Every Letter A Beginning
By: Yochanan Gordon
There is a unique phenomenon when it comes to the month of Elul, and that is the plethora of roshei teivos associated with its name.
The most famous of these is Ani L’dodi V’dodi Li, whose initial letters spell Elul. The Alter Rebbe, in Likkutei Torah, explains that the sequence in our relationship with Hashem is isarusa d’lesata followed by isarusa d’l’eila—an arousal from below followed by an arousal from Above. We first turn toward Hashem—ani l’dodi—and that elicits the reciprocal response of v’dodi li.
Elul, however, is the month in which “the King is in the field.” The King’s presence serves as an impetus toward awakening after the summer months, when spiritual introspection may have been the last thing on anyone’s mind.
But Ani L’dodi V’dodi Li is only one of many roshei teivos associated with Elul—aside, of course, from the humorous Ani L’uman V’ishti L’shviger.
Among the better-known ones are:
Inah L’yado V’samti Lecha, from the Torah’s discussion of the city of refuge. Elul is likened to a city of refuge in time, providing a person with the opportunity to escape the patterns of the past and redirect his life toward Hashem.
Aron, Luchos V’shivrei Luchos, brought by the great Kabbalist Rabbi Nosson Nota Shapiro in his Megaleh Amukos.
Ish L’rei’eihu Umatanos L’evyonim, emphasizing the interpersonal dimension of our Divine service.
Es Levavcha V’es Levav Zarecha, referring to Hashem circumcising our hearts and the hearts of our children—an image of teshuvah particularly germane to this time of year.
Anu L’Kah V’eineinu L’Kah, expressing a realignment of our gaze and attention toward Hashem.
And Echad L’chatas V’echad L’olah, a verse pertaining to korbanos, themselves intimately associated with atonement and return.
There are probably others that I am omitting. In fact, this is one of those phenomena that seems to grow from year to year, as new roshei teivos are unearthed—or conceived—by contemporary scholars and authors.
But there is a question that, in all these years, I have never seen addressed:
Why?
Why is Elul the one month out of twelve that invites this seemingly endless search for roshei teivoswithin its name?
Devarim gedolim einam b’mikreh—matters of significance are not coincidental or arbitrary. There must be something about Elul itself that lends its name to this particular form of interpretation.
If you think about it, what does a rosh teivah actually do?
Essentially, roshei teivos take every letter of a word and transform it into the first letter of another word.
Take Elul. The aleph is the first letter, the lamed the second, the vav the third, and the final lamed the fourth. Ordinarily, only the opening letter possesses the distinction of being first. Every letter that follows is simply another letter in the sequence.
But when Elul becomes Ani L’dodi V’dodi Li, something remarkable happens.
Every letter becomes a beginning.
The lamed is no longer merely the second letter of Elul; it becomes the opening letter of L’dodi. The vavbecomes the opening letter of V’dodi. The final lamed becomes the opening letter of Li.
Roshei teivos take letters that were secondary and confer upon each of them the primacy of a beginning.
And perhaps that tells us something profound about Elul.
There are moments in our lives that naturally feel like opening letters. Weddings, births, bar mitzvahs, the beginning of a school year, a new job, a new home—the happy, meaningful, and memorable days that stand out prominently in our minds.
But there are many more days that seem to exist somewhere in the middle of the word.
They are part of the continuum of our lives, but they do not vie for our attention. They are the Tuesdays and Wednesdays, the carpools and commutes, the meals and conversations, the ordinary encounters that seem merely to serve as connective tissue between one significant moment and the next.
The Torah says regarding Eretz Yisrael:
“Tamid eini Hashem Elokeich aba m’reishit hashana v’ad acharit shana.”
“The eyes of Hashem your G-d are constantly upon it, from the beginning of the year until the end of the year.”
The late Satmar Rebbe, Rabbi Yoel Teitelbaum, zt’l, once drew attention to a subtle change in the wording of the verse. At the beginning of the year, the Torah says hashanah—the year. Yet when referring to the end of the year, it says simply shanah—year, omitting the letter hei.
Why does the year lose its hei?
The Satmar Rebbe explained that the hei hayidiya, the definite article, conveys distinction and uniqueness. When Rosh Hashanah arrives, there is freshness and excitement in the air. People make resolutions and resolve that this year will be different. This will not be merely another year in a long succession of years. This is going to be hashanah—the year.
But as the months pass, the freshness begins to fade. The resolutions become harder to maintain, and the uniqueness with which the year began gradually gives way to routine. By the time we reach its conclusion, hashanah has become merely shanah.
The year has lost its hei.
The challenge, then, is to retain the sense of uniqueness with which the year began—to prevent life from becoming one long continuum in which one day simply follows another.
And perhaps that is precisely the message hidden within Elul’s unusual affinity for roshei teivos.
The work of Elul is to turn every letter into a rosh.
To take the moments that we ordinarily experience as second, third, and fourth letters—the seemingly mundane stretches of life—and imbue each of them with the freshness, intentionality, and primacy of a beginning.
The more I thought about this, the more it began to dawn on me that perhaps this offers a new way of understanding the Alter Rebbe’s famous analogy of Hamelech basadeh—the King in the field.
What is a field?
A field—sadeh in Hebrew—may be beautiful and expansive, but conceptually it represents the outside. It is not the palace. It is not the throne room. It is where ordinary life takes place.
The vegetation of the field is called sichah hasadeh. Chazal famously teach ein sichah elah tefillah, that sichah can refer to prayer. Yet relative to other Hebrew words for speech, sichah can also connote casual conversation—the ordinary, seemingly insignificant speech of everyday life.
The Alter Rebbe has a maamar on the verse:
“Vayetze Yitzchak lasuach basadeh lifnot erev.”
“And Yitzchak went out to meditate in the field toward evening.”
This, of course, is the source for Yitzchak’s establishment of the Minchah prayer. The Alter Rebbe explains that there are Mishnayos and Braisos. The word Braisa literally means “outside.” Yitzchak goes outward, into the “field,” as it were, in order to draw Divine light precisely there, transforming the darkness. The word lifanot, usually translated as “toward,” can also be read as lefanot—to clear away the darkness of evening.
Seen in this light, the King’s arrival in the field during Elul takes on another dimension.
The King represents primacy. There is nothing secondary about a king. The field, by contrast, represents precisely those areas of existence that we tend to regard as secondary—the outside, the ordinary, the unremarkable stretches of life.
In Elul, the King enters the field.
Hashem infuses the secondary with the primary.
And perhaps that is precisely why Elul is the month of roshei teivos.
Because roshei teivos do with letters exactly what Hamelech basadeh does with life.
They take the second letter, the third letter, and the fourth letter and declare:
You, too, are a beginning.
Elul asks us not merely to prepare for another new beginning on Rosh Hashanah, but to learn how to experience every moment as a beginning—to transform the entire year into roshei teivos, a succession of moments in which every encounter, every conversation, every prayer, and every seemingly mundane experience possesses the primacy of a first letter.
That is how we retain the hei of hashanah throughout the year.
By making every letter a rosh.
And every moment a beginning.
Being that it is Elul—and already after the fifteenth of Av—I will take this opportunity to wish all of our readers a kesivah vachasimah tovah, to be written and sealed for a good, sweet, and prosperous year.
Yochanan Gordon can be reached at [email protected]. Read more of Yochanan’s articles at 5TJT.com.
