Before we begin again
Elul — A Time to Bring the Past to a Close
Elul is not merely a month of preparation for Rosh Hashanah. Elul is a time to stop and honestly look back at the year that has passed: Where did we not do as well as we should have? Where did we fail? What needs to be corrected? And what must we do differently in the coming year?
This takes on special significance after a year that has placed all of us, our families, and our communities under great strain and difficulty. The war, the losses, the uncertainty, and the pressures of everyday life have affected us all. And throughout it all, life continues: work, earning a livelihood, children, learning, family, and all the responsibilities that leave a person little time to stop.
Precisely for this reason, we need Elul.
It is very easy to move from one day to the next, occupied with whatever is immediately before us. But before entering a new year, we need to stop and look at the year that is coming to an end.
This idea takes on special depth in the words of the Zohar at the beginning of our parashah.
The Torah teaches us the laws of Yefat To’ar, one of the more difficult laws in the parashah to understand. A Jewish soldier at war sees a non-Jewish woman among the captives and desires her. He may not take her immediately. The Torah requires her to undergo a process: she is brought into his home, her head is shaved, her captive garments are removed, and then the Torah says:
“And she shall weep for her father and her mother for a month of days.”
She must mourn her father and mother for thirty days, and only afterwards can she begin her new life.
The holy Zohar connects this “month of days” with the month of Elul. The Zohar Chadash says:
“Yerach yamim — this is the month of Elul, in which Moshe ascended the mountain to seek mercy before the Holy One, blessed be He, so that He would forgive Israel for the sin of the Golden Calf.”
But why does the Torah say yerach yamim, “a month of days,” rather than simply chodesh, “a month”?
There is an important point here. The word chodesh is connected with renewal, newness, and a new beginning. Yerach, referring to the cycle of the moon, conveys the passage of time and the completion of a period.
This is also reflected in the language used in halachic documents. In a ketubah, which represents the establishment of a marriage and the beginning of a new Jewish home, the month is referred to as chodesh. In a get, which represents the ending of a marriage, the word yerach is used. The terminology fits the meaning: chodesh expresses a new beginning, while yerach expresses a period that has come to an end.
According to this, the Torah’s choice of the words yerach yamim is not accidental.
We should think about the situation of the Yefat To’ar.
What a break from the past she is required to make.
She is a woman who has been taken captive. She has been torn away from her home, her family, her country, and everything that was familiar to her. Her entire reality has been overturned. She is brought into a foreign home, a new environment, and a completely different world. If she is eventually to enter a new life, she must first leave her former life behind and make a clear break with her past.
The Torah does not simply tell her: From now on, begin again.
First, cry. First, mourn. First, say goodbye to the past.
For thirty days she goes through a process of mourning and separation. She comes to terms with what she has experienced, recognizes what she is leaving behind, and closes an entire chapter of her life.
This is not a small change.
It is not a decision to correct one particular habit or to take on one more good thing. Those things are important and require effort. But here, something much deeper is involved:
An entire life behind her, and a new life ahead.
And this is one of the great lessons that the Zohar reveals to us in the words yerach yamim.
Sometimes a person cannot begin again as long as he continues to hold on to the past. There are things that can be corrected gradually, and there are times when a person has to say to himself:
This cannot continue. This has to stop. I am leaving this behind. From here, I begin again.
That is a fundamental change.
And this is the Zohar’s hint regarding the month of Elul.
Elul is the “yerach” before the “chodesh.”
Before “Blow the shofar on the chodesh,” before the new beginning of Rosh Hashanah, Hashem gives us an entire month to stop and properly bring the previous year to a close.
Not merely to ask, What small thing can I improve? But to ask more difficult questions:
Where is my life heading?
What has become too important in my life?
What has distanced me from what I know I should be doing?
What must I correct?
And what must I leave behind and not carry with me into the coming year?
There is a remarkable story about the Gaon Rabbi Tzvi Pesach Frank zt”l that illustrates what
Elul meant to him from his earliest childhood.
When Rabbi Tzvi Pesach was about 8 years old in Kovno, he went to hear Rabbi Yisrael Salanter zt”l speak on the Shabbos before Rosh Chodesh Elul. The shul was packed, and the young boy found a place for himself on the steps near the Aron Kodesh.
Rabbi Yisrael Salanter began speaking about the month of Elul, and then called out in Yiddish:
“Mir gefinen zich itzt in chodesh Elul, macht teshuvah!”
“We are now in the month of Elul. Do teshuvah!”
Rabbi Yisrael became so overcome by the very meaning of the month of Elul that he fainted and fell onto the young Rabbi Tzvi Pesach, who was sitting nearby. People immediately rushed to revive him.
The sight remained deeply etched in Rabbi Tzvi Pesach Frank’s memory.
I heard this story, and afterwards Rabbi Tzvi Pesach Frank’s grandson confirmed to me that it appears in the book Gaon HaHora’ah, and that he had the tradition from his father, Rabbi Avraham z”l, who had heard it from his father, the Gaon Rabbi Tzvi Pesach Frank zt”l.
When we reflect on this story, it is impossible not to be moved. An eight-year-old boy sees a great Torah leader so shaken by the words “the month of Elul” that he actually faints.
For him, Elul was not simply another month on the calendar.
Elul was a transformation.
The year is coming to an end. The Day of Judgment is approaching. A person must stop, examine himself, and do teshuvah.
How far we sometimes are from that feeling.
We hear that Elul has arrived, we hear the shofar, and we continue with our daily routine.
Work, earning a livelihood, children, learning, errands, and everything else that needs to be done.
But Elul is not meant to be another item within our routine.
Elul is meant to stop the routine.
It is meant to make us think.
This is especially true this year.
We have gone through a difficult and deeply unsettling year. Families have carried heavy burdens, and communities have faced tensions and difficulties. After everything we have been through, we cannot enter another year without stopping and taking an honest accounting.
Most of us do not sit in the Beis Midrash all day. We do not always have a fixed seder of mussar or many hours to sit quietly and make a cheshbon hanefesh. But that does not exempt us from the responsibility.
We have to find the time.
Even a few minutes a day. To stop, to think, and to examine ourselves.
But this self-examination must be honest and sincere. We cannot simply go through the motions; we have to be prepared to face the truth about ourselves.
Not only to ask, What good resolution will I take upon myself? But:
Where did I go wrong?
Where did I fail?
What became damaged in me over the course of the year?
What do I know cannot continue this way?
And what do I need to leave behind completely?
This is the great message of Yefat To’ar.
It teaches us that before beginning a new life, sometimes a person must first leave his former life behind and make a clear break with his past. Not a cosmetic repair, not an external change, and not merely another small resolution.
A genuine break with the past.
The Zohar reveals to us that yerach yamim is Elul.
Before the chodesh comes the yerach.
Before the beginning comes the ending.
Before renewal comes cheshbon hanefesh.
And before the new year, we need the courage to recognize what we must leave behind.
The Yefat To’ar cannot enter her new life while continuing to hold on to her previous life.
Neither can we enter a new year determined to continue in exactly the same way.
There are things that need to be corrected. There are things that need to be improved. And there are things from which we need to make a clear break and leave behind.
This is Elul.
This is the yerach yamim that Hashem gives us before the chodesh.
After the year we have experienced, we have a responsibility to stop, make a genuine cheshbon hanefesh, identify what must change, and come to Rosh Hashanah not merely with a wish for a Shanah Tovah, but with a determination to live the coming year differently.
