Perhaps the greatest religious conflict, especially for Jews, is that between God’s infiniteness and God’s intimacy.  God is radically One, as the mystics put it, Ayn od milvado, “There is nothing besides God.”  So impossible and dangerous is it to anthropomorphize God, to take the risk of limiting God or pretending to know God’s essence, that we Jews do not even refer to God directly, or call God by name, most often we refer to God in a way that is twice removed- as Hashem, “The Name.”  It is a mighty strange term for God, but I think it reflects how extreme our view of God as unknowable is.

Yet, as Jews, we live a religious life in which God is an intimate other.   We pray to God and expect that God hears- as we say in the liturgy- “the prayer of every mouth.”  We are commanded to love God (in the Shema) and are told that God loves us (in the Shacharit liturgy).  To reconcile God as infinite with God as personal, seems almost impossible.  Yet, though it is seemingly paradoxical, this is our conception of God.

We are the first monotheists, though God, at least from our vantage point, is not static, but rather a God that is accessible to us in many different ways and identities.   In Judaism God has many names, and names, as we know from the story in B’rashit of Adam naming the animals, indicate personas: God is a Parent (Avinu), Sovereign (Malkenu), Lover (as in The Song of Songs), Creator, etc..  God also has different ways of behaving: jealous, merciful, guiding, kind, etc.

Naming God is vital if God is to be revealed to us, if there is to be any relationship between us and God.  As Franz Rosenzweig put it: “With the proper name, the rigid wall of objectness has been breached.  That which has a name of its own can no longer be a thing, no longer everyman’s affair.” (The Star of Redemption 186)

We are approaching the month of Elul.  Which of these is our God for Elul, the time of Teshuvah, (repentance and return)?   Famously, the Rabbis say the word Elul is an acronym for: Ani L’dodi V’dodi Li, “I am to my beloved and my beloved is to me.”  Seems like our perception of God for Elul is of love.  But teshuvah, return, begins when we are far, not when we are close and beloved.   So how can we see God as our beloved before tishuvah has been completed (as if it ever can be done)?

Though God may be manifest to us in many ways during the month of Elul, to embark on the road of tishuvah, even as but a first step, is to declare our love for God, to say that our relationship with God is valuable to us and is worth working on, even if we find ourselves far away.  To even begin such a journey says something powerful about our connection to the Divine; this is 99% of tishuvah -stating in deed that we deem God worth it, and of value to us to try to come closer.  Perhaps this is why the Talmud says that even a thought of Tishuvah might render someone a Tzadik, a fully righteous person.

Each year, in many ways, we rely on the support and zeal of the community to help facilitate our personal teshuvah.  This year much of that will be glaringly absent.  The process of tishuvah will be more difficult without large, in person, communal selichot, without a shul full to the brim, without communal meals, without in person derashot, without the chazanut of the season, and so much more.  But God is there for us as an intimate other, a God of love that we need just take one step toward.

I hope with the tools we do have, such as Zoom, Facebook and Whatsapp classes, High holiday services that will be happening, with God’s help, though in an albeit attenuated way, and with the arm’s length support of our fellow community members who are only a phone call away, that though this High holiday season will not be the same we can find some jewels and insight within our situation this year.   My blessings for a fulfilling Elul.