Baseball and Elul

 As we enter the fall, and prepare for Tishrei – The High Holidays, Sukkot and Simchat Torah, we are also poised at a key moment of the great American sport - the climactic crescendo of the Baseball season. True, in the grand scheme of things this may seem trivial, yet - all happens by Divine Providence. As a result of this reality, Rabbi Israel Ba’al Shem Tov taught “Everything we hear and see must teach us a means of enhancing our Divine work”. Since this sporting milestones are always close to this most intense period of the Judaic year, they must teach us something important.

One of the special characteristics of baseball is the need for thorough preparation outside the games themselves. The perfect strike, the brilliant at-bat, the towering homer, the gravity-defying leaping catch at the wall, the perfectly choreographed double (or triple!) play all are the products of intense preparation and practice over many hours, days, months, and years. The necessary development of the specific baseball skills as well as the strength, coordination and athleticism needed to pull off the aforementioned feats can only be developed by much exercise and practice. The strike or the hit takes but an instant, but that success was built on many hours of hard work the fans in the stands never see. Without that work, the player wouldn’t even be in the game as a major leaguer at all.

On Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur we seek that “Great Play”, we seek the commitment of ourselves to Judaism on a new and deeper level, we seek the negation of that which holds us back, the rectification of our failings ands the filling-in of the lacunae of our Judaism. However, to get the most of that short at-bat -those few and sublime days of opportunity, we need to develop our spiritual strength and coordination and work on focused prayer. We to spend time on meaningful meditation on who we are and where we seek to go on our Jewish journey in this coming year.

This is the month of Elul we are about to entera , month building spiritual strength and spiritual skills. We spend more time and deeper focus on our prayer and Torah study, we increase the care with which we do Mitzvot, we examine the way we treat and help our fellows. We prepare for a deep encounter with G-d by making G-d and Judaism a much bigger part of our lives during this special month of preparation. We carefully inspect our dealings with other people to ensure that all those ordinary interactions are kind, respectful, and helpful. Then, we enter the High Holidays able to actualize the great opportunity of those special hours and days.

The more practice and preparation we engage in this month the more we ready for the opportunity offered by the Awesome days of the next month. We can then enter the special space of the Days of Awe, ready for our moment “at-bat” conversant in G-dliness, fluent in self-growth, and strong in our resolve that we will draw down from the Al-mighty a year of blessing and peace for us, our families and all of the Jewish people especially for our brothers and sisters in the Land of Israel.