A Good Time For Review

The month of Tishrei is coming, a special month full of holidays.The Jewish holidays are not just fulfilling a traditional obligation, they have spiritual roots derived from the forces of nature that operate in cycles, according to the rotation of the Earth around the sun and other higher reasons.

We feel that every day influences our world with different forces: One day is not like another, and one night is not like another night; we are changing all the time. There are more pleasant and better days and there are problematic days.

The month of Elul is a very good time for review of what we did in the past year and what we intend to do in the New Year.

The meaning of the name “Elul” is an acronym, “Ani Ledodi Vedodi Li (I am my beloved’s, and my beloved is mine)” (Song of Songs 6:3). We must understand the essential demand of the Creator, the higher force of nature. “I am my beloved’s” means that I need to examine myself this month before the beginning of the new year, in a special period of concentration of unique forces within us and our influence on the world.

We must carry out what is written in the Torah, the obligations that were received at Mount Sinai: “Become as one person with one heart” and “All Israel are friends.” Ultimately it is up to us to reach, “And you shall love your friend as yourself” and complete union.

People don’t understand what love is. In our world, this word takes on a very unclean and sexual nuance, or we connect this word with love for animals, trees, and the preservation of nature.

But the concept of love of others means connecting to feel all the desires of others and trying to fulfill them. This is like the connection of two devices; if we connect them correctly, the result is a single device all of whose parts can understand each other and work together.

That is how an engine is built so that all of its parts work in concert, like the organs of a single body that support each other. In this case, it is possible to say that there is love between them.

The Torah is speaking about love like this, about mutual connection, about understanding between everyone, when each one works for the others. If everyone works for everyone, a perfect system emerges, and this is the situation we must attain.

First only one person was created, Adam, one desire. But after that this system was shattered into a multitude of fragments that were not able to integrate with each other. Our work is to find a place for each one that is appropriate for him, and clarify in what form he must be integrated with the others. This is like a gigantic puzzle that we must assemble into one picture.

This puzzle includes 600,000 essential parts called “six hundred thousand souls,” and a further multitude of additional small fragments that are inserted between us. Every person in this world has a part of the overall puzzle because all of us are the “children of Adam,” and must compose him together.

But the main obligation in assembling this puzzle is imposed upon the people of Israel. They are the main constituents of all its billions of parts. If the people of Israel will assemble themselves correctly and will connect this puzzle correctly, then all the rest of the fragments will begin to move and search for their place. And ultimately each one will integrate with the others and become integrated in the puzzle.

In this way humanity will attain harmony, wondrous union, and the correct global integration that our world requires today so profoundly.
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From the Israeli Radio Program 103FM, 8/30/15