The season of healing has arrived.
On the eve of August 14, 2026, with the rising of the new moon, the month of Elul begins.
If you weren’t watching for it, you might have missed it. The world doesn’t stop. Your inbox doesn’t empty. The news doesn’t pause. And yet — quietly, insistently — the Jewish calendar opens a door.
Come back, it says. Come back to yourself. The season of return has begun.
Elul is the month before Rosh Hashanah
For thousands of years, Jewish tradition has treated Elul as sacred preparation time — an invitation. For thirty days, we are invited to slow down and ask the questions that get drowned out in the noise of ordinary life:
Who have I been this year?
Where have I drifted from who I want to be?
What needs tending — in me, in my relationships, in my world?
These are not easy questions. But they are the right ones.
And this year, they feel more urgent than ever.
So much has shaken us. War. Division within our own community. Antisemitism. Cruelty that has seemed to come from everywhere at once. Many of us are arriving at this season carrying more than we have words for — grief, exhaustion, a kind of bone-deep weariness. A feeling that we are broken in ways we don’t quite know how to name.
Here is what I want you to hear tonight, at the very start of Elul:
The broken tablets were kept alongside the whole tablets.
When Moses shattered the tablets after the Golden Calf incident — that catastrophic moment of rupture — the broken pieces were gathered up. Placed in the Ark. Carried through the wilderness alongside the whole tablets that came after.
Both sets, together. Held sacred.
This is not a minor detail of Torah. This is a theology.
What you are carrying — your fractures, your grief, your exhaustion, the weight of this hard year — is not something to fix before you can approach the holy. It is what you bring. And the season is built to hold it.
The High Holy Day season is not a deadline. It is a doorway.
It begins here, in Elul. Not at Rosh Hashanah, not at the sound of the shofar. Here, in this quiet month, when God — in the beautiful image of the tradition — comes looking for us. Not with a book of judgment. Like a lover. I am my beloved’s and my beloved is mine — the Hebrew acronym of that verse from Song of Songs spells ELUL. This is what the month is. A love story. An invitation home.
And it doesn’t end at Yom Kippur, either.
The full arc carries us all the way to Sukkot — to that moment five days after the fast, when we go outside and build a fragile booth. No solid roof. Just branches, and the stars visible above. We eat there, sit there, open to the sky.
And in that fragile, temporary dwelling, we discover something: we are healed enough.
Not fixed. Not complete. But present — safe enough inside ourselves to sit in something that could blow away, and feel held.
That is the image of healing this season is moving us toward. And it begins tonight.
Two things I’m offering you this season
First: Return, my soul-preparation workbook for Elul.
Return: 30 Days of Reflection is an interactive PDF with one question for each day of the month — walking you through the Jewish practice of teshuvah in four themes: truth, self, others, and wholeness. It’s a gentle, honest companion for the inner work of the season.
You can write your responses directly in the PDF or print it out. It’s designed to be used slowly, one day at a time, exactly the way Elul is meant to be entered — not all at once, but in daily, faithful increments. It also includes access to a dedicated private discussion space where you can reflect alongside others.
Download it at jewishmindful.org/return — $18–$54, pay what you’re able.
Second: Pathways to Healing, a 3-session soul preparation course.
Beginning next week, I’m teaching a course that takes us through the entire healing arc of the season together — in community, with Torah, poetry, mindfulness practices, and the particular kind of deep work that is better done in the company of spiritual friends.
Over three sessions we’ll explore:
- What We’re Carrying — naming what’s broken in us, in our relationships, in the world, and discovering that Judaism has always known how to hold brokenness as something sacred
- The Turning — teshuvah as medicine; the art of returning to ourselves and to God in the company of a community that sees us clearly
- The Journey — walking the Days of Awe all the way to Sukkot, discovering that the whole season is the healing, not just the destination
This course is for anyone who wants to enter the High Holy Day season with intention and depth — especially those who are feeling the weight of this past year and are longing to find their way back to center.
Tuesdays | August 18, 25 & September 1 | 4:00–5:30 pm PT / 7:00–8:30 pm ET Thursdays | August 20, 27 & September 3 | 9:30–11:00 am PT / 12:30–2:00 pm ET
$180 | Scholarship assistance available
Register at Pathways to Healing
Elul is an invitation to begin again — even this year, even now, even carrying what you’re carrying.
As Rumi teaches: What you seek is seeking you.
The season is already reaching toward you. I hope you’ll let it find you.
With blessings for a meaningful Elul,
Rabbi Jill Zimmerman Founding Rabbi, Path With Heart Community
