Avot, Elul and repentance: It's not too late

Many years ago I worked with a major law firm which prided itself on the enthusiasm with which it dedicated itself to its clients’ welfare. The lawyers worked long hours and rarely used their generous holiday allowance. Only on 1 January did they all desert their desks and return to their families to celebrate the new year. During my first year with the firm I told the partners that, for the Jewish New Year, Rosh Hashanah, I would be unavailable for work for two consecutive days. “Wow”, said one of my colleagues, “two days? You must have one enormous hangover after that!”

But the new Jewish year is not like that. It opens with Yom HaDin, the Day of Judgement. We face God, as it were, and give an account of ourselves. This is an awesome prospect, but we do not stand before Him unprepared. The month of Elul is our time for reflection on what we have (or have not) done and how we plan to address the challenges of the year ahead.

Two mishnayot in Avot deal with giving God an account of our actions, but in contrasting ways: one addresses our past, the other our future. Rabbi Elazar HaKappar (Avot 4:29) reminds us that there is no escape. In our ordinary lives we can dodge court appearances, fail to submit tax returns, and take evasive action when our fellow humans call us to account. But from God there is no escape. Just as a life is created, is born, lives and dies, so too will we have to answer to God for everything we have done, said, thought and been. That’s a tall order—and when we make all our excuses, God quite literally has all the time in the world to listen and judge accordingly.

Akavya ben Mahahalel (Avot 3:1) takes a different line. The time to think about what you are going to tell God is actually before you contemplate doing anything wrong. That way, you will avoid wrongdoing, your conscience will be clean and you won’t be punished. No-one needs to make excuses to explain away something they didn’t do wrong after all.

Looking at the Jewish calendar, we see that Elul is a festival-free space in which we can practise justifying our wrongs and if—as is most likely—this proves impossible, it’s a time to practise repentance too. Rabbi Eliezer (Avot 2:15) kindly tells us we only need to repent the day before we die; but, since that could be tomorrow, we effectively repent each day. Elul is also prime time for turning the exercise of stocktaking of good deeds and not-so-good ones into a golden chance to improve our performance for the year to come.

Roughly two-thirds of Elul has passed and, for many people, Rosh Hashanah still seems a long way away. Some of us have not long returned from our summer vacation or have been busily settling in children for the new school year. There are bills to be paid and so many terrestrial priorities to see to. But there’s still time to pause, to reflect and ponder, to ask what sort of person we are and what sort of person would we like to be, if we were only prepared to make the effort to do so. Let’s invest in Elul ahead of the Day of Judgment that lies ahead.