Elul is (almost) here! Again! And it feels like just yesterday I was writing last year’s journaling prompts. But here we are, about to turn the corner into the final month of the Jewish calendar year, on the precipice of the beautiful period of introspection leading up to the High Holidays. And seeing as last year’s post remains one of the most popular on the site (!!), I figured I’d share another 29 prompts for the days ahead. I just love writing and thinking about these, and they seemed to really speak to you last year. So…here we go!
First, though, a few thoughts (borrowed from last year’s post) on why I think journaling throughout the month of Elul is a good or at least interesting idea: Much like the secular New Year, Rosh Hashanah offers us a chance at a fresh start or reset. But it’s pretty much impossible to reap the benefits of a day like that without at least a little bit of forethought. If you were interested in making New Year’s resolutions, for instance, you likely wouldn’t whip out a pad of paper at 11:59 P.M. on December 31st. You’d give yourself some lead time—at least an hour, if not a full day or week.
That’s exactly how many Jews view the month of Elul. It’s a time to process the events of the year that’s coming to a close, tie up loose ends, and draw closer to G-d. Since seeking forgiveness is also a key part of the High Holidays, that’s a big part of this time, too.
I’m hoping that each of the prompts below will help you make the most of this exquisite, somewhat solemn, forward-and-backward-looking, preparatory time. I wrote each of these because they’re things I’m genuinely interested in exploring myself, so just know I’ll be writing about them along with you! A few are borrowed from last year because I loved them too much and wanted to think through them one more time, but the rest are brand-new.
Give me a shout on Instagram if you’re participating, and look out for my daily Stories about this, too—I’ll post each day’s prompt there beginning on 1 Elul/August 9. 💗
P.S. Please don’t share these prompts without proper attribution—thank you!
1 Elul (August 9)
“…It is as if [the shofar’s call] is saying: Wake up, sleepy ones, from your sleep…and you who slumber, arise.” (Maimonides, Mishneh Torah, Repentance 3:4)
Many congregations and individuals blow the shofar to conclude each morning of prayer during Elul. Write down a single word that will serve as your personal “shofar” during the coming year—one that you can use to rouse yourself to action. Reflect on why you chose this word to accompany you through 5782.
2 Elul
“Our heads are round so thought can change direction.” —Allen Ginsberg
Are there things you can’t imagine changing your mind about (values, belief systems, ideas about your future or past, ideas about the relationships in your life, etc.)? If there are, list them—then think about what would it be like to see the “other side” or alternative perspective on each topic. What are you willing/not willing to change your mind about this year?
3 Elul
“A man should aim to maintain physical health and vigor, in order that his soul may be upright, in a condition to know G-d. For it is impossible for one to understand sciences and meditate upon them when one is hungry or sick, or when any of his limbs is aching…because his purpose in all that he does will be to satisfy his needs so as to have a sound body with which to serve G-d.” —Maimonides
Journal about your relationship with your body and health, and think about how you might realistically change or maintain that relationship in the coming year. What does your ideal relationship with health look like? What obstacles have gotten in the way of that relationship in the past? Write about anything that comes to mind—exercise, nutrition, sleep habits, past habits, potential future habits, etc.
4 Elul
“I am my beloved’s and my beloved is mine.” (Song of Songs 6:3)
Elul is believed to be an acronym for the first letters of commonly cited Hebrew verse, “ani l’dodi v’dodi li” (“I am my beloved’s and my beloved is mine”). Many believe that G-d is the “beloved” referenced in that phrase, so they see Elul as a time to draw closer to G-d and become more intimately acquainted with their faith. In whatever capacity you’re comfortable, write a short “love letter” or note of gratitude/friendship to G-d, or to Judaism as a whole, or to whatever you’re hoping to recommit to in the coming year.
5 Elul
“There’s a trick to the ‘graceful exit.’ It begins with the vision to recognize when a job, a life stage, or a relationship is over—and let it go. It means leaving what’s over without denying its validity or its past importance to our lives. It involves a sense of future, a belief that every exit line is an entry, that we are moving up, rather than out.” ―Ellen Goodman
Are there specific scenarios in your life for which you currently seek closure? Is closure really attainable? If so, might it be possible to mentally close the loop or the door on those areas of your life without involving other people? For which scenarios is that not possible; i.e., for which scenarios do you feel compelled to involve, converse with, seek forgiveness from, or bestow forgiveness upon others?
6 Elul
“We can endure much more than we think we can; all human experience testifies to that.” —Rabbi Harold S. Kushner
What did you endure in the past year, and how? What qualities, traits, or habits helped (or hindered) you the most? What sort of person do you become when you’re faced with an endurance-testing scenario? Are you proud of yourself?
7 Elul
“Most of us spend too much time on what is urgent and not enough time on what is important.” ―Stephen R. Covey
Draw a pie chart of your life. It’s an easy way to visualize where your priorities have landed in the past year. Some sample “pie piece” categories might be: “relationships,” “work,” “hobbies,” “alone time,” “entertainment,” and so on. How much time do you spend with others? With yourself? On things that truly matter to you? Now draw a pie chart visualizing a more ideal use of time—thinking ahead to how you hope to spend your energy in 5782.
8 Elul
“‘When I make a promise to myself, I keep it.’ This was my mantra I said to myself for the entire first year of my self-healing journey… We tend to overload ourselves with things we want to do, then the mind gives us MASSIVE amounts of resistance, and we quit—diving into deep cycles of shame… When I started making small promises to myself, it was difficult. My ego wanted to make those big promises we all declare when we’ve had enough of ourselves. ‘I’ll go to the gym 5 days a week for an hour!’ ‘I’ll wake up at 5:30 am and meditate for 30 minutes.’ When we make ego-based promises (meaning we skip all the necessary small steps), we always end up not being able to keep them. Then we live in shame cycles because we’ve fractured our self-trust on another, deeper level. Self-esteem and self-worth are the result of trusting your own word. Create one small promise to keep for yourself. Keep it under 10 minutes. Forgive yourself when you skip, begin the next day. Keep it for 30 days. Add another promise. Build your promises. Transform yourself.” —Dr. Nicole LePera
Make one small promise to yourself for the coming year—just one!—that you’ll actively try to keep in an effort to build self-trust. It should be something to which you know you can realistically commit without making a huge lifestyle change. For instance: “I’m going to make the bed every single morning, no matter what” (that’s been my small promise for years now).
9 Elul
“A Jew who doesn’t believe in miracles is not a realist.” —David Ben Gurion
What miracles did you witness in the past year? You can list them or write about one—anything goes.
10 Elul
“Who sings in this world will sing also in the next.” —Talmud, Sanhedrin
Close your journal today. Make a playlist of at least 10 songs that will serve to inspire you to be better, braver, and more in touch with the divine in the coming year. Maybe the lyrics of these songs speak to you, or maybe the melodies feel relevant to the feelings you’re hoping to manifest in 5782. Maybe they just make you happy. There doesn’t really need to be a rhyme or reason.
11 Elul
“Close your eyes and imagine the best version of you possible. That’s who you really are, let go of any part of you that doesn’t believe it.” —C. Assaad
Use the quote above to inspire your journaling today. What is “the best version” of you? What does a day in their life look like—down to the smallest detail? What time do they wake up? How do they take their coffee? What do they wear? What do they stand for? What do they believe in?
12 Elul
“In a world without forgiveness, evil begets evil, harm generates harm, and there is no way short of exhaustion or forgetfulness of breaking the sequence. Forgiveness breaks the chain. It introduces into the logic of interpersonal encounter the unpredictability of grace. It represents a decision not to do what instinct and passion urge us to do. It answers hate with a refusal to hate, animosity with generosity. Few more daring ideas have ever entered the human situation. Forgiveness means that we are not destined endlessly to replay the grievances of yesterday. It is the ability to live with the past without being held captive by the past. It would not be an exaggeration to say that forgiveness is the most compelling testimony to human freedom.”
—Rabbi Jonathan Sacks
How will you forgive yourself in the coming year each time you don’t follow through with any of the plans you’ve outlined here so far? What will you say to yourself when you inevitably (because it *is* inevitable) fall short of your ideals or goals? Could you forgive yourself in this same thoughtful way every week if that’s how often you needed to reset? How about every day? Every hour? This year, how can you come to terms with, and even proactively welcome, the inevitability of imperfection—in other words, the sameness of imperfection and living?
13 Elul
“Judaism is not a religion, it’s a relationship.” —Rabbi Benzion Klatzko
Journal about your relationship with Judaism or your Jewishness. What does it look like right now? What work are you currently putting into the relationship, and how frequently? How can you strengthen this relationship or rethink the work you’re doing? What would make it more fulfilling, fun, or personal in the coming year?
14 Elul
“There is one respect in which each of us has precisely the same strength as Moses. Namely, the strength to choose. There is no hand of heaven—no physiological, genetic, psychological or Providential compulsion—that forces us to act one way rather than another. The fear of heaven is not in the hands of heaven; therefore the fear of heaven is as live an option to us as it was to Moses. Here is indeed a thing which, if it is small for Moses is small for us.” —Rabbi Jonathan Sacks, Tradition in an Untraditional Age
What things, events, or traits within your life have you accepted as “fated”? Is it possible to believe that there’s a choice available to you instead? What could be different if you believed you had the power to choose your own path?
15 Elul
“Only a life lived for others is a life worthwhile.” —Albert Einstein
Pick a “tzedakah theme” for your year—one charity to which you’ll give on a regular basis in the coming year. (You absolutely can and should pick more than one; this is just an idea for getting started.)
16 Elul
“To believe in something, and not to live it, is dishonest.” ―Mahatma Gandhi
What’s something you believe in, but don’t “live”? Conversely: What’s something you say often, but don’t really believe?
17 Elul
“Do not wait until the conditions are perfect to begin. Beginning makes the conditions perfect.” —Alan Cohen
What have you been waiting for, or waiting on? Could you begin in your current conditions—even incrementally or partially? If not, why?
18 Elul
“I love quotations because it is a joy to find thoughts one might have, beautifully expressed with much authority by someone recognized wiser than oneself.” —actress and singer Marlene Dietrich, the first woman and German to receive the Israeli Medallion of Valor in 1965 for her “courageous adherence to principle and consistent record of friendship for the Jewish people.”
Select and jot down a quote to live by—or at least something that can inspire you on a daily basis—in the coming year. Just one.
19 Elul
“What sort of diary should I like mine to be? …I should like to come back, after a year or two, and find that the collection had sorted itself and refined itself and coalesced… The main requisite, I think, on reading my old volumes, is not to play the part of a censor, but to write as the mood comes or of anything whatever; since I was curious to find how I went for things put in haphazard, and found the significance to lie where I never saw it at the time.” —Virginia Woolf
Write a letter to yourself at the end of 5782. Seal it in an envelope and set a calendar reminder to read it in a year.
20 Elul
“I have loved the stars too fondly to be fearful of the night.” ―Sarah Williams
What does your evening or before-bed routine look like now? In what ways is it helping or hindering you from living a more peaceful, contented life? How might you change, maintain, or improve this routine in 5782? Make an actionable plan to help you get started.
21 Elul
“Finish each day and be done with it. You have done what you could. Some blunders and absurdities no doubt crept in; forget them as soon as you can. Tomorrow is a new day. You shall begin it serenely and with too high a spirit to be encumbered with your old nonsense.” ―Ralph Waldo Emerson
What feelings, regrets, or worries you tend to hold onto after a day or event is over? Without denying the validity of these things, how can you end each day with more compassion for yourself and your circumstances?
22 Elul
“Jews have six senses. Touch, taste, sight, smell, hearing, and memory… For Jews, memory is no less primary than the prick of a pin, or its silver glimmer, or the taste of the blood it pulls from the finger. The Jew is pricked by a pin and remembers other pins. It is only by tracing the pinprick back to other pinpricks—when his mother tried to fix his sleeve while his arm was still in it, when his grandfather’s fingers fell asleep from stroking his great-grandfather’s damp forehead, when Abraham tested the knife point to be sure Isaac would feel no pain—that the Jew is able to know why it hurts. When a Jew encounters a pin, he asks: What does it remember like?” —Jonathan Safran Foer
Journal about your own “memory sense.” How does memory (good memories, bad memories, and everything in between) inform your life and decisions? What memories did you make yourself? Which ones did you inherit? What events do you remember that you never lived through?
23 Elul
“Our lives no longer belong to us alone; they belong to all those who need us desperately.” —Elie Wiesel
Who “needs you”? Maybe it’s a child, maybe it’s a community of people, maybe it’s someone you’ve never met before. How will you lend your life to theirs in 5782?
24 Elul
“This year, I want to call myself to task for what I have done and not done for peace. How much have I dared in opposition? How much have I put on the line for freedom? For mine and others?” —Marge Piercy
Use Marge Piercy’s beautiful words above to guide your journaling efforts today. How much have you “dared in opposition”? How much have you “put on the line for freedom”? What have you “done and not done for peace”?
25 Elul
“Resistance, which is a cousin of fear, manifests as feeling too lazy, scared, or tired to engage in the practices or actions that you know will serve your higher self.” ―Sheryl Paul
What are you resisting? What stories do you tell yourself about your own resistance? Are they true?
26 Elul
“Writing is my way of expressing—and thereby eliminating—all the various ways we can be wrong-headed.” —Zadie Smith
Journal about journaling! Do you think you’ll continue with a ritualized journaling practice in the coming year? How can you facilitate that ritual—do you need to purchase supplies, carve out time, etc.? What does journaling represent for you? Does it feel synonymous or interchangeable with any other mindful activities, like meditation?
27 Elul
“Your fellow is your mirror. If your own face is clean, the image you perceive will also be flawless. But should you look upon your fellow man and see a blemish, it is your own imperfection that you are encountering—you are being shown what it is that you must correct within yourself.” —Baal Shem Tov
Journal about projections—how you’ve experienced them and how you want to move through them in the coming year. What do you frequently observe, notice, or remark on in others that might actually be a reflection of something within you?
28 Elul
“Rosh Hashanah isn’t just about being new, it’s about a change.” —Max Levis
On the morning of Rosh Hashanah, what is the one feeling you wish to embody? How might you get to the place of feeling that way? (This could be as literal as going to sleep at a certain time the night before or meditating on the morning-of, or it could be as radical as changing an entire aspect of your life.)
29 Elul
“To be human is to struggle. Eventually we realize that when we sit under the umbrella of ‘shoulds’ — ‘This shouldn’t be so hard. I should be happy.’ — the pain rains down harder. But when we accept the fact that anxiety, depression, loneliness, powerlessness, grief, joy, and exhilaration are all part of the design, we step out into the rain and perhaps even dance a little.” ―Sheryl Paul
How might you begin to accept that pain, anxiety, and discomfort is “part of the design” in the coming year? How can you include these things in your idea of what a “perfect” or good year looks like? (I highly recommend Sheryl Paul’s book all about this concept—The Wisdom of Anxiety. The single most profound and eye-opening book I’ve ever read.)
I love your *guidebook* to Elul. Such meaningful quote choices, from such an array of wise sources.
Thank you.
May the coming chodesh of Elul help you prepare for a sweet new year, with new beginnings….
thank you so much, Pearl! the same to you!
Wow, just found this, so incredibly helpful! Thanks for putting this together!
thank you so much for writing, ayala! my pleasure!