Last week, last Monday night to be exact, we entered the holy month of Elul. Do you know how many holidays there are in Elul.
That’s right. None. No feasts or simchas. No Hallmark cards. It is a time of preparation and introspection. Why? Because we are approaching the Days of Awe.
Elul is a month of power. Our sages teach that the first day of the creation of the world was on the 25th of Elul. The third time Moses ascended Mt. Sinai to ask God for forgiveness was the 1st of Elul. There is a famous acrostic for Elul using its letters: Aleph- Lamed-Vav-Lamed “Ani L’dodi v’Dodi Li.” “I am my beloved’s and my beloved is mine.” This verse from Song of Songs encapsulates the essence of Elul — we turn to Hashem in Teshuvah, and he then turns towards us and renews us. There is mutuality. There is holiness. There is work to be done. There is hope.
It is brought down from the Zohar, a book of Jewish mysticism, that Jacob and Esau, those warring brothers, split possession of the worlds. Yes, there are two worlds. Esau was given this world, HaOlam Hazeh, to rule over and Jacob was given the next word, HaOlam Habah. When Jacob grabbed the blessing of his dying father Issac from his older brother, not only did he get the blessing, he snagged HaOlam Hazeh—this world — BACK from Esau. All the blessings, success and health we experience in this world are by the merit of Jacob who has possession of it.
Similarly, the months of the Hebrew year were also divided up between these two forces, these two brothers. The Zohar Kadosh teaches that Jacob took the first three months of the summer: Nissan, Iyar, Sivan. These months are loaded with holidays and holiness. Esau then took the last three months of the summer, Tammuz (a month of destruction), Av (the darkest days of the Jewish year), and Elul. Jacob then took the first three months of the winter: Tishrei, Cheshvan and Kislev. And Esau took the last three months: Tevet, Shevat and Adar. Things were pretty even Steven.
When Rebecca was giving birth to these struggling twins, the verse reads, “V’yado ochezet ba’akeiv Eisav.” Jacob’s hand grabbed onto the bottom, often translated as the heel, of Esau. There was a wrestling match in her womb. Can you even imagine?
But what was this struggle really about? The Zohar comes to teach us that it wasn’t about a physical “heel” at all. It was a spiritual battle. It was about the “end” of the year still in Esau’s possession. The final month of Elul. Esau was holding onto it. But Jacob grabbed this last month from Esau and wrested it away from him.
There is an internet joke that begins, “Imagine there are two wolves inside of you…” and every version of the joke describes two diametric opposites. One wolf like jazz, the other likes classical, and so on. But we don’t have to imagine. Every year in the month of Elul, there is a battle within each and every one of us to see if it will be in the possession of Ya’akov or Eisav.
According to a teaching from sages shared by Rabbi Dan Cohen of Yeshiva University, Eisav was not his original name. His real name was Asui עשוי — meaning made, ready made. The legends tell us that he sprang from Rebecca’s womb hairy and fully grown. And Ya’akov’s original name was Ekev עקב — heel, because as we just heard, he was holding onto Esau’s end, his heel. And the midrash continues to explain that grabbing on to the “end” of Asui meant that he was able to snag that critical letter yud back from him and attach it to his own name becoming Ya’akov. יעקב
I know what you’re thinking. Jessica, that’s very cute about switching the letters around, but what do you want me to do with it?
I’ll tell you. Listen carefully.
The power of Esau is the power of Asui — something already made. It is completed. Done. There is nothing else to do. When you fall under the power of Asui, you look at yourself and you say, “I’m fine how I am.” “I’m too old to change” or even, “I don’t need to grow any more.” You’re living on cruise control. We all know people who don’t work on themselves. They refuse to do teshuvah, because in their eyes there is nothing to do teshuvah for. They assume they are complete, but they are in stasis. In truth, we are none of us ever complete.
What Jacob was trying to accomplish by grabbing this letter yud away from Esau was to weaken this negative energy of Asui. We should never see ourselves as complete. He grabbed the Yud out of Asui, because yud in Kabbalah represents the element of thought, and he placed it at the beginning of his name, Ya’akov to allow us to fight back against the temptation of Asui — “I’m fine as I am.”
And this is the work of the month of Elul. Each year, we must work to ensure that this month is in the possession of Ya’akov and not Asui/Eisav. No matter how wonderful we are—and you all are pretty wonderful, trust me — you’re not Asui. Neither am I. We’re not there. We are not complete. We are not perfect. But—and this is key—we are not in stasis either. We are always growing, learning, and changing.
A story is told by the late Rav Mendel Futerfas, a pious Hassidic rabbi who ended up in a brutal Siberian work camp for teaching Judaism. Day after day of back-breaking labor from first light to last. Occasionally at night, the inmates would spend some time playing cards to pass the time. Someone had smuggled a deck of playing cards into the prison, but no one knew whom or how.
At some point, the guards would get wind of this and come stomping down the hall and into the cell to find the cards. They would shout, search, and harass every prisoner, tear the cell apart, but they never found the cards. Finding nothing, they would storm out with a warning. As the echo of their footsteps died, the cards would magically reappear, and the game would continue on.
Rav Mendel was amazed by this time and again. One night, he approached one of the ring leaders, “May I ask a question?” The ringleader nodded. Rav Mendel asked, “What kind of magic is this?”
“Magic? What do you mean?”
“The cards! Where do they go when the guard arrives?”
The ringleader laughed and said, “We aren’t merely common criminals, you know. We happen to be the best pickpockets in all of Russia. As soon as the guard comes into the room, we slip the cards into the large pocket on the side of his own pants. He can search anywhere he wants — but he has never found the cards because all along, they rest in his own pocket. On his way out, thank him, we apologize for any noise, we hope he gets more rest—clearly, he was hallucinating, yes?— and as we do so, we retrieve the cards, and Bob’s your uncle, mazal tov. They look everywhere, but never in their own pockets.”
Never in their own pockets.
It is so easy to find fault in others. How many times do you see exactly what your spouse or children need to do to improve? How many of those “solutions” would only work for you and not them? How many times do we mistake this certainty for empathy?
It’s always the other person who needs to improve, right? Always the other person who is failing. But we never check our own pockets. We need to understand that we are not “Asui.” We are not completed or finished. And we must work on ourselves before we insist on anyone else’s course of action.
(Of course, we probably shouldn’t “insist,” but that’s another sermon for another time.)
And so, here we are once again in an Elul battle. Will we give over to the forces of Eisav/Asui — full of ourselves, trapped in stasis, frozen in amber? Or will we approach it like the simple and gentle Ya’akov? An “ish tam.”
How we approach God in these weeks will determine how our holiday prayers are answered. If we humble ourselves, look within at our flaws — if we check our own pockets — and, more importantly, show empathy — true empathy, not assumption or certainty but compassion for the flaws of others — our text teaches again and again that God will raise up the lowly and humble of heart. He lifts those of us in the dust to be on par with princes.
May Hakadosh Baruch hu answer all our prayers, accept our supplications with compassion, and bring us all into a new year of positive change and growth.