We met for our annual Elul service, one with time for reflection and introspection. Our liturgy invited us to be in this particular moment, in our bodies, and in the world, while also looking backward and forward.

For Torah study we again turned to Jacob L. Wright’s “Why the Bible Began,” which Elliott has been reading, and thinking, her way through for several months now. Today we focused on how those who composed/wove/edited the Tanakh reconciled the story of the “glorious Davidic dynasty” with the Exodus/Conquering narrative which emphasized that we were redeemed by God and had no need for a king. Wright discusses this tension by exploring 1 Samuel 8: 10-19, in which the people demand a king, and God, speaking through Samuel, explicitly names all the ways that having a king will be destructive. We then read a contemporary revision of the passage about the establishment of a Jewish nation state. After, we discussed the complicated reality that being a person without citizenship of a state is so dangerous, and yet being a citizen of a state implicates one in extreme state violence against other citizens and other nations. There is no single answer, leaving us grateful that Jewish tradition has always emphasized how to hold contradictions.

Download this month’s liturgy here.

As is our beloved practice, we included Chava Mirel’s astoundingly beautiful Achat Sha’alti