Renewal and Resilience There is a growing sense of excitement during the month of Elul. We are getting ready for the Great Encounter. Each year, the process is the same, but the conditions are different, unique. Each year, we reflect on the past year, and we try to correct the course of our lives, and each year, we are made aware of the intricate connexions that link our lives to our fellow human beings and to the universe. Despite the changing circumstances of the world arou

MI ANI? Who am I? The essential question for each of us. What am I, where do I come from? Where do I go? The Humanist may have some biological answer or even some sociological construct, but for the person with some form of religious faith - indeed ANY form of religious faith - our existence has at least SIX dimensions. As well as the standard four dimensions of Left/Right, Up/Down, Backwards/Forwards and Time, there are, respectively, the Time Before Time and the Time After

Ani / Ish : My humanity – Who I am / What am I ? Rava said: “Every student of the Sages whose inner self is not like their outer self is not a student of the Sages.” (Babylonian Talmud, Yoma 72b). As well as the Holy Ark – the recipient of the tables of the law – was overlaid with gold without and within, in the same way, the student of the Sages – the recipient of the oral law from their masters – shall be the same person without and within. This saying of Rava could be dire

Elul is traditionally a month of introspection and preparation for the coming Yamim Noraim – Days of Awe. Like many months of the Hebrew calendar its name is Babylonian in origin and probably has its roots in the Akkadian word for a harvest, though it has resonances also of the verb “to protrude” אלל ('alal), and of the noun “a futile thing” אלול ('elul) In Aramaic, the verb אלל ('alal), means “to encircle” or “to search out”, which corresponds to the Hebrew verb עלל ('alal)