This week we read Shoftim, and right at the center of the portion comes one of the most powerful imperatives in all of Torah: Tzedek, tzedek tirdof — “Justice, justice shall you pursue.”

The repetition is intentional. The rabbis remind us that the Torah never wastes a word. Justice must be pursued not once, not occasionally, but relentlessly — until it takes root in the world.

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It’s a spiritual wake-up call. Think of it like an alarm clock for the soul.

That month is called Elul.

Elul comes right before Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur—the holiest days of the Jewish year. Instead of just showing up to synagogue and hoping for the best, our tradition says: prepare your heart. Transformation doesn’t happen in an instant. It takes intention, practice, and time. Elul gives us that time.

This month is about teshuva, a word often translated as “repentance” but more accurately meaning “return.” We are invited to return to our best selves, to return to our values, to return to our communities, and—for many of us—to return to God.

Teshuva is not about becoming someone different. It’s about remembering who we really are and aligning our lives more closely with that truth.

Elul is also a season of heshbon hanefesh, an “accounting of the soul.” Just as you might review a bank statement to see what came in, what went out, and what needs attention, Elul asks us to review our lives. Where did I show up with kindness, courage, or honesty? Where did I miss the mark? What do I want to carry forward, and what am I ready to release?

Our tradition even gives us reminders. Each morning of Elul, the shofar is sounded. Its cry is not meant to scare us but to wake us up—a spiritual alarm clock reminding us not to drift through our days.

And there’s a teaching that during Elul, God is especially close. Like a sovereign who leaves the palace and walks in the fields, the divine is accessible, available, near. The work of return doesn’t require grand gestures or holy spaces. It begins right where we are—in the ordinary fields of our lives.

So this Elul, I invite you to take one daily step of reflection.

It doesn’t have to be big. Write down one thing you’re grateful for. Reach out to someone you’ve drifted from. Pause for a few minutes of quiet and check in with yourself.

Small steps, taken consistently, prepare us for the new year.

And when the High Holidays arrive, may we not be caught off guard. May we enter awake, aware, and ready.

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Progressive Jews must stay in relationship with other progressive people and confront antisemitism when it happens.

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I made this video to expand a little and talk about what I wrote in Losing a Generation…

Also, please forgive Stella’s snoring in the background.

VIDEO TRANSCRIPT:

So last week I wrote a Substack piece titled it basically Losing a Generation. And I'll add it here, and I want to talk about it a little bit in this video, because it's gotten a lot of attention. Um, and in the essay, I say we are losing a generation of Jewish people, and it's not because they don't care about the Judaism. It's actually quite the opposite. We are losing this generation because legacy institutions, whether they be JCC synagogues or something else, legacy institutions that claim to safeguard our tradition and the ones that claim to protect us, have lost their moral clarity. We are. Judaism, in my opinion, is the OG of liberation theology. It's the original liberation theology, meaning that liberation theology at its basic definition of God's preferential concern for the poor and oppressed. A theology that is rooted through the lens of social justice, and arguing that faith requires active work to free people from unjust economic, political, and social conditions. And we as Jews are commanded in the Torah no less than 36 times to not oppress the stranger, because we know the soul of the stranger. And we are told explicitly and repeatedly that justice is not optional. And yet, too many of our Jewish leaders to many of our institutions have gone silent. Silent on suffering. And too many of our institutions have prioritized political safety over prophetic responsibility. And young Jews see this contradiction, and they see the gap between the Torah they've been taught and the silence of institutions that claim to represent that Torah. We have young people in our society who have grown up on American values. And for the sake of this podcast or this video, let's say American values are rooted in justice, fairness, compassion and freedom and liberty. Those American values, values that have been connected to the Torah, the Torah that we taught them, we taught them about these values. And because they see this contradiction between the Torah they've been taught and how our institutions are acting, they are walking away. And it's not just young people. Some older folks were fed up as well. Not from Judaism. It's not big. And I'm not talking about the people who don't love their Judaism. They are fed up and walking away from a version of Judaism that has become completely unrecognizable to them. And conversation after conversation, I encounter Jews of all ages, long-time synagogue members, community leaders, people who have given decades to these institutions, who are fed up with this lack of moral clarity. If we continue down this path of silence and selective empathy, we won't just lose a generation. We will lose the soul of our tradition. And as the month of a lull approaches, a time of the year when we think about how we may have missed the mark, how we've not done a great job in the past, and how we can do better in the future, and how we can live up to the future we want, there is still time to return. There's still time to return to the tour of empathy, compassion and justice. But only if we are willing. Willing to see the suffering of others and moving beyond moving beyond this. What about ism? What about insert selective words? There's still time to return, but only if we are willing to see the suffering of others. And we must let our hearts be broken and open, like the tablets at Sinai and IV. I wrote about this last week and I read about this before. Um, I had a link in the bottom to the post from last week. Um, and I've, like I said, I've written about what's driving people away and what our tradition actually demands and how we might find our way back. Let's find our way back, folks. Y'all have a great day.

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