*As the Months of Av and Elul Die Away| Maya Tevet Dayan | 6 Minutes on Friday | September 12, 2025*
On the last day of the month of Elul, one year ago, a missile struck our home. It was from the single barrage launched by Iran. The missile fell just outside my father’s fence while we were in the shelter. And the house collapsed. And with it, everything collapsed. In an instant, everything we had done that day was erased. Just that morning I was filmed for a documentary, interviewed for a magazine, taught a class. It had been a full day, and suddenly it was all gone. In an instant, the time ahead was also erased.
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For two days we wandered through the ruins of the house with our mouths open, picking up glass, splintered wood, and broken furniture. Outside, everything was burned, and inside, through the gaping walls, the air was thick with smoke. The next day we saw people walking by with trays and pots. What holiday is it now? I asked.
It was Rosh Hashanah. That’s how my last year ended, and that’s how the year began, the one that in a week’s time will come to its close.
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The missile, on that last day of Elul, shaped so much of what this year became. It sent us, of course, into long months of construction and repairs. But at the same time, also into long months of restoring our breath, our appetite, our very spirit. It remained lodged inside us, raising its head at every siren, at every heavy truck unloading on the street, at every sudden boom. It was there in the war that broke out in the spring with Iran, and in our decision, after only a few days of terror, to board a ship and sail away. Seasickness and fear of the ocean didn’t matter. The missile from the end of Elul stayed with us every month of the year, mingling with our daily decisions, with the way we stood in the world - sometimes upright, sometimes hunched. And even now, as I write these words, it is here, right here.
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And so this year I noticed for the first time how what happens on the very last day of the year, and what happens on its very first day, can set the tone for all that follows. Which is why Elchanan Nir’s new book arrived to me at exactly the right time: a book written entirely about Rosh Hashanah, in which I found a whole chapter about the last day of Elul and the first day of the new year. Elchanan Nir - poet, scholar of Judaism and India, and also a rabbi - suggests we look at each year as if it were a whole life cycle. From the moment of entry, full of suspicion or trust, just like a newborn entering the world. Until the moment of departure, which he likens to old age.
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And so, this part of the year, just like the last part of life, is the point at which we must choose between wholeness and despair. “This is the stage of summation,” he writes, “an attempt to come to terms with the life that has been, with a deep understanding of it and with an acceptance of one’s personal history, with all its ups and downs. When a person is at peace with their life, they are also at peace with its end, with the approach of death. But when there is no peace, when the struggle, the frustration, the sense of failure and regret go on without end, then that person will stand fearful before death and find it hard to accept its inevitable arrival.”
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I knew what he meant. I’ve met people who were anxious and full of regret before their death, and others who approached it with acceptance. How could I end this difficult year with acceptance? In his book, I found a wonderful suggestion. Listen to this:
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“How can one part ways with a year in a spirit of peace? My wife and I have a small ritual of release every year’s end. A day or two before Rosh Hashanah we try to go out into nature, soak in the last of the green, rest under a tree, and write a few notes reflecting on the past year: a moment of personal goodness we experienced. A moment of goodness as a couple. A moment of goodness in our family. A moment of communal goodness. A moment of national goodness. A moment of universal goodness. We look at these moments and give thanks for them. To walk through life with an awareness of the good and with gratitude for it is not at all simple. Life often appears to us as self-evident, as inevitable… But precisely the realization that everything around us is fleeting… allows us to release ourselves from taking life for granted. That release gives birth to gratitude.
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I give thanks for breath, for air, for the nature around me, for my family and friends, for love and true friendship, for the goodness of my very existence, for the goodness that transcends all daily worries. Gratitude itself emerges as my deepest connection, as a created being, to the Creator.”
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But that is not all, so I continue quoting: “My wife and I do not stop at moments of goodness. In our yearly ritual of release we also make sure to write down moments of challenge or hardship we experienced, for there is no year without both. We read our notes to one another, notes of goodness and notes of pain, recall those moments, give thanks for what was, place the notes into a bag, and then throw them into the trash. In this way we allow ourselves to part not only from the mountaintop moments but also from the collapses that marked the year. Tomorrow each of us will stand before the new revelation, the new year. No one will ascend with us. Each of us will be alone, like Moses climbing the mountain to receive the Tablets, going out to greet the face of the new year. With all my heart I pray it will be a year of blessing and redemption. A year of kindness. A year of compassion. A year of radiant light.”
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So this year we, too, will hold such a ritual, as a couple and as a family, inspired by this beautiful book, titled Zachreinu Le-Chayim - “Remember Us for Life.” And I’d like to end with a poem by the Polish poet Wisława Szymborska, one that speaks of both endings and beginnings, and of war, which we’ve all been steeped in these past two years.
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*The End and the Beginning*
(Translated By Joanna Trzeciak)
After every war / someone has to clean up./ Things won’t / straighten themselves up, after all.//
Someone has to push the rubble / to the side of the road,/ so the corpse-filled wagons /can pass.//
Someone has to get mired / in scum and ashes,/ sofa springs,/ splintered glass,/ and bloody rags.//
Someone has to drag in a girder / to prop up a wall./ Someone has to glaze a window,/ rehang a door.//
Photogenic it’s not, / and takes years./ All the cameras have left / for another war.//
We’ll need the bridges back, / and new railway stations./ Sleeves will go ragged/ from rolling them up.//
Someone, broom in hand,/ still recalls the way it was./ Someone else listens/ and nods with unsevered head.//
But already there are those nearby / starting to mill about / who will find it dull.//
From out of the bushes / sometimes someone still unearths / rusted-out arguments / and carries them to the garbage pile.//
Those who knew / what was going on here / must make way for / those who know little.
And less than little./ And finally as little as nothing.//
In the grass that has overgrown / causes and effects, / someone must be stretched out / blade of grass in his mouth / gazing at the clouds.//
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May we walk toward the end of this year with peace, with hearts inclined toward kindness in the year to come, and may our “after the war” finally arrive.
Wishing us all Shabbat Shalom,
*Maya Tevet Dayan*