Around this time one year, “The holidays are coming!” was the headline on an ad for a Jewish-style restaurant/caterer. It’s a brilliant line, because, especially from the Jewish perspective, there’s ALWAYS a holiday (holy day, commemoration, etc.) coming!

And before (or after) some of them are periods of preparation or reflection. A fast day before Purim, another after Rosh Hashana, seven special weeks between Pesach and Shavuot, the three weeks, the ten days, etc.

Now, we enter Elul, a month-long anticipation of the High Holy Days. We are encouraged to engage in introspection, seek out those to whom we should apologize, make restitution as needed; in short, pull ourselves together and clean our slate as best we can before approaching God through the rituals and liturgy of Rosh Hashana and Yom Kippur.

Why are we to approach God? Perhaps to remind ourselves that we are mere mortals, mortals who sometimes think we’re not, or that others are less deserving, worthy, caring…than are we. We can so easily succumb to hubris and self-aggrandizement!

So it is that on Rosh Hashana we note that our “origin is dust” and that we are as substantial as “a vanishing dream.” One time I was reminded of this was when we moved out of our house of thirty years. We’d put a lot of work into it, some of which we’d done ourselves. Our daughters grew up there, we all grew to be proud of the physicality of the house and about the dreams we’d fulfilled and the memories we’d created there.

When it came time to move to the Shore, our art came off the walls, our stuff went into boxes, furniture was loaded into the truck and we changed out some of our more personal mezuzot for others we were happy to leave for the next (Jewish) owners. Over the weeks it took to pack up and empty out, our house became less and less ours.

Our house was ours because of how we lived in it; our lives are ours because of what we do with them. Our loving, giving, feeding, sharing and caring add substance and meaning to our lives and to the lives of others.

We take the month of Elul to work our way up to the expectations of Rosh Hashana — repentance, prayer and generosity — and seek to fulfill those expectations as we understand or interpret them. We spend some time each day reflecting on how to be more at peace with ourselves, our families, our communities. We give ourselves permission to approach God because God doesn’t issue invitations, not even for special occasions.

It is up to us to keep track of those special occasions and make the most of them. Good thing that the holidays are coming!

Shabbat shalom!שבת שלום