As the Hebrew month of Elul begins, the Jewish calendar asks something difficult of us.
Long before we gather for Rosh Hashanah or stand in judgment on Yom Kippur, we are called to begin a cheshbon hanefesh, an accounting of the soul. We take stock of what we have done, whom we have hurt, and where we have fallen short.
The daily blast of the shofar is an alarm for the conscience. It reminds us that renewal is not automatic. Repentance begins with honesty, and forgiveness with humility. Neither is possible without the willingness to change.
Soon, Jews around the world will pray to be inscribed and ultimately sealed in the Book of Life. The image has endured because a book records more than our intentions. It records what we have written through our actions: how we have lived, how we have treated others, and what we have contributed to the world around us.
Before we ask the Almighty to write our names in that book, we should ask what kind of chapter we have written together.
This has been no ordinary year.
The Jewish people continue to confront enemies who seek our isolation, delegitimization, and destruction. Israel faces continuing threats from Hamas, Hezbollah, the Houthis, and the regime in Tehran. Across the world, antisemitism has moved from the margins into schools, synagogues, campuses, streets, and public institutions.
Jews were murdered while celebrating Hanukkah at Bondi Beach and while worshiping on Yom Kippur at Manchester’s Heaton Park Synagogue. In the United States, the ADL recorded 203 antisemitic assaults in 2025, the highest number in the history of its annual audit. Thirty-two involved deadly weapons, and three people were killed in antisemitic attacks.
We have every reason to look outward with concern.
Elul requires us to look inward as well.
For all the threats directed against us, we must also ask whether anger, suspicion, and contempt have weakened the bonds that have sustained Jewish life for generations.
Elul asks us to account for the enemies we have confronted and the relationships we have damaged.
The Jewish people have never been strangers to disagreement. Our tradition does not demand uniformity, and our history has never produced it. The pages of the Talmud preserve vigorous arguments, competing interpretations, and minority opinions. The sages Hillel and Shammai disagreed over questions that touched nearly every aspect of Jewish life.
Jewish civilization flourished not because Jews always agreed, but because disagreement took place within a shared covenant.
The test of Jewish unity is not whether we disagree. We always have. It is whether, in the heat of disagreement, we still recognize one another as family.
Too often today, disagreement becomes estrangement. Political differences become grounds for moral excommunication. Motives are condemned before arguments are considered. Social media rewards the harshest judgment and the quickest denunciation. We speak about one another more readily than we speak with one another.
Elul: A time of reckoning
Too many of us have become certain not only that we are right, but that those who disagree with us must be wicked, ignorant, or beyond redemption.
That is no longer principled disagreement. It is a refusal to remain in community with one another.
None of this requires us to surrender our convictions. Judaism does not ask us to care less about the questions that matter. It asks us to argue with humility, to listen with patience, and to remember that no political disagreement erases the divine image in another person.
A people facing enemies from without cannot afford to treat every disagreement within as a civil war.
Repentance rarely begins with a grand gesture. More often, it begins with a conversation we have avoided, an apology we have resisted, or a willingness to hear someone we had already dismissed.
It can mean listening before condemning, assuming good faith before assigning malice, and choosing dialogue without pretending that our differences are insignificant.
That responsibility does not belong only to individuals. Institutions, synagogues, schools, organizations, and communal leaders help set the tone of Jewish life. Every public statement, sermon, social media post, and communal decision helps set that tone.
Leadership does not require avoiding difficult disputes. It requires ensuring that those disputes do not consume the community they are meant to strengthen.
Judaism understands repentance as both individual and collective. We worship together. Some prayers cannot be recited without a minyan (prayer quorum). On Yom Kippur, we do not stand before the Almighty and confess only, “I have sinned.”
We say, “We have sinned.” Ashamnu. Bagadnu.
We confess in the plural because we bear responsibility for our own conduct and for the community we have helped create.
The Book of Life is therefore more than a personal metaphor. It is a reminder that our destinies are intertwined. We are one people, bound to those who came before us, those who stand beside us, and those who will follow.
Dor l’dor.
None of us will enter the Days of Awe without shortcomings. That is why the season exists. Judaism rests on the conviction that people can change, relationships can be repaired, and communities can renew themselves.
As Elul begins, we should do more than make plans for the holidays. We should begin the harder preparation.
Let us examine what we have done to one another, seek forgiveness where we have caused hurt, and extend it where repentance is sincere. Let us recover the humility to learn from one another, and the wisdom to recognize that what binds us is deeper than what divides us.
And when we ask to be inscribed in the Book of Life, let us do so as one people, responsible for one another and standing together before our Creator.
The writer is CEO of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations.