Elul Project 5781
חַדֵּשׁ יָמֵינוּ כְּקֶדֶם
Renew our days as in the past or renew our days as in the beginning.
This phrase, which is sung at the conclusion of every Torah service, originates from the 
Book of Lamentations recited on Tisha B’av. It expresses the hope that God will restore our days to resemble a time before the destruction of the Temple. The final word, kedem, not only evokes longing for a past time, but a primordial time, a beginning time, when the world was freshly born, creation. Furthermore, the root letters of kedem, kuf-dalet-mem, yield a number of additional meanings. Derived from kadim, which means east, kuf-dalet-mem also paradoxically points to the future and is used to convey forward motion. Kuf-dalet-mem connects a sense of progress and development not only to the past, but to a time that is essentially new.

We are living in a period of global mourning, uncertainty, transition, reflection, and hope. What have we been through, who are we now, and where are we going?

This Elul, what does it mean to move forward? What role does looking back, remembering, and restoring play in our personal and collective progress? And how might we be guided by the vision of a new world?
Today's Text: Day 18
Yehuda Amichai:
A Child is Something Else Again

translated by Chana Bloch

A child is something else again. Wakes up
in the afternoon and in an instant he’s full of words,
in an instant he’s humming, in an instant warm,
instant light, instant darkness.

A child is Job. They’ve already placed their bets on him
but he doesn’t know it. He scratches his body
for pleasure. Nothing hurts yet.

They’re training him to be a polite Job,
to say “Thank you” when the Lord has given,
to say “You’re welcome” when the Lord has taken away.

A child is vengeance.
A child is a missile into the coming generations.
I launched him: I’m still trembling.

A child is something else again: on a rainy spring day
glimpsing the Garden of Eden through the fence,
kissing him in his sleep,
hearing footsteps in the wet pine needles.

A child delivers you from death.
Child, Garden, Rain, Fate.
Question of the Day
How do you embody your inner child?

How does your inner child impact the way you dwell and create in the world? 
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