We are walking in today: Men Of Torah Day--Men, It's Elul A Time of Self Discovery!!!
Witness discovery throughout the Bible: H4672 matsa' spelled mem, ayin, alef--to find, attain to, secure, acquire, get (thing sought), to find (what is lost), to meet, encounter, to find (a condition), to learn, devise, to find out, to detect, to guess, to be found, to be encountered, be lighted upon, be discovered, to appear, be recognized, to be gained, be secured, to be, be found, to be in the possession of, to be found in a place, happen to be, to be left after war, to be present, to prove to be, to cause to find, attain, to cause to light upon, come upon, come, to cause to encounter, to present offering
Gen 27:20
Isaac said to his son, “How is it that you have it so quickly, my son?” And he said, “Because
the LORD your God caused it to happen to me.”
The Torah: Genesis 2:20, 6:8, 18:3, 19:19, 26:19, 33:8, 37:15, 39:4; 41:38, 44:16, 47:14, 47:29; Exodus 9:19, 16:25, 33:12-13, 34:9; Numbers 32:23; Deuteronomy 4:29-30
Prophets: 1 Samuel 1:18, Nehemiah 8:14; Isaiah 41:12, 57:10; Jeremiah 1:19, 15:16, 29:14
Writings: Judges 6:17; Ruth 2:2, 2:13; 2 Chronicles 15:15, 19:3 Esther 1:5, 7:3; Job 11:7; Proverbs 3:4, 3:13, 7:15, 8:17; Ecclesiastes 7:27; Song of Solomon 3:4
Jeremiah 50:20 ‘In those days and at that time,’ declares the LORD, ‘search will be made for the iniquity of Israel, but there will be none; and for the sins of Judah, but they will not be found; for I will pardon those whom I leave as a remnant.’
Psalm 27:7-14 (CJB)
7 Listen, Adonai, to my voice when I cry;
show favor to me, and answer me.
8 “My heart said of you, ‘Seek my face.’”
Your face, Adonai, I will seek.
9 Do not hide your face from me,
don’t turn your servant away in anger.
You are my help; don’t abandon me;
don’t leave me, God my savior.
10 Even though my father and mother have left me,
Adonai will care for me.
11 Teach me your way, Adonai;
lead me on a level path
because of my enemies —
12 don’t give me up to the whims of my foes;
for false witnesses have risen against me,
also those who are breathing violence.
13 If I hadn’t believed that I would see
Adonai’s goodness in the land of the living, . . .
14 Put your hope in Adonai, be strong,
and let your heart take courage!
Yes, put your hope in Adonai!
Songs Of Solomon 8:6-7
6 Set me like a seal on your heart,
like a seal on your arm;
for love is as strong as death,
passion as cruel as Sh’ol;
its flashes are flashes of fire,
[as fierce as the] flame of Yah.
7 No amount of water can quench love,
torrents cannot drown it.
If someone gave all the wealth in his house for love,
he would gain only utter contempt.
Elul is not just the pre-festive month. If you skip Elul and don’t give it any special attention, you might suddenly find yourself unprepared at Rosh Hashanah. Just like Friday prepares for the coming Shabbat, so too, Elul, the sixth month from Nisan, is an essential preparation for the seventh month of Tishrei in particular, and for the coming year in general.
I Am for My Beloved
It is a well-known fact that the initials of the phrase, “I am for my Beloved, and my Beloved is for me” spell out “Elul” in the aleph bet. This means that it is an appropriate time to arouse ourselves to approach God. If “I am for [i.e., towards] my Beloved” by doing Teshuvah (repentance) and good deeds then, “my Beloved [will be] for me. In the verse “I am for my Beloved and my Beloved is for me,” it all begins with “I.” The month of Elul is the most appropriate month for personal soul-searching and trying to present our personal “balance-sheet” towards the end of the Jewish year. Yet, beyond all of our personal accounts—regarding what we have done during the past year—we are liable to reveal that we have gotten lost in the overall tally… there are so many things that we have dealt with, we have been scattered in every direction, but where were we really?? Where is our “I”? The urgent task of Elul is to find our lost “I,” to rehabilitate our personality and to take it to a renewed meeting with God, “I am for my Beloved.” But, how do we do that?
Flee to a City of Refuge
In Chassidic writings, it is explained that Elul is the “city of refuge” of the year. This is how every one of us should feel, to a certain extent, when the month of Elul arrives. We look in all directions in shock: Oh my goodness, what have I done? Who have I (almost) killed? Myself. I must immediately find myself a protected space where I can hide out, renew my proper way of living, and rediscover my true self. But, where is the soul’s city of refuge? We need to reach the root of the soul. The verse states, “Flee to your place”[2]—i.e., to one’s initial starting point. One might do a “guided imagery” exercise: begin by peeling away all the layers of one’s personality, all the unwanted baggage that has accumulated over the years, until we return to our mother’s womb. But, that’s not enough, we need to go even further back in time, until we reach the seminal point from which we were born (more precisely, the fetus is created from the meeting between the father’s seed and the ovum. Physical reality is parallel to spiritual reality. Even our soul follows a similar journey until it appears in our familiar personality. The fundamental kernel of our soul is also in “the mind of the father”—i.e., in God, the Creator’s thought (where even the term “thought” is a borrowed expression and is not the same as what we know as “thought”).
Compassionate Father
Our journey to the source―to the root of our soul―has brought us to a rendezvous with our Father, “Our Father; compassionate Father.” As deep as we might dig into ourselves, we will never find our lost identity until we recognize the existence of our most fundamental soul root that is incorporated within the Almighty. But, in Elul, we meet Him first and foremost as a good Father. There is a famous allegory that states that in Elul “the King is in the field”—however, the special thing about this state is that when the king is the field, he does not appear with his usual formal attire, rather he shows a smiling face to everyone, allowing all to approach him without any special preparation—exactly like a compassionate father. In order to expose the root of our souls, which corresponds to the sefirah of wisdom and to the letter yud, an inner power of the soul is required—the power of selflessness, which relates to standing before God feeling like a zero-dimensional point.
As men of the Torah, we seek less of self to discover in Yahweh our original identity. The feast time of Yahweh, Elul is the perfect time to meet the Father in the field of this world. Ask what is not amiss but what is written in our case log--Yahweh's Torah. The language of The Kingdom Of YHVH. We learn that in its study. There lies a treasure of truth only to the seekers. Shema, Selah hear listen and consider this lesson for your a closer walk with Yahweh our King in the field!
7 Listen, Adonai, to my voice when I cry;
show favor to me, and answer me.
8 “My heart said of you, ‘Seek my face.’”
Your face, Adonai, I will seek.
9 Do not hide your face from me,
don’t turn your servant away in anger.
You are my help; don’t abandon me;
don’t leave me, God my savior.
10 Even though my father and mother have left me,
Adonai will care for me.
11 Teach me your way, Adonai;
lead me on a level path
because of my enemies —
12 don’t give me up to the whims of my foes;
for false witnesses have risen against me,
also those who are breathing violence.
13 If I hadn’t believed that I would see
Adonai’s goodness in the land of the living, . . .
14 Put your hope in Adonai, be strong,
and let your heart take courage!
Yes, put your hope in Adonai!
Songs Of Solomon 8:6-7
6 Set me like a seal on your heart,
like a seal on your arm;
for love is as strong as death,
passion as cruel as Sh’ol;
its flashes are flashes of fire,
[as fierce as the] flame of Yah.
7 No amount of water can quench love,
torrents cannot drown it.
If someone gave all the wealth in his house for love,
he would gain only utter contempt.
Elul is not just the pre-festive month. If you skip Elul and don’t give it any special attention, you might suddenly find yourself unprepared at Rosh Hashanah. Just like Friday prepares for the coming Shabbat, so too, Elul, the sixth month from Nisan, is an essential preparation for the seventh month of Tishrei in particular, and for the coming year in general.
I Am for My Beloved
It is a well-known fact that the initials of the phrase, “I am for my Beloved, and my Beloved is for me” spell out “Elul” in the aleph bet. This means that it is an appropriate time to arouse ourselves to approach God. If “I am for [i.e., towards] my Beloved” by doing Teshuvah (repentance) and good deeds then, “my Beloved [will be] for me. In the verse “I am for my Beloved and my Beloved is for me,” it all begins with “I.” The month of Elul is the most appropriate month for personal soul-searching and trying to present our personal “balance-sheet” towards the end of the Jewish year. Yet, beyond all of our personal accounts—regarding what we have done during the past year—we are liable to reveal that we have gotten lost in the overall tally… there are so many things that we have dealt with, we have been scattered in every direction, but where were we really?? Where is our “I”? The urgent task of Elul is to find our lost “I,” to rehabilitate our personality and to take it to a renewed meeting with God, “I am for my Beloved.” But, how do we do that?
Flee to a City of Refuge
In Chassidic writings, it is explained that Elul is the “city of refuge” of the year. This is how every one of us should feel, to a certain extent, when the month of Elul arrives. We look in all directions in shock: Oh my goodness, what have I done? Who have I (almost) killed? Myself. I must immediately find myself a protected space where I can hide out, renew my proper way of living, and rediscover my true self. But, where is the soul’s city of refuge? We need to reach the root of the soul. The verse states, “Flee to your place”[2]—i.e., to one’s initial starting point. One might do a “guided imagery” exercise: begin by peeling away all the layers of one’s personality, all the unwanted baggage that has accumulated over the years, until we return to our mother’s womb. But, that’s not enough, we need to go even further back in time, until we reach the seminal point from which we were born (more precisely, the fetus is created from the meeting between the father’s seed and the ovum. Physical reality is parallel to spiritual reality. Even our soul follows a similar journey until it appears in our familiar personality. The fundamental kernel of our soul is also in “the mind of the father”—i.e., in God, the Creator’s thought (where even the term “thought” is a borrowed expression and is not the same as what we know as “thought”).
Compassionate Father
Our journey to the source―to the root of our soul―has brought us to a rendezvous with our Father, “Our Father; compassionate Father.” As deep as we might dig into ourselves, we will never find our lost identity until we recognize the existence of our most fundamental soul root that is incorporated within the Almighty. But, in Elul, we meet Him first and foremost as a good Father. There is a famous allegory that states that in Elul “the King is in the field”—however, the special thing about this state is that when the king is the field, he does not appear with his usual formal attire, rather he shows a smiling face to everyone, allowing all to approach him without any special preparation—exactly like a compassionate father. In order to expose the root of our souls, which corresponds to the sefirah of wisdom and to the letter yud, an inner power of the soul is required—the power of selflessness, which relates to standing before God feeling like a zero-dimensional point.
As men of the Torah, we seek less of self to discover in Yahweh our original identity. The feast time of Yahweh, Elul is the perfect time to meet the Father in the field of this world. Ask what is not amiss but what is written in our case log--Yahweh's Torah. The language of The Kingdom Of YHVH. We learn that in its study. There lies a treasure of truth only to the seekers. Shema, Selah hear listen and consider this lesson for your a closer walk with Yahweh our King in the field!
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