affronts. I beat myself up for being poor at things I could have studied harder: cooking, Hebrew, golf.
The imperfections go on. About two weeks into my middot list, I’m preparing dinner on a Saturday night with my mother-in-law, Phyllis, who is visiting us with my father-in-law, Milton, from Chicago. Every time she asks me how my holiday-immersion is going, she poses the same question: “Do you think you’re going to turn really religious?”
I’m chopping cucumbers as I try to explain that I have no plan other than to simply keep up with the calendar and see where it takes me. One thing at a time. For now, I just need to focus on the Elul reflections. Phyllis doesn’t hide her skepticism: “Don’t you think it’s going to be hard spending forty days tearing yourself apart?” My answer surprises me. I tell Phyllis that the task is already giving me a strange stillness. Contrary to Yom Kippur, when my penance in synagogue is often sidetracked by hunger, it’s a very different experience to critique oneself on a full stomach while moving through an average day. I’m less impatient with the exercise; I take my time. I might even be harsher on my flaws because, unlike in services, when the litany of sins comes fast and furious, Elul allows for a scrupulous accounting.
My nightly exchanges with Catherine become trinkets of candor, which I collect. We make our way through the list as summer folds into fall, and I find that the specificity of the list makes self-examination sharper, plainer. There’s less room to skirt the truth.
And yet despite all the introspection, I’m wholly at sea when it comes to the next phase of the atonement marathon—Selichot (penitential prayers). We beg for mercy. Selichot starts the Saturday night before Rosh Hashanah and lasts until Yom Kippur. The kickoff service is like going to the late show, scheduled between 10 P.M. and midnight—and includes poetry of contrition.
I learn that the centerpiece of the Selichot liturgy is the “Thirteen Attributes of Mercy.” They are God’s virtues—which, if recited, are our ticket to clemency.
The Israelites were given this list after they angered God by building the Golden Calf. According to the Talmud (commentary on the Torah), God basically told Moses: “If your people want me to forgive them, they should recite this list describing me.”
I’ll input the numbers—though they’re not usually in the text—because otherwise you may be as confused as I was as to how one gets to thirteen traits:
1. Merciful God, 2. merciful God, 3. powerful God, 4. compassionate and 5. gracious, 6. slow to anger, and 7. abundant in kindness and 8. truth. 9. Preserver of kindness for thousands of generations, 10. forgiver of iniquity, 11. willful sin and 12. error, and 13. Who cleanses (Exodus 34:6–7).
Okay. I get the Thirteen Attributes of God . . . kind of. Truthfully, it seems oddly insecure of God to require thirteen compliments in exchange for mercy. But as I reread the prayer, I start to absorb a different message. Maybe God is saying, “These attributes of mine should also be yours. Emulate and live by them.”
When I read the prayer that way, I love the list. They are traits I aspire to, even if I never thought to enumerate them. Ben Franklin did just that. He created a list of thirteen virtues and measured himself by them every week, including temperance, silence, frugality, and industry. Our Founding Father fashioned his own personalized Selichot.
Despite my epiphany about God and Ben Franklin, I’m not so keen on going to synagogue so late on a weekend night. But I’ve committed to push through my laziness, my excuses (and my comfort zone) to keep up and show up. Judaism has specific office hours.
I’ve picked a program that starts before midnight, because I’m a wimp about staying up late. I walk into the dignified Park Avenue Synagogue on Madison Avenue at 10 P.M. and feel like a party guest who’s arrived too early. It’s not crowded, not empty. This sanctuary always has a formality to it, but tonight there’s extra pomp: the velvet-swathed Torah is adorned in pristine white garb for the impending High Holidays, like a child putting on a new birthday outfit. The music is majestic. Rabbi Elliot Cosgrove, whom I know and admire, is lacking his usual wry humor. Tonight is serious stuff.
May my heart be open
To every broken soul,
To orphaned life,
To every stumbler Wandering unknown
And groping in the shadow.
I’m the stumbler, the wanderer, the groper in the shadow. That’s why I started this project. I now realize it’s a quintessential Jewish act: seeking, grappling. If you’re reaching, it’s because you believe there’s something to grab hold of.
I can’t stay till the end because I promised my friend Rabbi Elie Kaunfer I’d stop by his service way uptown. Cofounder of Mechon Hadar, an independent seminary, Elie taught my Torah study group and wrote me this email before the holiday: “Abby, You might like a more experiential davening (reciting prayers), even if you aren’t able to understand or even follow every word.”
I arrive late to the crowded room of young regulars on the second floor of the Fort Tryon Jewish Center in Washington Heights. They have run out of handouts and chairs, so I move to a corner of the dimly lit space, grab my iPhone,
