Elul Asanas: Story Meditations on Repair in Time of Genocide

As we approach the new Jewish Year, we also approach the one-year anniversary of Hamas’s violent attack on Israel on October 7, 2023 and Israel’s relentless, genocidal response that has decimated schools, mosques, hospitals and homes throughout Gaza and the Israeli-Occupied Palestinian Territories in the West Bank.?

I specifically wanted to use the Jewish month of Elul and Story Asana together with the intention of opening my own listening to more Israelis – both Jews and Palestinians –? as well as American Jews, to build a wider community, with more momentum, more people pressing our governments to stop the mass destruction that is currently strangling all possibilities of peace.?

Story Asana? is a daily practice that combines spoken storytelling, meditation, and writing. I developed Story Asana in the fall of 2008 to help me shake off judgements, criticisms, interpretations, and all the other types of meaning-making that were getting in the way of my talking honestly about my own life experience with people whose experience was different from my own.?

How can we honor the belief of so many religious traditions that all humans are created equal with the drive that often flares up inside us to see ourselves and people like us as better than other people? Everything you need to get started unpacking this conundrum is here.?

It is one of the miracles of storytelling that even stories about hard things are a tonic for the brain of the teller and the listener. I will be posting my answers to these questions every few days between now and Yom Kippur here and at @storyhood. I look forward to reading your stories there too. Remember: Storyhood is a space for multi-voiced healing. All lived experience is welcome; no words that are intended to harm.?

THE TRADITION

1. What is Elul?

Elul is the Jewish month of repentance and repair leading up to the New Year and Day of Atonement. There is a rhythm to this full month of repentance in Jewish tradition that I have found quite healing over the years. I’m using Elul this year to introduce you to Story Asana? — my daily practice that combines meditation, storytelling and writing. Ready to get started? Here’s the first question:?

What is something your family practices at the same time every year? What do you remember about the first time you learned or practiced this tradition? Who explained the tradition to you? What specific details do you remember from that first time??

2. Where does the tradition of Elul come from??

Elul is a tradition Jewish people created during the Babylonian exile after the destruction of the Jerusalem Temple in 597 BCE. Memories of exile — losing your home, the places you grew up, and the physical and spiritual anchors of your day-to-day life — run deep in both Jewish and Palestinian people.?

Have you or someone you know been displaced from your home or the place you were born? What caused the displacement – economic, political, religious or cultural differences, or something else? If exile is part of your own lived experience, write everything you can remember. If a relative or community member, interview them and record their story in their own words with your phone or another device.?

3. What does the name “Elul” mean?

Elul has a variety of meanings in the overlapping cultures and languages of the Levant. My favorite is Aramaic, where “Elul” means search, because the idea of Elul is to search our souls for places we erred in the year gone by, to make amends, and to explore ways to do better in the year to come.?

What’s something you messed up this past year? Can you describe, very succinctly, what went wrong? What happened to you and especially what are the ways you may have harmed other people? Stick with one instance of rupture to remember the details of each person’s actions and words at the time.?

4. A key part of the Elul tradition is making amends — repair — for the ways you have caused harm to other people.?

It is said that we cannot ask the Universe for forgiveness until we have cleaned up the breakdowns – the harm we have caused, knowingly or unknowingly – in our personal, business, and community relationships.?

What is a piece of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict – or any other conflict – that flows from your personal error? With a spirit of compassion for your own and others’ failures, describe in detail what you did that you wish you had done differently??

5. Often, these conflicts and these mistakes go to the root of who we think we are. They divide us from people we love; they divide us from the truest and best version of ourselves.?

What resources do you have to resist the temptation to harm others that begins in our sense of needing to be right??

Where does the conflict arise in your body? What does it remind you of from your own or your community’s past? Stick with this part, maybe for a few days. Can you soften your relationship with the conflict, with the sense of who you are that creates the conflict in your own heart??

6. Personal and collective change is at the heart of the Jewish notion of repentance and repair.?

I am reminded of something @PrentisHemphill describes perfectly in What It Takes to Heal: Healing ourselves is key to healing the world; and healing the world is key to our own spirit’s repair.?

What will you commit to doing differently in the coming year, so you cause others less harm? Describe the situation that caused harm and, in as much detail as you can imagine, what you will do differently when the situation that triggers you shows up again??

7. REST?

When you have meditated on these challenges for 6 days – or when you feel overwhelmed by the whole idea of change – take some time to rest. See yourself and the world as whole and complete exactly as we are, and for one full day let that be enough!

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