Buckle up, sports fans, it’s synagogue pre-season—a.k.a. Elul, the Hebrew month of spiritual preparation directly before the High Holidays. It’s somehow both a marathon and a sprint for observant Jews and their leaders: synagogue staff, rabbis and cantors prepare to go into overdrive writing sermons, leading prayers, facilitating spiritual experiences, and essentially running the year’s most important programming back-to-back-to-back for a month.
How can you community members support their leaders, prevent burnout and help empower rabbis to take on the enormous tasks ahead? Avi and Matthew share their thoughts, while also sharing their own routines—what they do logistically and spiritually to prepare for a time when they won’t have bandwith for self-reflection.
Transcript
Avi Finegold: It is Elul. And our minds and hearts are filled with thoughts of return, repentance, and repair. How do rabbis prepare professionally? How do they prepare personally? And how do people support rabbis during this time? I’m Avi Finegold. Yedida’s away this week, but I’m here with Matthew Leibel. We are not in Heaven.
Matthew Leibel, all the way from the middle of Canada.
Matthew Leibl: Avi Finegold, all the way from the middle of the United States.
Avi Finegold: Yeah. I’m here briefly. I will be in Montreal on Thursday.
Matthew Leibl: And Meatloaf said two out of three ain’t bad, which is kind of our, our show today. Right.
Avi Finegold: We are missing Yedida and we are here. You know, that means that we can just talk about sports all the time. Spend an hour talking about sports.
Matthew Leibl: And alienate our producer and a large part of our audience. Or go to the Menschwarmers.
Avi Finegold: Right, exactly. Go listen to Gabe and Jamie. It’s Elul. We’re back, and we’re back in this, like, Elul mode the days before Chodesh Tov. The real thing that I got my mind about Elul and Teshuvah and returning and trying to do better. Speaking of sports, Corey Jackson, I don’t know, for those of you who heard he’s the Yankees drafted this guy who did a swastika. As we are wont to say, and everybody’s up in arms and what do you think?
Matthew Leibl: I don’t know. I mean, I don’t know a lot. A lot of the details. What I know of the story is that they’ve drafted this player who back in college drew a swastika on the door of a Jewish student and says that he was super drunk and he was loaded when he went through this. And he’s admitting it was a mistake and he’s trying to grow from it. I mean, no doubt probably because he doesn’t want to compromise his baseball career. But I’m, I’m much more inclined to call this guy a dummy who got loaded and did something without thinking it through than somebody who was motivated by hate. Like, this doesn’t sound to me. I think we all know a lot of people. I think we ourselves probably did stupid things at that time in our lives. I certainly did stupid things when I was in university. I didn’t draw swastikas, but I did whatever stupid things. And I’m more inclined to say he’s a dummy than a racist fueled by hate and that this should hold him back from his career. So I think the backlash is unfortunately typical of the Twitter era, but unwarranted here for me. What do you.
Avi Finegold: Yeah, I again, I think that this is the very essence of what Teshuvah is, is owning up to your mistake and saying, I’m not going to do this again. Now, you know, if in his major league debut he shows up and, you know, on Jason Youkilis, who’s not playing anymore, but, you know, sorry, Kevin, Kevin, you know, I’m talking about. Yeah, he goes to Kevin. You. Kevin Youkilis is Jewish, right?
Matthew Leibl: Yes, yes, of course.
Avi Finegold: Puts a swastika on, you know, in his locker. Then you know that he hasn’t done the Teshuvah. Right. He hasn’t fixed himself up. We trust the very nature of. You know, I love the Torah reading that we have on Rosh Hashanah is about Ishmael. And even though we know Ishmael might go and do other things later on in his life, Ishmael is pardoned by God because of Ba’asher Hu Sham, because of the way that he was repentant in that moment. And if, you know, Corey Jackson is repentant and he really is contrite about this, we gotta give him a break.
Matthew Leibl: We have to build in, especially for young people to be able to undo your mistakes. I mean, some things you can undo. I get that, but there’s gotta be room where we’re trying to find ways. Like you said this entire season, the whole premise of the highlight of the Jewish year for rabbis is based on this idea of second chances being within our grasp, even if they are the same second chances we were seeking last year. Still, it’s. Still, it’s built into the fabric right now.
Avi Finegold: Staying with Elul and staying with sports, but moving in a slightly different direction. A lot of the commentaries point out that one of the ways in which you can use Elul as a mnemonic device, as a, as a hint of something, is that Elul stands for Ani L’dodi V’dodi Li. My parents actually got engaged on Rosh Chodesh Elul. And so their wedding bands actually said Ani L’dodi V’dodi Li on the wedding band. It’s about the connections we have with individuals. And speaking of which, there was a famous engagement that happened as we are recording.
Matthew Leibl: Yeah. Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce, which makes this both a music story and a sports story, as well as a just.
Avi Finegold: General an Elul story.
Matthew Leibl: I don’t know if any of the headlines, Avi, are gonna have it as an Elul story, but, hey, like this is always a time of year with lots of weddings. You’re going to Montreal for a wedding. There’s weddings all over. So Elul really is an Ani L’dodi V’dodi Li time.
Avi Finegold: Maybe we have to ask, is Taylor Swift actually repentant or is she unrepentant about all the previous relationships and the way that she’s trashed those people in the past? Maybe she has some repenting to do.
Matthew Leibl: I don’t know her well enough to know for sure. All I know is that this wedding I remember, I guess it’s about 13 years ago, the royal wedding between Kate and William. Never been a big, huge obsessor of over the royals, but I just remember that was a wedding that got some national, some global attention. This feels like it’s going to be the biggest wedding ever. Maybe like given the time, like in.
Avi Finegold: The coverage, it’s also going to take forever to plan this one.
Matthew Leibl: Well, that was your, that was your thought. And I was wondering, I was like, are they really gonna drag this out and milk this? Like, I kind of think that she’s like, what if we forget for a second that they’re huge stars and that they’re, they’re human beings and, and at the age that like. Because how old is Taylor Swift? She born in 1989, right? Isn’t that why that album’s called? I think she’s got an album. 1989. Because she’s born in 1989.
Avi Finegold: That is correct.
Matthew Leibl: Which means that she’s 35. She turns 36 in December. I, I get the sense that she wants to be a mom. I mean, biology and physiology play a role in this when you’re a, when you’re a woman. Like, I don’t think she wants to spend the next two years planning away. I think she wants to get married and have kids and, and, and then I think the question will be, is she gonna stop touring? Is she gonna tour again? Is she gonna. What’s she gonna do with her kids? Is she gonna be like Beyoncé?
Avi Finegold: Every couple that I do their wedding, I tell them short engagement. Short engagement is the answer to like any of the pre-marriage stuff. Because you know, you’re doing it, you might as well just get it done. And I wish that, you know, Taylor Swift hears about this and says, you know what? That Avi Finegold, I think he’s right. But something tells me that she’s not. And something tells me that this wedding will take a long time. There might be a Stanley Cup in Canada before Taylor Swift gets married.
Matthew Leibl: Okay. Here. Okay, let’s do some, let’s set some over unders. Well, yeah, I mean Vegas is basically, you know, there’s a lot of Jewish influence in the history in Vegas, and so I think we can do the Vegas odds. What if I gave you by two Eluls from now so not even next Elul but by two from now by.
Avi Finegold: Will they 2027, will they be married?
Matthew Leibl: Yeah, I take for sure. I take the under. I take for sure they’re married by then.
Avi Finegold: It’s unclear. Like, I might take the over, but just over, right? Like, it would…
Matthew Leibl: Isn’t that one of the answers of the Magic 8-Ball when you shake it? It says it is unclear.
Avi Finegold: It is unclear. Yeah, I might take the over. I would definitely take the over on a year, probably even 18 months. That’s where we’re like; beyond that, I think that’s where it’s getting iffy. I think the logistics are going to take them forever to plan this huge wedding. I think the prenups are going to take them forever to hash out. This is not going to be like a simple, hey, find a wedding hall and a caterer, and just go do it.
Matthew Leibl: Well, I wish them all the best. Lots of mazel. I hope that this is… They seem really happy together, and I’m all for it. Go for it. Good for them. But I think she’s going to be in trouble because they’re going to get married as his career ends, and he’s going to be puttering around the house. So she’s going to have to go on tour right away.
Avi Finegold: Perhaps.
Matthew Leibl: Perhaps there’s a sports take that no one wants. Anyway, so we could go on to our next Jewish topic. Like on the topic of marriages, there was a story that a friend sent to me about a third-generation Conservative rabbi, the last name Sachs, S-A-C-K-S, who resigned from the Rabbinical Assembly. If I have the story correct, it’s basically like cutting ties with the Conservative movement over the issue, which we’ve discussed in our still newer podcast here, of interfaith marriages. Since the 70s, the Conservative movement and the Jewish Theological Seminary, the Rabbinical Assembly—all the big organizations that are part of this—say that a rabbi or cantor in the movement may not officiate an interfaith wedding. And if I remember correctly, until very recently, you weren’t even allowed to attend. According to the story, someone made an anonymous tip that this Rabbi Sacks had been performing interfaith weddings. He admits he has. He wrote a letter trying to explain that he’s been trying to talk to people in the movement about it, no one’s been interested, and that he just, rather than wait for the findings of the conclusion, like of the inquiry or whatever it is, he just decided to resign. And of course, I always admire people with the confidence and the strength of their convictions, and so I give him full props for that. I’ve been officiating interfaith weddings since before I was a rabbi. So I’m obviously, I think it’s obvious I’m going to be in support of this guy, and I think his theories are right. We’ve talked about this—the direction I see it going—and the story talked about numbers, maybe half in congregations that are more liberal. This just reignites a debate that keeps coming around. But what is interesting to me about this, Avi, is I’m curious about the Rabbinical Assembly’s, the movement’s, reaction to this. I just feel like this once-great Conservative movement every year is getting more and more irrelevant, and so many major synagogues in North America are Conservative, whatever that means. I just feel like they are going to end up identity-less sooner than later.
Avi Finegold: So this is not the first Conservative rabbi that has left the movement, right? There are many prominent… Not many, but there are definitely enough prominent rabbis that have left the Conservative movement. Amichai Lau-Lavie left the Conservative movement in 2017. Adina Lewittes, good Canadian. Roli Matalon of Congregation B’nai Jeshurun in New York, left the Conservative movement in a similar way. So there’s a lot of them. And for all the talk, you often hear, “Well, there’s no Pope in Judaism, so people are free to do… you know, you don’t have to believe X or believe Y in order to be Jewish.” And that’s true. But with a couple of denominations like the Reform Movement and the Conservative movement, there kind of is a “Catholic” version of Judaism, in that if you want to say you’re Conservative, they kind of own the notion of what it means to be a Conservative rabbi. And they’ll say, “You’ll leave the movement and all shuls that are technically Conservative shuls.” The Conservative movement basically says, “These are our principles. We are a halachic organization. We are a halachic movement. And until the day comes when we have changed our position on intermarriages, this is our position currently. And if you violate that position, you’re no longer considered to be in the movement.” So I kind of respect the Conservative movement for at least sticking to their guns, saying, “Look, if you violate these principles, you’re not in the movement.” We’re not telling you you’re a bad guy. We’re saying, “This is our principle, and this is where it is.” He’s saying, “This no longer fits with who I am. Great. Good for you.” You know, I see that the writing’s on the wall where they have staff working on the whole interfaith question, and there are people actively within the movement saying, “Yes, we’re hoping to shift it. We’re hoping to shift it.” And it feels kind of like, you know, mechitzah felt like in the 50s and 60s, or, you know, women joining the rabbinate—these things take time, and we’re in that place right now for the Conservative movement.
Matthew Leibl: I don’t get that sense. I don’t get that sense that the movement even is really entertaining that, which means if they’re not entertaining it, maybe we’re 10 years away from a decision like that. But a lot—I just don’t get that feeling that that’s the direction that…
Avi Finegold: I mean, the fact that they now welcome… The fact that they now welcome spouses of Jewish members into congregations, and they actively want to encourage those people. They are actively doing programming for interfaith couples and families. Even though at the wedding level, at the connection, at the… Being a member of the movement or the community, you still have to convert. In a Conservative halachic framework, they’re clearly starting to create… I mean, at least in my sense of it, my read of it, is that they’re clearly creating the pathway that is going to eventually go and say, “Hey, you know, maybe we can do this.” Or, I don’t know, like, I’m not sure. I don’t know where it’s going to go. But that’s my sense, is that maybe it’s actually going to go in that direction soon enough.
Matthew Leibl: If you’re right, it feels backwards to me. It feels like they’re doing all these little things and dancing around the big thing.
Avi Finegold: It’s the change.
Matthew Leibl: Find a way to get your arms around the big thing—the wedding.
Avi Finegold: It’s the change that takes time, right? It’s easier to change the little things on the side, and then by the end, where all the little things are changed, then you’re like, “Ah, this big thing. It’s not such a big thing,” because we do this already, and we do that already, and we do that already, and we do that already.
Matthew Leibl: I know. It feels like you backed into that, though. Like you go, if you want a sports metaphor, you got to be like the NFL. Make a change. Make a big change. Rewrite your rules. Make a big change. Change your kickoffs. Boom. Not gradual. Make a change. Recognize your trends and go for it.
Avi Finegold: I’ll give you the NFL analogy in response, and I’ll say, “Anybody who goes and says, ‘I need to make this big change, and I have to do this massive teshuvah, and I’m going to switch right now,’ it lasts for like a week or two, right?” The whole New Year’s resolution, you start small, you start changing the little habits so that by the time you get to the big habit, you’ve actually changed a lot of other places in your life. You’ve done something better in this piece, and you’ve done something better in that piece, and you’ve done something better in that piece, and then you’ve changed. Like, let’s say somebody says, you know what? I don’t go to shul. I don’t go to shul, but I am changing my mind so that by Rosh Hashanah, I’m going to shul three times a day, I’m going to put on Tefillin every day, I’m going to do all of this stuff. I’m changing everything. That’s not going to last. Whereas if you say, you know what, I’m going to make sure I go to Minyan once a week for the next month, and I’m going to keep that going into the holiday season, into the fall, and at least pray one out of the three services at home on my own every day. Right. Those are little changes so that by the time you’re able to add on more and add on more, that’s better. To their credit, if that is an internal discussion that they’re having, which I’m not part of the ra, so I don’t know. Actually, there could be an argument for saying we’re going to change all the little things first, and we’re going to be welcoming of this so that by the time we are ready to tackle the question, it feels a lot more comfortable for us.
Matthew Leibl: But this is not the beginning of it. Like, I feel like there’s been 25 years of a trend already, and it’s the movement that’s actually behind it. The movement is not catching.
Avi Finegold: Yeah. Because of the movement, and it’s been difficult.
Matthew Leibl: Right, but who dictates Judaism? The Jewish people or this organization that’s trying to kind of frame it? Is it. Is it the.
Avi Finegold: I wish Yedida was here because she would say it’s all history. And if you look at the past, even in the most Orthodox communities, right, change happens, and it happens slowly. And change often comes up from the bottom to the level of the big halachic deciders, to the point where you can say, yes, this changes where it’s at. And we are going to go with the times and not just, like, follow what we think it says in the book. Right. So it is both ways that, you know, the movement follows what the people do, and the people, in theory, if they’re part of a movement, adhere to what the movement says. I think it goes both ways.
Matthew Leibl: I wonder where the movement feels the resistance is strong, the resistance to this trend in the people because.
Avi Finegold: Are you saying. Are you saying the conservative movement is Star Wars? The resistance is strong.
Matthew Leibl: Yeah, except the resistance. Yeah. I don’t know. I don’t want to go there. I don’t want to go there. We were better with sports.
Avi Finegold: Let’s move on. This is a moment when, as we said, you know, we are moving into overdrive. We’re a month away, basically, from Rosh Hashanah. Just as a way of introduction, what are you doing this year for Rosh Hashanah?
Matthew Leibl: This will be the third year that I do my own services for Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur. I’ve got a space that’s a very popular space for weddings called the Gates. It’s a very cool place in Winnipeg, right along the banks of one of our rivers. So we can actually go down to the river and do tashlich, which is really, really cool.
Avi Finegold: Taylor, if you’re listening, this space is open for 2027.
Matthew Leibl: Before August. And we do a service for the second day of Rosh Hashanah, for Kol Nidre and for the morning of Yom Kippur. So a total of three services over the high holidays.
Avi Finegold: And you’ve done Rosh Hashanah professionally for many years before that? Probably 17 years. Even though you have done a lot of Rosh Hashanahs, what does prep look like every year? Like, what does it mean to, like, get into.
Matthew Leibl: It’s changed, right? Like, I remember. Oh, my gosh. I remember. I started when I was 19, right? And my first gig for Rosh Hashanah was doing Shacharit. And the Sharad Zedek in the early 2000s was following a model going back several decades where we had such a large congregation that we had two services, a first service and a second service on both days. So by the end of day two of Rosh Hashanah, you’ve done four services. You’ve done both services twice. And we didn’t do Shacharit for the afternoon crowd, but we did Shacharit for the morning crowd, but we had to do it so early in order to be able to fit in this lengthy Conservative service of four and a half hours. Shacharit was basically like 7:30 in the morning. And the room at the Sharad Zedek was set up for 1200, 1300 seats, and we barely had a minyan. And at that shul, you look out at the crowd when you daven, you don’t have your back to them, you have your face to them. And I remember, like, the first one looking out at this crowd of 1200 chairs and like 10 faces. And, like, I have practised for nobody. Like, there is nobody here to hear me do like, like El Nora Alila, like something from Shacharit that I had never learned before, that wasn’t in my bar mitzvah. So I had to learn all this new nusach. I practised in front of a mirror listening to a cassette tape. In 2004, I was so freaked out and I got out there and it was just like an empty, gigantic auditorium of chairs. So that was my first one. Now, the prep has changed from that, you know, now it’s like honing the sermons because I run my own service, I have some of the, I guess, logistical things from parking to where people are going to sit, to what the room’s going to look like. But I got good people to help me and I try not to stress, but now it’s finding time to fit the sermons in and really make those powerful. What about for you? Like, what’s yours?
Avi Finegold: I should say the most interesting gig I ever had for Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur was in a big Conservative shul in Montreal where I didn’t lead any services. But on Rosh Hashanah, they actually hired me to set up in the library a beit midrash where we studied all of the prayers of the day, so that if you wanted to take a break from the service, that was like four and a half hours, and it’s just really long and you’re just sitting there and you don’t know what’s going on. I prayed really early. It was an hour walk each way. And I set up during the service from like 10 to 1, all these, like, photocopied sheets. And we went through a lot of the Piyyutim, a lot of the songs, a lot of the extra prayers, a lot of the themes of the day, what the Torah service is talking about. And I, like, I thought it was really cool to be able to give people like, oh, you want to come in for half an hour? Yeah, let’s learn this piece, or let’s learn that piece. And people were popping in and out over the course of the day to sort of, like, give themselves a break. And that was a lot of fun. I did that on Rosh Hashanah. I did that on Yom Kippur. And it felt kind of cool. You know, it was rough to have to get up super early, find a minyan that was like 6 a.m. to be done by like 9:30 so that I could then walk over to there at 10.
Matthew Leibl: And you found one like that?
Avi Finegold: Yeah, yeah. I mean, in the religious community, you find a lot of, like, even Rosh Hashanah Vatikin, like sunrise minyanim. And it was. That was really meaningful. It was kind of an interesting, you know, thing that I’ve done. But I’ve mainly led services. Sermons are, you know, they’re tough to have to write a Rosh Hashanah sermon and make it original every year.
And I’ve seen this happen. I’ve delivered some of them. It takes time, it takes real work. So this was a long lead into this whole discussion about Jewish professionals and the context in which this article, that I’m about to quote, came in is due to the crisis going on in the Jewish community, whether it’s with antisemitism, the war in Israel, all of this stuff. Our Jewish professionals are burned out, and we need to give them a break. This is from eJewish Philanthropy. The title was “The Crisis We’re Ignoring: Who’s Caring for the People Who Hold Up the Jewish World.” And it was giving, you know, sort of a musar, a notice to the community to, like, get better at taking the Jewish professionals and propping them up and giving them time, giving them a spa day, and making sure they take off their vacation so that they can feel comfortable and they can do this. I felt like as soon as I finished reading this article, my first instinct was like, hey, you know, rabbis have been doing this for centuries. And nobody goes and says, hey, prop up the rabbis, go give them a spa day after Rosh Hashanah, after Sukkot. Like, we know what it’s like to have to have gone through crises where nobody goes and says, oh my God, this is the best. Our rabbi, he deserves like a month-long vacation. It’s like, as soon as the rabbi takes weeks off, they’re like, who does he think he is? What? He’s not even working. He’s working on Shabbat? Like his Shabbat is a day off? I’m like, no, it’s real work.
Matthew Leibl: I had a similar reaction to you. I would have preferred more context in the article itself with some actual numbers. I’d like to hear, like, to your point, what makes now different from what Jewish professionals have been going through? The article makes it seem that in this post 10/7 world, this is the first time the Jewish professional has been pushed to the edge. I’ve seen them pushed to the edge forever. Yeah, like, show me a Jewish teacher who isn’t stressed because they’re a teacher, or at camp who isn’t stressed, or at shul or at a community centre. Like, I, I’m a little skeptical, to be honest with you. A little skeptical of, like, the uniqueness now of protecting professionals from burnout. It is a real thing. You know that old joke: everyone goes to talk to the rabbi, but who does the rabbi talk to?
Avi Finegold: The rabbi talks to other rabbis.
Matthew Leibl: Right. If they have time, if they’re not seeing other people, right. So, I believe in caring for professionals. Don’t get me wrong for a second.
Avi Finegold: My response, in all honesty, is I look at people that are high net worth individuals, as we like to say.
Matthew Leibl: Sure, a lot of dough, a lot of dough.
Avi Finegold: People, people who are wealthy and they are under a lot of stress, I’m sure, at work all the time, but they’re like, oh, I’m doing this because I’m earning a pile of money in order to be under all of this stress. And as a result of having this pile of money, there’s a lot of stuff in my life that I can just remove or I can find other ways that I can de-stress or I’m actually saving so that I can retire at age 45 and be done. Like, it all makes it worth it. Whereas within the Jewish community, you’re making these people push to the edge, but they’re earning like bupkis. Like, they’re not getting the same point. And so great, you run a foundation, you should double the salary of every professional in the Jewish community that is doing, you know, whatever, that is doing something professionally in the Jewish community. I can assure you that those people then will say, thank you. I don’t need a spa day, I need you to double my salary because I deserve it. And it’s still less than what equivalent people would be making in the private sector.
Matthew Leibl: Yeah, I think that people are feeling that in all kinds of places, for sure. So I guess one of the questions, Avi, that comes up here is given that Elul on its own is a time where rabbis are gearing up for Rosh Hashanah. It’s a very, very busy time. What are the things that congregants or even just regular Jewish people can do to support their clergy? If we make this assumption that this is a high-stress time and they want to take care of them or give them a break or whatever, that kind of idea.
Avi Finegold: So for rabbis in the Elul time, it’s like accountants in April. Right. This is rabbinic tax season, is what I always call Elul and the high holidays. I think the first thing to recognize is you’re not going to do much for an accountant in tax season, right. They know that they’ve signed up for this, and they have a lot of work that they have to do, and they’re going to put in all these extra hours in this month leading up to the tax deadlines, and the rabbis are doing the same thing. So, I don’t think that needing to give them something in Elul is important. I mean, giving them whatever time they might need to actually get the stuff done, sure. But the thing that I think is important is when it comes to Sukkot and when it comes to Cheshvan, do something for rabbis then to say, look, we genuinely appreciate Sukkot. We genuinely appreciate this is what you do. Find a way for rabbis to like, take time to do stuff for themselves and to do stuff for other rabbis. Because I’ll be honest, as much as you can be friends with laypeople, nobody really understands you professionally other than another rabbi or other ministers. I gotta say some of my closest friends are Christian ministers because they get it just as, just as equally. So I think that, like, now, give them a break, give them their time. Know that it’s going to be a late time, it’s going to be a lot of work. Cantors, the same thing. I have a colleague who’s a cantor who takes three days before Rosh Hashanah where he, like, leaves his family and he goes to his vocal coach and he’s like, okay, we gotta, we gotta get this going. The race is coming, so you gotta fine-tune the engine. Cheshvan comes, go do something nice for your rabbi.
Matthew Leibl: I, I, I love that. I actually love that. I always think it’s so funny. It used to be so fun. Like, right after Yom Kippur, everyone always say, oh, wow, got through another tough one.
Avi Finegold: I’d be like, dude, five days, Sukkot is coming up.
Matthew Leibl: There’s like eight. There’s like eight days of Sukkot with Shmini Atzeret and Simchat Torah. Like, we’re halfway. Oh, yeah. But we don’t come to that, right? We used to have this thing where no one back in my Shaare Zedek days, the day after Yom Kippur was completely blocked off. No one was allowed to schedule a meeting. No one was allowed to schedule an event. There were no lessons. It was like this idea that the day after the Super Bowl, because you love all the sports references and Yedida’s absence today, the day after the Super Bowl should be a national holiday so people can recover. And the day after Yom Kippur was kind of like a synagogue holiday. What I was laughed at in reverse, though. You know, what can people do in the Elul-Tishrei lead-up? It’s not so much anything other than kind of sort of staying out of the way a little bit. I used to love these people who would try to schedule an event or a programme or have, like, extra meetings and try and get something done and say they wanted to have the meeting or the event a week and a half before Rosh Hashanah. I was like, why? Well, you know, like, we can get. No, like, we’ve got enough going on right now. Let’s not add to what’s going on here. So I didn’t appreciate anyone who was trying to schedule meetings. There was like, oh, we’ve got to plan an event for December. Let’s have a meeting here six days before Rosh Hashanah. I was like, no, we can have this meeting after Yadav. We can, we can wait.
Avi Finegold: Here’s what I’m thinking. And this is like a total “Not in Heaven” moment. We should launch this and make it a thing. We should launch a campaign to get people to do something nice for their rabbi and tell us what it’s going to be, or what it was. We should highlight that in Cheshvan.
Matthew Leibl: I’d love to hear.
Avi Finegold: Do something nice for your rabbi day or month or whatever it is. Let’s put a pin in that one and come back to it. What’s your personal Elul look like? Your, your chuva shift? What are the things that you read? What are the things that you move forward on?
Matthew Leibl: I think that it happens. You think? I’m so busy with all this other stuff because it’s such a busy time of year that I don’t know that I’m consciously thinking about teshuva separate from it. I guess what I’m trying to say is in the course of preparing the sermons and everything for our services, it gets me thinking a lot about the last year. I often wonder as I’m preparing to talk to a crowd of people, have they done as much thinking about their soulful life? Not to be trite, but have they done as much soul searching as I’ve done just in the act of preparing for the sermons to talk to them about their soul searching? Right, like this kind of cyclical thing. Like I said, I used to be that guy. I imagine people like us who are drawn to this kind of work are usually the people who, the night of Kol Nidre, would go home and actually think about what the rabbi had talked about. But not like some of my contemporaries, God forbid, who might have eaten or watched TV or done something very routine and regular. For me, the evening of Kol Nidre, even before I worked, was a night of reflection. That night alone, I think there were things that I would take with me if the message was strong, at the very least. So, I think just my work forces me to think about these things, whether I’m going forward or going backwards.
Avi Finegold: Rosh Hashanah is not about repentance. Right. Rosh Hashanah is just about the recognition of the relationship we have with God, God as the supreme leader, and all of that. So, it’s not so much about Rosh Hashanah, but more about Yom Kippur. But Elul is about that whole path, you know, all the people that are coming to your service, right?
Matthew Leibl: Yes, yes, yes, of course.
Avi Finegold: Yes. So why don’t you start sending out, and this will make your sermon writing even easier. You should start sending out emails and call them “prepent” instead of repent, right? Get them to sort of say, look, showing up on Rosh Hashanah and just expecting to be in that mindset doesn’t make sense, right? This is the pre, Elul is the preseason that gets you there. And Rosh Hashanah is the opening day, right? You have to prep for it, and you should be helping the congregation along in this thing. Once or twice a week, send out something like a reading, an action guide: “Hey, why don’t you think about doing something good for everybody for the next week?” Come up with stuff that you can send to people and say, this is what happens when you come to my congregation. I help you through. I get you there.
Matthew Leibl: Avi, you had me at prepent. I don’t think you’re hired.
Avi Finegold: I don’t think that’s mine, but you can take it.
Matthew Leibl: You’re hired. You’re hired. And the pay is zero. Yeah, I’m so excited to have you on the team. But you’re right. How many people just show up on Rosh Hashanah and that day is maybe when it clicks in like that. That was the whole idea, right? Like, Judaism has this built in everywhere. I always tell people, you don’t just sit down and start doing the Shema on Shabbat morning or on any morning. You have to do your… You have to… You can’t just go and play sports, man. We’re really hammering this today. You have to stretch, right? You have to do some version of warming up. You can’t just go right into it. So something as big as cleansing your soul, as repentance, is the same sort of thing. You can’t just wake up and say, today is my repentance day. You have to. Judaism is all about this. We prepare ourselves through the Omer for Shavuot. We prepare ourselves in the morning to get to the Shema. There’s always the lead-up. There’s always the lead-in. And if you take the lead-in seriously with whatever you’re doing, it makes the job so much easier. Anyone who’s lived knows this. You spend all your time on preparation, it makes the actual execution so much smoother. It’s just… Those are always tangible things, right? You like to make drinks, and I like to cook a little bit. If you have all your stuff pre-cut and set up, and it looks like a Food Network show, it’s so much easier.
Avi Finegold: Oh, there you go. That’s the better metaphor. Elul is the mise en place, right? For the actual “crappy” meal that is Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur.
Matthew Leibl: But we’ve been doing sports all day, so we can’t switch it up this late in the game. I mean, who would we be? We can’t be like the Rabbinic Assembly and be inconsistent. We have to be consistent.
Avi Finegold: I love it. Yeah. So I think that… Look, let’s keep this in mind as we go through. We got a few more weeks of shows in Elul, and I want to be more mindful of this even as we get through other topics and other stuff. On that note, let’s move to textual healing.
Matthew Leibl: So this week’s Parsha is Shoftim. Shoftim has a lot of really interesting lines. It’s got this one line, three words: Tzedek, tzedek tirdof. Love this one. Read about it years ago. Justice, justice shall you pursue. The repetition of the word “tzedek” has fascinated rabbis because that doesn’t happen very often. Why does a word get said twice? One of the main interpretations is that you shall pursue justice justly. This idea that the ends don’t justify the means; the process has to be just as well. I was drawn to it because I heard that Ruth Bader Ginsburg, of blessed memory, had this calligraphy on the wall in her chambers in the Supreme Court – “Justice, justice shall you pursue,” Tzedek, tzedek tirdof. I find that in my life, when I hear it, my wife does it too, I do it. When we say something twice, when we repeat something, it’s usually because of importance, it’s usually because of emphasis. But there’s also this element, not a joke, with sports, with encouragement. A lot of times when you play sports, you’ll hear people repeat your name, like, here you go, here you go. Attaboy, attaboy. You say things twice to pump people up. I just found that it was very interesting that on the journey towards justice, you talk about propping up professionals. Sometimes when you’re pursuing justice, you can easily lose sight of when you’re in it, like what you’re fighting for, why you have to fight so hard if something was just and right. Why is it so difficult? Words of encouragement and words of repetition keep you on the path, whether you’re Ruth Bader Ginsburg or Avi Finegold and Matthew Leibel. The pursuit of justice is anything but easy. And that, those three words and this teaching that comes from this parsha, I just absolutely love. Because anyone who’s had to pursue justice in one form or another knows you gotta be strong. It helps when your strength can come from the outside, whether it’s words, family, or friends, to prop you up. Sometimes you need that encouragement: “Here we go. Here we go. You can do it. You can do it.” So that’s what I like about this parsha. What about you?
Avi Finegold: There is a lot in this parsha. This is one of those where there’s law after law after law. I want to focus on one of them that comes up at the end, and it’s the laws of the siege. I don’t know if you know the laws about this in this week’s portion. It says, when you get to a city and you’re about to besiege it in order to conquer it, you’re forbidden to destroy its trees, specifically its fruit-bearing trees. You may eat of them, but you must not cut them down.
It says, “Ki ha’adam eitz hasadeh lavo mi panacha b’matzor.” Are trees of the field human to withdraw before you into the besieged city? It couldn’t possibly be more appropriate for the time we’re in right now, thinking about the relationship between these things. The main idea I like to learn from this text is not just about not cutting down fruit trees. You need to cut down trees because you don’t bring all the stuff with you to besiege the city. You take from the trees around and build battering rams. They say you can do that with trees that don’t bear fruit.
But those trees have been planted, and they’re giving food to people around. Destroying the source of food is Bal Tashchit. It’s a principle like you shouldn’t waste things, you shouldn’t waste food, you shouldn’t waste resources. Beyond that is the notion of, “What did the tree do to you?” I love that saying. It shows that the Torah sometimes has literary style. Is the tree a person for you to go and hurt?
This is one of those teachings. There’s a phrase, “If you know, you know.” It’s a tough time to read this verse and reflect, wishing we felt about it like we do about many other laws. How do we waste resources? Where are we wasting them? What are we doing for people’s food supplies in and out of the city? You might win and live in that city without fruit trees to eat from, or you might lose and retreat, leaving people without food.
I think it’s one of those mitzvot, one of those laws, that we would do well to pay more attention to.
Thank you for listening to Not in Heaven. Our producer and editor is Zachary Kaufman. Michael Freeman is the executive producer. Our music is by Socalled. We’d love to hear what you think about anything we spoke about on the show. Please email us at [email protected] to catch every episode. Subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. And if you’d like to support our show, consider making a donation to The CJN at TheCJN.ca/donate.
Show Notes
Credits
- Hosts: Avi Finegold, Yedida Eisenstat, Matthew Leibl
- Production team: Zachary Judah Kauffman (editor), Michael Fraiman (executive producer)
- Music: Socalled
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