Welcome back to your High Holy Days Prep Course! We have arrived at Week Three of our seven-week countdown to the New Year 5777!

As we approach the start of the Hebrew month of Elul, we officially begin preparing our souls for the High Holy Days. To aid in this preparation, this week we are pointing you toward a daily exercise outlined by a wonderful, non-Jewish author named Panache Desai. In his book, Discovering Your Soul Signature, Desai guides readers through a process designed to help us discover and return to our most essential and authentic selves.

While he writes from an ecumenical perspective, the idea is very Jewish: at our core, we have a divine soul or spark which animates our existence. As we go through life, the light within us sometimes becomes harder to access. It is dimmed - blocked off by emotional baggage or obscured by ego. Engaging in Desai’s 33-day spiritual excavation enables you to shed the anger, fear, guilt, shame, sadness, and despair which diminishes our access to our deepest, most complete selves.

Of course, if you’re looking for an explicitly Jewish manual to doing this work, that also exists, try Aryeh Kaplan’s book, Jewish Meditation. This step-by-step introduction to meditation and the Jewish practice of meditation is a practical guide which covers such topics as mantra meditation, contemplation, and visualization within a Jewish context.

TALK TO US!
What have you done lately to prepare for the Holy Days? What have you gained, thus far, from the recommendations we’re making in this Prep Course? We’d love to hear your feedback and learn from your experiences. Be sure to visit our Facebook page or even reply to this message to share your insights, challenges and victories!

And don’t forget that Hillel is here as your home (or home to anyone seeking a warm and inviting community) for the High Holy Days. CLICK HERE for more information.