Clergy Reflections on Elul: Recovering and Reflection

Clergy Reflections on Elul: Recovering and Reflection

HUC Rabbinic Intern Paige Beame, 2025

Last August, I tore the cartilage in my hip and spent six months living with constant pain, trying to avoid surgery. I had to step back, slow down, and find new ways to fill my time. For someone who has always lived actively, this was not easy. My mood suffered, and I had to learn how to ask for help. My injury didn’t just affect me, it affected my sister and my roommate, who supported me in ways large and small. When I finally had surgery in May, I needed to rely on them even more.

For someone stubborn and independent, that reliance was difficult. There were days I snapped at the very people who were bringing me dinner or helping me up the stairs. Now, almost four months post-op and halfway to full recovery, I continue to live in the tension of this recovery. My life still doesn’t feel “normal,” I don’t move the same way even though my brain is ready to move like I used to. The days that I am planted on the couch due to this injury are the days I struggle with the toll this process has taken.

And yet, as I prepare to enter the High Holy Days, I realize that the lessons of recovery mirror the lessons of Elul. Just as my hip needs time and care to heal, so too does my soul. Healing requires honesty, patience, and the humility to admit that I cannot do it alone. This season asks the same of us: to notice where we are wounded, to ask forgiveness when our pain has hurt others, and to lean on community and God as we work toward wholeness.

This Elul, I will be reaching out to those who carried me through my recovery: with gratitude, and with the humility to apologize where my pain spilled over onto them. I invite you to join me in asking: Who has lifted me up this year? Who do I need to thank? Who do I need to ask forgiveness from?

Even though I may not feel fully like myself, I want to act like the person I know I am and strive to be. That is the work of teshuvah, to believe that wholeness is possible, even in the midst of healing.