This is the final of my Elul series for 5785/2025. You can find my introduction to Elul here, and here are parts one, two, and three respectively.
As I sit down to write this reflection, just hours before sunset and therefore the start of Rosh Hashanah, I feel a profound peace.
I listened to my last Psalm 27 of the season last night, in the shower. Music (and a little pelvis movment) have become important strategies for fending off traumatic flashbacks in the shower, and it felt so sacred to use Psalm 27/Achat Sha’alti for this. I mentioned in my earlier posts that certain lines from this psalm spoke to me as a survivor of sexual violence. It brought me peace to use this tool in a space i find sometimes fraught with awful memories.
So I began to encourage this peace, this ease in myself last night. And it continues into today as I enjoy the cooler temperatures outside, the leaves changing color. The changing, the turning, of seasons and self feels very present.
As the High Holy Days approach, you’ll often see Jewish folks online and in person asking if fellow observers are “ready.” I think this year I am. Ready for the accessible online services I’ve found to attend. Ready for the rituals – especially the one I will lead, tashlich, a ritual for “casting off sins” or, really, for letting go of what does not serve us. I’ve led it in larger groups, but this year it will be just me and my wife.
I feel ready to face up to my failings of the last year, and to face new possibilities for success and failure both in the new year. I feel ready to, as Aziz Gazipura says in his book on how to move beyond people pleasing, profoundly change my life and how I interact with others.
I choose a word of the year to focus on from one Rosh Hashanah to the next. This started accidentally when, at one Holy Days gathering, I asked the Torah for the pleasure that had been missing – and then felt compelled to track pleasure in my life and find ways to increase it. Following that was year of “Softness” which became “Letting Go,” (the year I made the decision to move).
This last year my word has been “Sustain.” I’ve helped support my wife into finding full time work in her chosen profession. I’ve begun to build a regimen for physical activity. I’m laying the groundwork for community, rather than individual relationships. I’ve made more money in my independent writing and tarot than ever before. I’ve gotten meticulous about budgeting my family’s small finances. I’ve stepped away from social media in a lot of ways, organized emails and screenshots and created organizing systems to keep me on track, and soon I’ll delete my Facebook to have one less suck on my time and attention. I have settled in to life in my family home. I have picked up books instead of reaching for my phone. All of these things feel like they bring me closer to, and help sustain, the person I want to be.
I feel sustained. Nothing lasts forever, I know this. All this stability could evaporate in disaster. But in this moment, I feel sustained. And so I feel ready to face down a new word for a new year.
I am returning, as it were, to pleasure. But as nothing stays the same, not just pleasure. For 5786, I will be seeking “Courageous Pleasure.”
I’m sure I’ll speak more in future about what this means, but in short just now I’ll say I want to go after that which brings joy, desire, and goodness to me and my community without fear. This means, inherently, being honest about who I am and welcoming what comes or goes from my life in response. And yes, it means I’d like to have more sex, with myself and my wife.
I have some complex feelings about the word peace – shalom in Hebrew and salaam in Arabic, my Jewslim household uses both – but to me peace is no quiet meek thing. Rather, peace speaks to a deep, inner soul stillness from which strength can be drawn. It is that peace that I feel now, and from which I say I am ready for the High Holy Days and to face a new year.
Wishing you shalom as well.