August 2024: Rosh Chodesh Elul

We have some amazing programs coming up at the 10.27 Healing Partnership that I’m excited to share with you. The first is “Preparing the Heart and Mind,” our Rosh Chodesh Elul program in collaboration with Jewish Life at the JCC.

The month of Tishrei on the Jewish calendar will arrive soon, shifting our calendars and seasons with the Jewish New Year. Tishrei sometimes appears suddenly, as jarring as the first day of school, and sometimes subtly, like the autumn leaves beginning to turn.

We are still granted some time with the month of Elul, which allows us to prepare for this inevitable change. Elul is a month of awakening, of practice and of anticipation, inviting us to look forward and wade into the waters of repentance.

To meet these times as our best selves, we need to anticipate and predict our emotional states and our potential struggles. This year during Tishrei the High Holidays, October 27th, and October 7th will all take place within a few short weeks. Join us on Rosh Chodesh Elul (Sept. 3rd) for a program to prepare ourselves to embrace all the different facets of this season, from sorrow to joy.

In this event we will immerse ourselves in Jewish learning, led by Rabbi Aaron Meyer of Temple Emanuel, Rabbi Hindy Finman of the JCC and Center for Loving Kindness, and Danielle Kranjec, Associate Vice President of Jewish Education at Hillel International. This wisdom will help us to prepare in ways Jewish people have for thousands of years, through times that brought ease and those that brought difficulty. Participants can then explore modalities for holding emotional space that they may not be familiar with through gentle yoga or sound bathing. Finally, we will gather for a communal shofar blowing to conclude our program! The shofar demands wakefulness and personal accounting. We will blast it in community to start Elul to rise from spiritual slumber and to turn towards the inevitable changing of the season and the year.

I look forward to joining in community with you at this Rosh Chodesh Elul event! For those who have not yet gotten the chance to meet Rabbi Hindy Finman, the new CFLK Director and Director of Jewish Life at the JCC, I hope you are able to become acquainted and experience her teaching at this event that begins the JCC’s Season of Hope. To register and learn more, please click here.