Each year we enter into a period of deep reflection and prayer which begins with the month of Elul. In Aramaic, 'elul' means 'search'. For many of us the month of Elul is a time when we are engaged in a kind of "Hide and Seek" game.... both with our own higher-souls and with G-d.
In playing Hide and Seek with the Divine, there are times when we simply can’t be bothered looking for G-d, and times when we do not wish to be found ourselves. Times when we push G-d away like spiteful children losing a game, and times when we try to hide Him in a mental cupboard out of embarrassment or shame (lest other think we have become overly self-righteous or proud of being pious).
Our reticence can sometimes be due to remorse about things we have done or said or thought ourselves. Sometimes it can be because we have chickened-out in a political, social,or theological world in which it is unfashionable to admit that we want to know G-d in an explicitly intimate way. G-d sometimes seems very close to us and we rejoice. But even when we feel we are doing our best, there can be a strong sense of His distance or absence.
Sometimes He hides from us in a sort of dance, in a sort of game, in a sort of lesson, in a sort of method we don’t really understand, and sometimes struggle against. It can go on for years like that. The absence of any sensation that G-d might be within hailing distance is a common and recurring state in the life of most serious contemplatives. This is not punishment, cruelty, or the Divine toying with us like puppets. But it may be a refining test-situation. It may be a positive tool which ultimately helps us to see more of G-d and less of ourselves in the contemplative process. It can remind us that it is G-d Himself that we seek and not the gifts He gives us.
Yes, He will let us find Him—but we cannot make Him stay.
Yes, He will wrestle with us for a time—but at dawn He will be gone.
Yes, we may sense His Presence for a moment—but we cannot dwell in that moment for too long.
oooOooo
For many Jews, Elul (and the ensuing Ten Days of Awe) are the time of year when they become their most active in both prayer and in self examination. Sefardim, for example, intensify the liturgy from Rosh Hodesh Elul onwards with the daily recitation of Selihot....and Ashkenazi Jews (and some Sefardim) blow the Shofar daily during the month of Elul to remind us of the special time we are in.
On the first day of Elul, those Ten Days seem a long way away–– and yet we are told to “Blow the shofar in Elul”. Some say this is for practice as the shofar is blown ritually on the approaching festival days, but many say that it is to remind us that if we are truly to make changes for the better in our lives, we have to start preparing for them in good time.
For many Jews, the season provides an uncomfortable (but somehow also welcomed) opportunity to take stock and it gives them a formally sanctioned encouragement to engage in a more intense prayer-life than may be thought appropriate or even possible at other times in the year.
But the specific focus of the Selihot we recite during the month of Elul involves penitence and confession, for sure– but its jewel is the recitation of the Divine Attributes, a revelation made to Moses in the cleft of the rock and to each one of us as we hide there ourselves.
Thus, the month's most profound focus is actually the deepening of our encounter with the Divine.
For those who live out the religious calendar with some intensity, there is a sense that one should 'seek G-d while He may be found' with the month of Elul being an annual retreat-time par excellence. For such people the month of Elul can be extraordinarily charged and numinous. This can even be the case for contemplatives who have an intense prayer regimen all year round.
The month of Elul (and the ensuing Ten Days of Awe),
are a time when our search for G-d is liturgically intensified.
It is not that He has, as it were, stepped down from heaven to be "in the field" with us like some mythological and anthropomorphic deity who goes on a vacation: rather it is a celebration of an awareness that G-d was and is in every time and place all along and that we simply created a calendric liturgy to highlight our awareness of that Presence. Realising and experiencing something of the Divine Eternity and Omnipresence is truly the goal of the "search" which Elul can generate in us.
A contemplative also knows that time is really an illusion. Yesterday, Today, and Tomorrow are simultaneous in G-d: The still point of Musaf Yom Kippur can be like a small flame inside the soul which burns all year round as a memory and a reference point. The Call of the Shofar in Elul is actually ever-present, as is the Voice of Sinai. If only we would listen.
In this way of seeing things, though G-d has concealed Himself, His Presence is not altogether withdrawn but there is a sense in which this kind of hiding is for our own good.
We are reminded that Moses saw the back and not the face of G-d and that Elijah covered his face with a mantle: both prophets experiencing the event thus shielded for their own protection. The times in which we are in our own cleft of the rock are rare events, and the obscuring cloud is actually our friend.
We are given the month of Elul and the Penitential/Holiday season
as a chance to double up our half-hearted efforts to find G-d––
or perhaps, to allow G-d to find us.
Its message is really that He is more present in the world if we make Him so. But that is also a description of what a Jewish Contemplative is trying to do in every moment and not just once a year, or even once a week.
Potentially, every moment can be 'the time when He might let us find Him'.
Every place is His 'field' if we are actively looking for signs of His Presence.
But it sometimes involves us seeing in the dark.
It sometimes involves us standing still in order to see that He is right next to us.
It may involve the ability to survive on the manna of hope when faith is all but lost. It certainly involves patience and determination. And in this game of Hide and Seek, whether we are playing it during Elul, during the High Holidays or on a normal weekday– it is the energy and consistency with which we make the search that counts: for we are told we can find Him– but only if we search with all our heart. All of it.
©Nachman
Davies
Rosh Hodesh Elul
Safed
2025
(edited from
an essay written in 2009)
