This week’s Torah commentary, written by Hebrew Seminary rabbinical student Helen L. Conway, has been sponsored anonymously.
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It is common now to use reflective journals during Elul. The Oxford English Dictionary tells us the verb ‘journalling’ was first recorded in 1803 but referred to simply listing the events of a day. It was psychologist Dr. Ira Progroff’s Intensive Journal Method in the 1960s and psychologist Dr. James W. Pennebaker’s work on the wellbeing effects of journalling that caused the use of writing as self-exploration to take off.
However, Jews have been facing the task of תְּשׁוּבָה (teshuvah) or ‘returning’ for centuries. What guidance is embedded in the Torah itself that we can now combine with modern journal prompts to make our reflection more effective?
Ki Tavo falls in the middle of Elul each year. According to a legend in the Babylonian Talmud, Megillah 31a, edited near the middle of the 1st millennium C.E., Ezra the scribe—who had lived one millennium earlier—insisted that our portion should be read just before Rosh Hashanah. The Talmud cites one of its favorite sages, Reish Lekish, who explains that, since Ki Tavo contains curses, reading it at year’s close allows us to get them out of the way before the New Year comes in. But maybe, there is a more positive reason.
Ki Tavo comprises instructions from Moses to the people detailing what to do upon arrival in the Promised Land. There are three tasks. They must tithe their first fruits and repeat a ‘capsule history’ to the priest. They were to erect plastered stones on which “כׇּל־דִּבְרֵ֛י הַתּוֹרָ֥ה הַזֹּ֖את” (kol divrey hattorah hazzot, “all the words of this Instruction”) was to be written, and there was a whole performative ritual in which the tribes were divided and sent up facing mountains to shout curses or blessings across the valley. One might see in that dramatic presentation of ‘good/bad outcomes’ an echo of the concepts of names being included or left out of the Book of Life.
The command to write every word of “this Instruction” distinctly on the plastered stones has been debated. Is “this Instruction” only the Ten Commandments or the whole Torah? The French commentator Rashi (c. 1028–1105), responding to Deuteronomy 27:8, even suggests that qualifying term “בַּאֵ֥ר הֵיטֵֽב” (ba’er heytev, literally, “elucidating well”) implies writing it in seventy languages. Almost nothing however is written, in classic or contemporary text about the mode of writing itself.
The Hebrew וְכָתַבְתָּ֣ (vekhatavta) is variously translated as a command to ‘write,’ to ‘inscribe,’ or to ‘engrave.’ Artistically speaking theses are different mechanisms. However it is a reasonable assumption, working from the lack of mention of any ink and the requirements for plaster, that the method used was likely to have been what the Italians later dubbed ‘sgraffito’—the act of scratching into damp plaster to create words that read more clearly than if simply chiseled into stone. This fits with the command to write it distinctly. We might also imply this from the pairing of the instruction with the tithing of the first fruits. Both are processes of working generatively and then subtracting from one’s own handiwork.
Teshuvah (תְּשׁוּבָה)—the term we use for “repentance”—literally means “returning” and is often translated as meaning ‘coming home to oneself.’ Ki Tavo is the story of the Israelites finding their own way home, to the Promised Land, for the very first time. It is a blueprint in effect of how to arrive at our home, then physically and now psychologically through our journalling. Ki Tavo contains an important lesson about how much trust it truly takes to complete teshuvah and to arrive back home to ourselves.
Thinking back to those first fruits—the Israelites have been precariously tramping through a desert, dreaming of settling down and growing sweet, juicy fruits. They finally get everything that has been promised them but are immediately told before you can even enjoy your yield, you have to subtract some of it and give it away. Most likely, this felt non-intuitive and uncomfortable. Hadn’t they earned those fruits? What if this land wasn’t as good as hoped and there was no more fruit? The ritual required trust—a willingness not to hoard and not to hold onto merely what was known and certain.
Similarly the s’graffito method requires a lot of faith in the process. The scratching has to be done when the plaster is fresh (about 1–3 hours old) before it dries and begins to crack if carved into. There is little time to rest and enjoy the satisfaction of having achieved a perfectly rendered surface (not the easiest of tasks). Once the scratch is made, there are no do-overs. It takes nerve to make the first marks.
When we write Elul journals, we are also being asked to participate in a subtractive process. We might feel happy sitting in high dungeon and feeling self-righteous after a blazing argument. Bad habits may foster comfort over time. Our natural instinct might say: I like things just the way we are. I know what it’s like here. I’ll hold on to what I know.
However, teshuvah requires trust. We are being asked to subtract what might now feel deserved, enticing, or safe and to scratch all the way down to the solid stone of the Torah for its guidance in our lives. We must give up the justifications, reasoning, and self-denials we have carefully constructed for ourselves. Just as when tithing the fruits the Israelites were required to recite their history at Elul, we are required to consider not just the road ahead, but where we came come from and how we might return. We are asked to risk giving up what has become integrated in our lives and to go back to a place of uncertainty where we are asked to revisit a decision point and make a fresh mark.
This Elul, whether or not we are journaling, each of us might ask ourselves: where in life are you being called to leave a safe and familiar place, make a more courageous choice, and trust where that choice may lead?
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