In the coming weeks, we approach Rosh Hashana, the Jewish New Year, and the day on which G-d judges the entire earth and determines what the coming year will bring.
And despite understanding that this judgment takes place as part of an inventory of the year that has passed, and despite knowing there are other, more supernal themes at play on this day, I find myself struggling each year with this idea of judgment.
For a reason unknown to me until this year, it has always bothered me.
This familiar discomfort found expression this past Shabbat, as I sat and considered the concept.
And here is the idea I struggle with:
How does a perfect G-d, who created us to be imperfect, judge us on our imperfections?
How does a G-d who transcends all boundaries judge us from His high throne on the basis of a condition He Himself chose to impose on us?
How is that kind, or even just?
A thought then occurred to me which gave me peace, and that is what I want to share.
It is explained in multiple places in Chassidic literature that Elul, the last month before Rosh Hashana, is a time when “the King is in the field.”
This is, of course, a very simplified way of describing a much deeper idea. G-d is not distant from us during the rest of the year, nor does He suddenly become close in Elul. Rather, Elul is a time when that closeness is revealed and emphasized in a particular way, when access to Him is, so to speak, more open and immediate.
The idea, as I always understood it, was that during this month the King comes close to us in the field, making Himself more accessible before returning to the palace, where He will judge us.
But perhaps there is another perspective that this explanation does not usually cover.
In Pirkei Avot, it says that one should not judge another until he stands in his place.
The idea being that, in order to judge someone, you must truly put yourself in their shoes. You must understand who they are, why they did what they did, and what burdens they carry.
But, of course, no one can ever fully put themselves in someone else’s shoes.
We cannot truly fathom what it is like to be someone else.
What ideas, values, insecurities, or even mental models do they see the world through that are different from ours?
How can I know the insecurities you carry? The fears you grapple with every day?
How can I feel what it feels like to you when a childhood trauma gets triggered?
How can I understand what baggage your upbringing left you with? What scars you bear?
I cannot.
Perhaps that is precisely the point.
Pirkei Avot seems to set an almost impossible condition for judgment, because no human being can ever truly stand in another person’s place.
But G-d can.
G-d is the only one who can truly put Himself in our shoes. The only one who can see through our eyes, feel the pit in our stomachs, and know the courage it takes to overcome it.
And our sages teach that G-d does not merely command us from above while remaining removed from what He asks of us.
The Midrash says that the ways of G-d are unlike those of flesh and blood. A human being may tell others what to do while not doing it himself. But G-d is different: what He does, He tells Israel to do and observe.
So if He tells us not to judge another until we have stood in his place, perhaps it follows that, before judging us, He somehow stands in ours.
Perhaps that is what Elul is from His perspective.
G-d is not sitting high upon His throne, dressed in pristine kingly garments, looking down at our soiled, muddy peasants’ clothes and judging us from the distance of His own perfection.
The King spends a month in the field.
He comes down into the mud with us.
He works the field with us.
He sweats with us. Cries with us.
He feels the pressure of the bills, the children who need us, the ordinary demands that leave us exhausted before the real work has even begun.
And perhaps He goes deeper still, into the deepest recesses of our hearts, to face our challenges with us.
To know them not only as an infinite G-d looking in, but as they are experienced by a finite, imperfect human being.
To experience our anxiety, our struggles, our grappling with the yetzer hara, our victories and our losses, directly from within.
The letters of Elul are the first letters of the verse Ani ledodi vedodi li:
“I am my beloved’s, and my beloved is mine.”
As we try to get closer and approach Him from where we stand, He also comes down to us where we stand.
We move toward Him.
And He moves toward us.
And only after that preparation do we come to Rosh Hashana to be judged for the coming year.
But now, the judgment is a very different kind of judgment.
Not from above.
From within.
In a way, perhaps the judgment dispensed on Rosh Hashana is not so different from the judgment you would give yourself if you were capable of being truly unbiased and honest.
A judgment of G-d, looking through your own eyes at the year that has passed.
A glorious King, standing in your dirty boots.
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Wow!! You are definitely in lighted!!
Helped me so much!! Thank you!!!