Wake Up Call

Last Friday began the Jewish month of Elul, which immediately precedes the Jewish New Year. The Jewish New Year is not like December 31^st, where you go out with friends, drink (if you’re allowed to), and make false promises of dieting, cursing less, and being kinder to animals. The Jewish New Year isn’t nearly as fun. We sit in synagogue for two days with our lives in the balance, praying that we should have a successful, healthy, and productive year. You almost definitely make some promises you don’t keep, but you try to take heed that these days determine your year to come.

The month preceding this intense period is a time to evaluate the past year and look forward to the upcoming one. We begin the month with the sound of the Shofar, a wake-up call from our normal routine. All religious practices have the chance to become mundane and bland after years of performing them. It’s only natural that after doing the same thing over and over again, you’ll eventually fall into a habit and lose that initial fire. The Shofar is meant to serve as a sign to change your daily routines and once again find that spark within your religious observance.

And yet, despite the call of the Shofar and the upcoming High Holidays, I find myself in somewhat of a funk. A lot of it has to do with being tired, and some has to do with falling prey to my normal routine, but a large portion has to do with not processing the importance of this time. Last year, I no doubt sat at synagogue engaged in prayer and repentance, but also in keeping a track of how many pages were left until we got a break for lunch. I was 23, life was pleasant, and although I was somewhat sick, I never had anything to fear.

Not in a million years would I have predicted that this year would’ve brought both the news of an impending liver transplant as well as the exciting news of starting a family. At our age, you can’t honestly feel like your life is in the balance. And for the past few years, that was how I spent my Elul and Rosh Hashanah. This year, though, I truly don’t know what the future will bring. Every day I wait for the call from my doctor telling me a liver has arrived. And with every passing day, the future does not become any clearer.

You would think this would put me in hyper-drive, praying and learning all day in a synagogue. That’s what I would think. But for some reason, I don’t feel this way. I don’t know why but this Elul hasn’t been so different from years past. Maybe it’s a protective mechanism, a rationalization that things don’t hang in the balance. Or maybe its just laziness. I think it’s a combination of those two, but perhaps more importantly, it shows that I’m not supposed to feel that way. At the end of the day, it’s my reality that I have no clue what the future brings. When I pray or learn, my future hangs in the balance whether I feel it or not. In fact, if I felt it all the time, I would probably go crazy. Although I might not feel it, my life is one constant Shofar blow.