Is Your Soul on Do Not Disturb Mode?
A few weeks ago, millions of phones across Australia suddenly began screaming.
It was not a cyberattack, nor was it a malfunction. Australia was testing a new national emergency warning system called AusAlert. For about ten seconds, phones across the country sounded a loud siren designed to warn people of fires, floods, tsunamis and other emergencies.
What caught my attention was one particular feature of the system which is designed to sound even if your phone is on Silent Mode or Do Not Disturb.
Which makes sense. Because what good is an emergency alarm if it respects your desire not to be disturbed?
The entire purpose of an alarm is to wake you up and to interrupt whatever you were doing. That is its only job.
Just like the Shofar that was sounded in synagogues all over the world today.
Today, we enter the Hebrew month of Elul. And every morning throughout this month of preparation for the High Holidays we blow a ram’s horn, which functions much like an ancient alarm.
There is something unique about sleep that is unlike almost any other human experience.
When you are sleeping, you do not know that you are asleep.
If I know I have done something wrong, at least I know there is something to repair. If I feel guilty, uncomfortable, or dissatisfied with where I am spiritually, at least I am feeling something.
I may not yet be ready to actually change, but at least a part of me is awake, still paying attention.
But sometimes we are spiritually asleep. We are not struggling with our Judaism and we are not angry at G-d. We are not rebelling.
We are simply asleep.
Life gets full. Work. Family. Bills. Messages. Appointments. News. Responsibilities. Days become weeks and weeks become months. We get so busy taking care of everything that feels urgent in our life we don’t stop to ask: What is happening to my soul?
Am I closer to G-d than I was a year ago? Am I becoming a better person? Is my prayer more alive? Have I become kinder, more patient, more generous?
Or have I simply become very busy being busy?
This is what spiritual sleep looks like. Our bodies are present, and we may even be doing all the right things. But inwardly, we are somewhere else. Our inner presence and conscious awareness of the moment is totally absent.
If you have ever been speaking to a person who was physically sitting in front of you, yet his mind was completely elsewhere, you know what I mean.
So Judaism built an alarm clock into our calendar. It’s called the Shofar.
The great Maimonides uses this metaphor explicitly. To quote the Rambam:
“Wake up, you sleepy ones, from your sleep, and you who slumber, arise. Inspect your deeds, repent, remember your Creator…. Look to your souls. Improve your ways and your deeds… (Laws of teshuva ch. 3)
Notice the order. Before the Rambam says to inspect your deeds, he first says to wake up.
Why?
Because you cannot return to G-d, while you are asleep.
Before you can examine who you are, and what you are becoming, you first need to be awake enough to care. Awake enough to be aware of your spiritual reality.
Only then can change begin.
In the Chassidic worldview, one of the greatest spiritual dangers is not from sin, but apathy. It’s the danger of indifference that comes not from denying G-d, but from saying, “Whatever. I don’t care enough to bother questioning my beliefs.”
A person who is struggling with G-d is still engaged in the relationship. He cares enough to struggle. The deeper danger is reaching the point where we simply don’t care enough to care.
Many Jews get lost not because they every chose to deliberately walk away from G-d, but simply because they put their soul on Silent Mode while attending to everything else in life. They became so distracted living everyday life that they became oblivious to their soul’s needs, unaware of how far they wandered.
The good news is that even though the person might be in a spiritual Do Not Disturb mode and in a deep sleep, the bond between their soul and G-d has not disappeared. The connection is still there. It is simply not fully conscious.
Yes, the person is spiritually sleeping.
But he can wake up.
Which is why the shofar does not give a speech. It cries out with a primal cry of the heart. It’s not a long lecture, just a wake-up alarm.
The Shofar is a raw and simple wake-up call to become more present in your spiritual journey. Pay attention to who you are and how you are living.
There is one more extremely uplifting aspect to this month-long Shofar blowing custom.
The history of this custom begins not with spiritual achievement, but with one of the greatest failures in Jewish history.
The Jewish people stood at Mount Sinai and experienced G-d in a way no generation had before. Forty days later, they built the Golden Calf. Moses came down on the seventeenth of Tammuz and shattered the tablets.
After spending a second set of forty days in prayer before G-d begging for forgiveness, G-d finally agreed to give the Jews a second chance.
G-d told Moses to ascend the mountain a third time, this time carrying a new set of sapphire tablets, and G-d would once again give us the Ten Commandments. The day Moses went back up Mt. Sinai was today, the first day of the month of Elul.
Before he went up, Pirkei D’Rabbi Eliezer teaches that a shofar was sounded throughout the camp announcing that Moses was going up, specifically to remind the people not to repeat their earlier mistake and go astray again without Moses.
Think about that.
The very first Elul shofar of history was not sounded for righteous people looking for a deeply moving spiritual experience.
It sounded for people who had already failed. Spectacularly.
It was to these Jews that the Shofar was first blown, waking them up, and reminding them that they are getting another chance. Just this time, they need to stay awake.
For the next month, we will hear this Shofar again and again. Each time we hear its cry, the shofar will be asking us a simple question:
Are you awake yet?
The question is not: Have you become perfect? Have you repaired your entire life?
The question is: Are you awake? Are you paying attention to your soul? To your family? To the things that really matter in life?
The people who heard that original Elul shofar had failed terribly.
But G-d did not give up on them. He told Moses to climb the mountain again. A new set of tablets was coming. A broken relationship was being rebuilt.
And the shofar sounded through the camp making sure the Jews were awake.
May this Elul wake us up as it did back then. Let it refocus us on what truly matters.
Let it wake us up to the beauty of our marriage, and the preciousness of our children.
Let it wake us up to the mitzvah we keep postponing and to the prayer we have stopped feeling.
Let it reawaken the love we once felt for someone we no longer speak to and remind us of the person still waiting for our forgiveness.
We do not need to fix everything this Elul.
But we do need to wake up.
Because once we are awake, we can begin to change. We can begin to reconnect. We can begin to come home.
May G-d bless each of us with a month of true awakening and renewed purpose, and may we be blessed with a meaningful and sweet new year filled with health, peace, joy, and abundant blessings.
Chodesh Tov and Good Shabbos!
Rabbi Yankie & Chana Denburg
