 |
| Shalom Bayit: Ensuring everyone's right to healthy, non-violent relationships |
Adapted from this week’s Hakhel at JCHS, our weekly all-school gathering — the last of the year 5786. Inspired by Shalom Bayit's annual semon campaign and resources
This Friday evening Rosh Hashanah arrives and a new year begins. So at our final Hakhel of 5786, I shared one of the ways my own kids, Sarah and Daniel, taught me — back when they were in high school — about getting ready for a new Jewish year.
The Hebrew month we are in is called Elul, spelled aleph, lamed, vav, lamed. For centuries the rabbis have read those four letters as an acronym for a line from Song of Songs (6:3):
אֲנִי לְדוֹדִי וְדוֹדִי לִי
Ani l’dodi v’dodi li — “I am my beloved’s, and my beloved is mine.”
Song of Songs is a relationship poem. To some it expresses the relationship between two intimates. For others, it expresses the relationship between the people Israel and God. Why would the tradition name the month of preparing for a new year after a relationship poem? Because it is the tradition’s way of teaching that preparing for a new year is not about your statistical record — our grades, our followers count, or our streak on any app. It is about our relationships.
A Relationship Audit
Elul’s classic practice is called cheshbon hanefesh — literally, an accounting of the soul. How is that practice transformed by knowing we do it during Elul, the month of relationships? The month is time for an accounting of our relationships. A relationship audit.
My kids taught me how to do that with two questions. Question one: bring to mind one relationship that is a source of light in your life — a friend, a sibling, a parent, a teammate, a teacher. Now ask yourself: what makes that relationship feel that way?
When others in the Bay Area Jewish community — people of all ages — were asked that question, here's what they said: support, trust, kindness, real listening, respect, laughter, feeling safe, room to grow.
Notice anything unique about that list? None of those items are about statistics or numbers of friends, or counting anything. The list items are not about luck or chance. Every items on that list represents a relationship muscle — something a person does, on purpose, over and over. Pirkei Avot (6:6) teaches that many of these same qualities are among the ways Torah itself is acquired. The way we treat each other in relationships is a Torah curriculum for life.
Question two, the harder one, just for the inside of your own head: was there a moment this year when your own words or actions didn’t match that list we just discussed? The message fired off in the group chat. The joke that landed as a cut. The person frozen out. We all have examples. But those examples need not be. source for shame. They could be a source of learning, toward improving. That is the homework of this Jewish season.
The Repair That Belongs to Us
Here is what the Mishnah teaches about the days we are about to enter (Yoma 8:9):
עֲבֵרוֹת שֶׁבֵּין אָדָם לַמָּקוֹם, יוֹם הַכִּפּוּרִים מְכַפֵּר. עֲבֵרוֹת שֶׁבֵּין אָדָם לַחֲבֵרוֹ, אֵין יוֹם הַכִּפּוּרִים מְכַפֵּר עַד שֶׁיְּרַצֶּה אֶת חֲבֵרוֹ
“For transgressions between a person and God, Yom Kippur atones. For transgressions between a person and another person, Yom Kippur does not atone until one has made things right with the other.”
Yom Kippur squares away what is between us and God. But for what is between us and each other, Yom Kippur does not atone until we make it right with the person. God does not accept an apology on someone else’s behalf. That repair belongs to us.
When the Accounting Shows Something Harder
I said one more thing to our students, because it matters and I wanted them to hear it from me. Sometimes an accounting of the soul shows us something harder — a friendship or a relationship, online or in person, that makes us feel afraid, or controlled, or smaller than we are.
That is not what friendship or love looks like. But if it does feel that way, it is not our fault. Rather, every one of us deserves relationships in which we are safe and where we get to be fully ourselves. I asked any student for whom a relationship doesn’t feel that way to bring it to a trusted adult — an advisor, a dean, our counselor. Our doors and our hearts are always open, and not just for the Laffy Taffy jar in my office.
Our wider Jewish community has an organization, Shalom Bayit, devoted to exactly this — helping people in relationships that have become unsafe — because our tradition holds that shalom, peace and wholeness, is supposed to live in every home and every relationship.
One Repair, One Gratitude
So here was the assignment before Friday night, and I offer it to every reader. It has two parts. First, deliver one real apology — doing it in person beats texting. Second, speak one real thank-you to someone on your light list who has never heard it out loud. One repair, one gratitude. That is cheshbon hanefesh in action.
At JCHS, every Hakhel during Elul ends with the sound of the shofar. This was our last Elul blast before the great blasts of Rosh Hashanah itself. As a student sounded the shofar at school, I invited our students to hear the shofar blasts as one question, the Elul question: whom do I need to turn toward?
Ani l’dodi v’dodi li. When the shofar sounds on Rosh Hashanah, may it find every one of us already turned toward each other.
Shanah tovah u’metukah — a good and sweet new year.
