The tale is told of a wealthy man who loved to host guests in his home and impress them with his collection of rare and expensive wines. The more dignified and important the guest, the more luxurious the wine he would serve him.
One day, he hosted an extremely important visitor in his home. He called in his butler and told him to bring a bottle of their most expensive wine for their special guest. The butler went off to the wine cellar, and the host sat down to dinner with his guest. After some time, the host became concerned that the butler did not return, and eventually he went down to the cellar himself. As he went down the steps, he was assaulted by a strong smell of wine. Entering the cellar, he gasped in horror. All around him were dozens of bottles of wine smashed over the entire floor. He looked around and saw the butler reclining on a couch, surveying the results of his mishap. When the servant noticed his employer, he looked up at him and smiled. “Good evening, sir,” he exclaimed! “How is your day going? Actually, I've been meaning to speak to you. I think I'm due for a raise!”
However this scenario plays out, it certainly doesn’t end with his getting a raise! “What a foolish worker,” we think. Yet, we all act pretty much the same, every single year. The entire year, we commit all sorts of transgressions, “smashing” and harming Hashem’s beautiful world. Then, it comes Elul, and suddenly we turn to Hashem and ask Him, in all seriousness, for a good year.
So, where does that leave us? Does this mean we should not even try? Of course not. But it should give us reason to pause, and ask ourselves, “What am I doing now? Do I think I really deserve everything I am asking for? What do I need to do, what effort must I expend, to make this a reality?”
Amulige Yidden were fond of repeating how “Even the fish in the sea tremble when Elul arrives.” It is told how two irreligious youths were arguing, and their disagreement soon led to blows. A passerby admonished them, “What are you doing! Don’t you know that it is Elul?” Shamefaced, they abruptly stopped fighting. Such was the atmosphere during Elul in generations past.
We are very far from the time when these feelings held true, when we felt an instinctive, deep-rooted connection to Elul. But we can still recognize the importance and value of this special time.
Imagine walking down the street when you see a dollar bill laying there right in front of you. You stoop down and pick it up and don’t think much of it, until another few bills float past you. You look around, and you see a child holding his father’s wallet, pulling out all the ‘papers’, and throwing them in the air, delighting in watching them dance in the wind. An amusing scene, perhaps, but what do you think will happen when the father shows up? We can be quite sure that the father’s reaction will be quite different than his son’s. Why? Because to the young boy, these are just colorful bits of paper, there for his entertainment. But to the father, they are of great value, and he will be very anxious, to say the least, to see his hard-earned money just thrown away.
Are we making the most of our Elul? Are we contemplating the opportunity being handed to us? If the answer is no, if we squander away this chance by paying lip service to the times without engaging meaningfully in the times, we are far more foolish than that young child. We cannot expect to enter Rosh Hashana and Yom Kippur without adequate preparation.
Every minute of Elul should be valuable to us. The Maharil cautions against accepting Rosh Hashana early, the way we make an ‘early Shabbos’. There’s still some time left! We have a few more precious moments to prepare, to enter the new year with a better mindset, and we should maximize this time. Which one of can honestly say that we do not have difficult and important work to do, that we do not need to work towards genuine teshuva?
A Magid once arrived in a town and gave a public drasha during Elul, exhorting the townspeople to do teshuva. During his speech, he cried out, “Yidden, who knows how much time we have left. Every single resident of this town will die one day! Do you know when your time will come? Come, let us return to Hashem.”
The townspeople took his words to heart, and they all began to weep. But in the corner stood one fellow, and he was laughing merrily. The Magid could not understand his apathy, and after the lecture concluded, he approached him and asked for an explanation. “How could you be so impervious to my message?” The fellow was taken aback. “What do you mean? Why should I be affected by your words? You said explicitly that everyone in this town will die one day. I am only visiting here. You message had nothing to do with me!”
Let us not be like this simple fellow. We must take the messages personally and do our best to internalize them and grow.
However, we must be careful not to go too far in the other direction, either. In our zeal to have a serious Elul, we can easily go overboard.
The Divrei Chaim gave a mashal about a poor woman with a houseful of hungry children. One day, she returned from the market holding an egg, and the children became excited, anticipating a tasty lunch. “No, my dear children,” she cautioned them. “We are not going to eat this egg. I bought this egg directly from the farmer. If we incubate the egg properly, it will hatch, and when the chock gros up, it will give is an egg every single day!”
The children marveled at the thought of such abundance! In their enthusiasm, they passed the egg around, and then the unthinkable happened. The egg dropped and broke. They stood and stared at the mess, and they realized that they would have nothing from it – not today and not ever.
We can make the very same mistake with our Elul. If we overreach and try to make grand kabalos about the upcoming year, we run the very real risk of falling short. Then, we will be left with nothing. It is far wiser to strive for small, meaningful actions so that we can affect real change.
Sitting in their house, going about their regular routine, parents received a phone call we should never know from. They were informed that their child was in an accident and is in critical condition. Rushing to the hospital, they found the child connected to multiple machines keeping him alive. Hour after hour, they sat by his side, waiting for any sign of improvement, as the doctors slowly lost hope. Days turn into weeks, and weeks turn into months, and the doctors finally told them it was time to give up. The parents pleaded with them for some more time, but the hospital staff was adamant. “Your child has no chance of making it,” they claimed, “and we need the bed and supplies for other patients.” The parents begged them for another twenty-four hours before they ‘pulled the plug’, and the staff reluctantly agreed.
The parents sat by their child’s side, praying and hoping for a miracle. As the day drew to a close, the mother sat holding their son’s hand, when suddenly she felt some pressure. Unable to believe what she was feeling, she waited, and a few minutes later it happened again. Her son was squeezing her hand! She ran to tell the doctor, and thereby saved his life. After a long, difficult journey, the boy made a full recovery.
This is how we should feel during Elul. We don’t need to change everything, and Hashem does not expect us to resolve every one of our shortcomings. We just need to hear the shofar and respond, to give Him a sign of life, an indication that we are still invested in His plan for us. He is waiting to accept us with open arms – we just have to take the first step.
