sashinka | observation orientated, with a twist of lime | a blog

Forgiveness Time
It's Ellul, the Hebrew month that precedes Jewish New Year and the Day of Atonement and other festivals that I won't bore you with.

Ellul is a time to do teshuva (repentence) with your fellow human, a time to think about what you want to change about yourself in the coming year and how you plan to do it. A couple of weeks ago a friend asked me to do something... not exactly bad, but not something I ideally wanted to do. Because of my current repentence orientation, I said no. When he asked why, I replied, "it's Ellul. I can't." He thought I was a nutter.

The idea is that by the time you get to Synagogue you've done all you're intra-human repentence, there's just the God stuff left. Of course, you do have to believe in God for that. But it is a cleansing time of year. There's a custom of saying to people something like, "if I've done anything to offend/hurt you in the last year, please forgive me." Last year, I did teshuva with a former flatmate I'd parted on bad terms with, and my former Rabbi (who is not related to the artist formerly known as Prince).

And now I have a weblog: a chance to hurt and offend people all over the world and in varying time frames. So: if I've done anything to offend you since January 13th (think that's when my blog started), it really wasn't personal, but I hope you can accept my apology. Although, having made a quick call to my halachic (Jewish legal stuff) consultant, Z, I believe my responsibility is purely to apologise, and the onus is on you to accept, but it doesn't matter if you don't. It's not me, it's you.

Rosh Hashanah (New Year) is on Saturday and Sunday, and Yom Kippur (the Day of Atonement) is on September 16th. Sashinka will be unavailable on those days.