In this pre-High Holiday blog, Rabbi Amalia reflects on the month of Elul, moving back to the DMV as an adult, and where she’s catching glimpses of the Divine in her new home.
Growing up in Silver Spring, I never expected to come back to the DMV. I completed my undergraduate degree in Baltimore, spent a year organizing in Baltimore City, moved across the country to Arizona, and then jetted out of the country to Israel.
I didn’t look back.
Over the years I have lived in many different states, but never considered returning to the DMV, where everything felt too familiar and enclosed, a dress that had once fit but now too tight, pushed to the back of my closet. I would visit family for a few days, and then leave, eager to go back to my home, rooted in place, only to drift back again a year or two later.
At the end of August, I moved from Brooklyn to Washington, DC.
Just like that, I’m back in the DMV, and the overlap of my move and the start of the month of Elul could not be better timed. Traditionally, Elul is when Jewish people begin preparations for the High Holidays. Preparations for Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur include reviewing our actions from the past year and taking an accounting of where we have succeeded and where we have fallen short. It is a time of reflection on our relationships with ourselves, with others, and with the Divine [Author’s note: if God is part of your Jewish practice and beliefs].
Elul and the High Holidays that follow force us to encounter our past self and our past year, so we may determine how we might improve in the coming year. As I reacquaint myself with the DMV – the crystal clear “doors opening” of the metro, running into old high school friends with newborns of their own in coffee shops, and the Tattes that have sprung up in seemingly every neighborhood alcove – I notice the moments when I long for Brooklyn [Author’s note: I don’t miss the smell of trash everywhere, and it has been a huge pleasure to walk around DC without the fragrance of trash permeating the air].
I miss the hubbub in our old neighborhood before Shabbat, with flower sellers on the street corners where I would pick up fresh blooms every Friday afternoon. I find myself pining for the posters that littered street signs in Crown Heights, a common way to publicize neighborhood announcements, and the Hebrew I would hear anywhere within 2 blocks of my apartment.
Yet, when I first moved to Brooklyn, I remember longing for Boston, the city I had lived in for two years prior, another stop along the way in my seemingly never-ending series of moves.
I spent my first weeks in Brooklyn missing easy access to the Charles River and the walks I would take on its banks. I spent months hungering for the Bridgewater sandwich from Clover, a beloved vegetarian kosher chain, as well as longing for the many public parks a moment’s walk from my old apartment.
To be in a state of longing is to enter the High Holy days. When Elul begins, you might hear people in Jewish spaces saying, “the King is in the Field!” Practically, what this means is that God (aka “The King” / The Divine / The Source of All), is coming to ‘meet’ us as we begin our journey of reflection and change [Author’s note: Masculine God language is not my preferred mode of referencing the Divine, but for the sake of context I am using it to accurately reflect the phrase]. God shows up “in the field,” a place of common ground and closeness. In the day-to-day, God might feel removed and distant. But, in Elul, the Divine is waiting for us on the steps of our local coffee shop, along the sidewalk where we walk our dog, and just outside of the doors of the gym.
I know the longing for what was home will abate as I settle into new rhythms in DC, discovering and uncovering the ways it becomes my new home. For now, I catch glimpses of the Divine in the moments when I hang up a mezuzah (a scroll with the shema written on parchment enclosed in a decorative case) on our front door. God and I exchange glances as I water my plants, my Jasmine plant unfurling in the extended sunlight of our DC living room, reaching towards light she never received in our dark Brooklyn apartment.
Each day I settle into this city, I resonate deeper with the themes of Elul: we have to encounter the past in order to be better in the future. As I explore DC, I stumble over ghosts of my past self. I see the ghosts of my high school and 26-year-old self flit by, and I give them a wave, forgiving my mistakes, awkwardness, and imperfections, allowing my adult self, flawed as she is, to step forward. Walking along the streets of Adams Morgan, my new neighborhood, I realize that God and I are in conversation with each other, more so than usual. The whispered prayer of, “please God, let this be the right bus” as I run to catch it, or a fervent plea of protection and care for my child as I drop him off at his new daycare, a heartbroken query of the Divine as I walk by unhoused folks sleeping on a sidewalk, and a joke or two with God as I arrive late for synagogue once again on Shabbat morning. God is longing to meet us, to be in relationship with us as we are right now, fully flawed and aware of those flaws.
During this Elul season, may we encounter the Divine on the street corners, where God is longing to meet with us. May we recognize the Divine in each other, and may we have the courage to reflect on who we have been, who we want to become, and where we are going.
The views and opinions expressed in this blog and on this website are solely those of the original authors. These views and opinions do not necessarily represent those of the organization GatherDC, the GatherDC staff, the GatherDC board, and/or any/all contributors to this site.
