Reflection isn’t always so easy... - The Jewish Chronicle

When the High Holy Days fall early, as they do this year, their arrival always gives me a shock, as if they had been secretly lurking, waiting to leap out while I was distracted by the summer holidays.

Elul, the month leading up to Rosh Hashanah, is supposed to be a time for inward reflection. But I find it even more challenging than usual to search my soul in preparation for the Days of Awe when I’m in a holiday park with my family, spending my days whooshing down water slides and chucking beach balls around.

In fact, right now I’m sitting in my holiday cabin trying to write about moral introspection, and meanwhile my husband Anthony and thirteen-year-old son are on the other side of the thin wall, belting out “Don’t You Want Me” by the Human League. It’s not exactly helping.

I’m struck by the words of Rabbi Jonathan Wittenberg: “Whom among those around us will we see, and whom will we fail to notice?” he says. “What will be the compass of our moral imagination, our heart’s concern?”

These are challenging questions and ones it is essential to address. But finding the mental space to think about how to do so is incredibly hard.

Getting into the right mood for the chagim is made extra difficult by the fact that the secular world around us is running to a completely different timetable. I suspect that if one is in Israel, it’s rather different. As I scrolled through Facebook one day in August, past the endless sea of holiday photos, I came across a post that stood out. “Having breakfast in Jaffa with the balcony door open,” wrote my friend Sam. “Suddenly I hear a shofar. My hair stands on end and I hear the notes viscerally. I can’t believe Rosh Hashanah is only a month away.”

It entices me, the idea of living in an environment where the rhythms of the Jewish year leak out into the streets, so that by the time a festival begins, all your senses have been prepared for it. In the diaspora, though, it takes a lot more effort.

Even when the holidays are over and I can turn my attention to the approaching chagim, practical considerations seem to overwhelm everything... How can I get through my work with so many extra days off approaching? And why has my honey cake sunk yet again when I followed the recipe to the letter? And which family members will host which meals, to make sure no one feels either overlooked or put-upon?

In fact, family politics are among the most challenging aspects of High Holy Day preparation, I find. One year, for example, my mother had the whole extended family coming to stay, so she made an immense pile of gefilte fish well in advance and put them in the spare freezer. (Obviously if you’re Jewish, a spare freezer is more or less compulsory.)

My father then plugged in the iron, failing to notice that in order to do so he had unplugged the freezer. I suspect the smell when the freezer door was finally opened some weeks later was quite something.

Surprisingly, my parents remained married... but that was the year I first learned to make gefilte fish — replacing the ruined ones so that my long-suffering mother wouldn’t have to start all over again.

When Rosh Hashanah finally arrives, it would be nice to think I can at last take time to explore the deeper meaning of the Yamim Noraim. It’s not so easy, unfortunately.

Each year, after the High Holy Days are over, I make notes on my phone to refer back to the next time. This might sound like an effective way to build my knowledge and understanding of these festivals that are so vital to our Jewish practice. Perhaps I’m recording which psalm one sings during Elul, or jotting down noting whether teshuvah means “repentance” or “return” or “answer” — or perhaps all three.

Sadly, this is not so. Here’s a typical extract:

“Rosh Hashanah first day: Anthony was on security 10-12. Took the kids to the children’s service for half an hour. They hated it. Heard Shoshana’s sermon. [That’s Rabbi Shoshana Boyd-Gelfand.] Try to make sure Anthony hears her next time.”

All my notes are like this: an endless list of complex logistics, with the unachievable aim of making sure the five of us are where we want or need to be at any given time (which is either in a service or most definitely not in a service, depending on which member of the family we’re referring to).

None of it is exactly spiritually uplifting — and I’m not quite sure what to do about it. I reckon that during these chagim I’m just going to have to follow my usual plan: running around doing pretty much the best I can, along with everyone else, and expanding the “compass of my moral imagination and my heart’s concern” as widely as possible, by trying to make good choices about what I do and say, in the midst of my running.

@susanreuben