This week my 11-year-old son began 6th grade in Crown Heights. Commuting to Brooklyn on a daily basis isn’t easy, and because it was his first week he asked me to pick him up, and I promised I would.
So at 3.00pm I left my office and headed into Brooklyn. But there was so much traffic that what should have been a 40-minute trip took a full hour longer.
When I finally arrived, he wasn’t outside waiting, which seemed strange. I parked near the school and asked the secretary if she knew where my son was. She called up to the classroom and said he’ll be down shortly. Five minutes passed, then 10, then 15, and I went back inside to find out what was going on. She called again and told me, “We can’t find your son, he’s nowhere to be found!”
Don’t panic, I told myself. I’m sure he didn’t disappear. Trying not to let the worst thoughts enter my mind, I called my wife, but she hadn’t heard anything either. Still, I tried to keep calm.
We have close friends and shluchim who also live on the Upper East Side and sometimes we carpool together. So I called them and asked if my son had gone with them. “I don’t think so,” she answered. “That definitely wasn’t the plan.” I asked her to double check because my son wasn’t at the school, and she said she would check and call me back. A minute later my phone rang and relief filled my body—he was with them! Seems there was a misunderstanding. They drove past the school and saw my son waiting outside, and they assumed he was going with them, so he hopped in and figured I couldn’t make it after all.
Whew. Crisis averted.
But here I was, trying to do a one-time favor to help my son settle into a new school year, and look what it turned into! As I headed back to the city—again in heavy traffic—I figured there must be a lesson to be learned from my wasted 3.5 hours!.
I realized my experience is closely connected to the time of year we’re in—the month of Elul. In this month, our sages teach, G-d goes out into the field to meet us, so to speak. Instead of being closed away in his palace, he is easily accessible—in the park, in the street, the places we regularly traverse in our daily lives. He does this as a one off—to help us settle into the year. “Come meet Me,” He says, “I love you dearly and want to make this easier for you.”
How do we go out and meet Him?
By thinking about Him, and studying His Torah. By getting ready for the High Holidays. As much as we prepare physically, we need to prepare spiritually—taking an accounting of the previous year, seeing which areas of service to G-d we need to improve upon, and taking active measures to do so. Whether that’s making more of an effort to eat kosher even outside the house, or keep Shabbat each week, or put on tefillin daily—we all know what we need to work on.
So let’s get going—we don’t want Him to go out and find nobody there!
Shabbat Shalom
Rabbi Uriel Vigler