Rabbi told us a story during Friday evening’s Shabbat service, a tale he’d picked up from a book he’d recently read to his two young daughters. It was about a little boy whose enthusiasm for magic — whereby things happen with a flick of the wand and the recitation of some suitably impressive-sounding words — got him into trouble when it didn’t bring the results he’d hoped in the real world. He wanted something for nothing, the accomplishment without the work.

Rabbi reminded us that if we want to enjoy the fruits of this season of spiritual renewal, we must do the work. If we fail to do our homework now, the ancient prayers we will utter at Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur will be no more than “magic” words. To put it in Harry Potter parlance, they’ll be as effective as a Muggle waving a stick and saying, “Accio broom!”

We know better than to expect an incantation to clean our house. The housekeeping of our heart requires equally real effort, for all that it isn’t physical labor. We must do the work; the arrival of the new year won’t magically do it for us.

#BlogElul, the brainchild of Rabbi Phyllis Sommer, invites participants to chronicle the month leading up to the Jewish High Holy Days through blog posts, photos, and other social media expressions.

I realize that the last few days have been a bit of a departure from my usual subject matter. “What gives,” I imagine a reader asking as yet another #BlogElul post shows up in her feed reader or Twitter timeline, “with all this Jewish stuff? I thought this was a military spouse blog.”

I’m afraid I didn’t do a very good job of orienting readers who might be unfamiliar with Judaism to this month’s venture before I leaped right in with the first day’s topic. Most of the people I’ve gotten to know through this blog and my Twitter account are military spouses. The vast majority are not Jewish — unsurprising, since we’re a tiny minority in both the general population and the military world. While I have talked about Jewish stuff on the blog in the past, it was mostly in passing. This business with a Jewish blog post every single day for a whole month must seem like it came out of nowhere.

With that in mind, I have a question for any of my readers who might be a little perplexed by this whole exercise.

What do you want to know?

Do you have a question about Judaism? About our experience as a Jewish military family? Is there something you’ve always wondered about Jews or Judaism, but never felt like you could ask?

Well, here I am. I know some things. What good is knowing something if you can’t share that knowledge with others who want to know things?

For what it’s worth, I’ve answered these kinds of questions before from all kinds of folks. I don’t mind. We’re used to being a bit of a curiosity in the military world, and I’d much rather have people ask questions and learn something than worry that they’re going to offend us.

You can ask your question — big or little, silly or deep — in the comments to this post, on Twitter, or via the form below. If you want to remain anonymous, that’s fine, but you’ll need to at least leave me an email address if you want me to respond privately.

I’m not a rabbi, and I’m not an expert on all Judaism-related topics. I certainly do not claim to represent all Jews. I have a little knowledge (probably just enough to be dangerous, right?) that I would be honored to share with those who wish to expand their own.

#BlogElul, the brainchild of Rabbi Phyllis Sommer, invites participants to chronicle the month leading up to the Jewish High Holy Days through blog posts, photos, and other social media expressions.

I accept that I do not have time to write a lengthy exploration of the fourth daily topic before the sun sets and the Sabbath arrives. I’ll be off the computer and away from the blogosphere, Twitterverse, and Facebook until after sundown on Saturday.

When this post goes live, my husband and I will be welcoming the first Shabbat of the month of Elul together with our community.  With prayer and song, wine cups joyfully lifted, and challah held high by small, slightly sticky children’s hands, we will accept gratefully the gift of rest and renewal bestowed upon our people.

Shabbat Shalom, everyone. May your day be one of peace — no exceptions.

#BlogElul, the brainchild of Rabbi Phyllis Sommer, invites participants to chronicle the month leading up to the Jewish High Holy Days through blog posts, photos, and other social media expressions.

We Jews say a lot of blessings. Like, a lot a lot. There are blessings for food (several different ones for different categories, both before and after meals), for lighting Shabbat or holiday candles, for hearing thunder, for laying eyes on the sea, for hearing good news, for hearing bad news, for the proper functioning of our bodies after using the bathroom, for seeing a rainbow, for seeing an unusual person, for opening our eyes in the morning. You name it, we probably have a blessing (called a b’rakhah in Hebrew) for it.

When the sun went down and ushered in the third day of Elul*, I was at a baseball game. Although some fans treat sports with the reverence due a religion (complete with sainted players, demonic forces wearing the uniforms of the opposing team, and “hymns” in the form of stadium rock), I am of the view that a baseball game is a secular event. At first glance, it didn’t look like we were going to be doing anything particularly Jewish that evening.

My third #BlogElul post was still unwritten as we headed to Pensacola Bayfront Stadium, so I had blessings on the brain. We have blessings we could say for just about everything, after all, and that ought to mean that any place, even one as secular as a stadium, should provide at least a few b’rakhah prompts. I started to wonder how many opportunities to bless God I could find at a baseball game. Here are just a few of the ones we found as we watched the Pensacola Blue Wahoos beat the Jacksonville Suns.

Practice pitches before the game.

• This was my very first baseball game ever, so we could start strong with the Shehecheyanu, which we say for “firsts” and unique or infrequent joyful occasions.
• Pensacola Bayfront Stadium isn’t merely a name: we had a great view of the ocean, and the sea breeze helped cool down the summer evening. We got to bless God “who has made the great sea.”
• What’s a baseball game without a little stadium food? We couldn’t resist a hot, salty soft pretzel. There is apparently some debate over whether a soft pretzel gets the b’rakhah for bread or the one for other grain foods, but either way, it was a blessing opportunity.
• While we’re on the subject of food and drink, it was apparently “Thirsty Thursday” at the ballpark, which brought the price of a tall, frosty beer down to something reasonable. We blessed God, “at whose word all things come into being,” and settled in for a relaxing game.
• When the clouds started rolling in, I was concerned that we would soon be saying the blessings for seeing lightning or hearing thunder. The weather held pleasant, though, which ought to call for a blessing in and of itself.

B’rakhot and ballgames.

My little experiment turned out to be an eye-opening mindfulness exercise. By deliberately searching for opportunities to say blessings, I gained intimations of the divine in an unexpected place. Perhaps that is why we have blessings for just about everything, from the obviously transcendent to the seemingly mundane: sparks of the holy are all around us — even out at the ballgame — if only we remember to step outside of ourselves for a few seconds to acknowledge their Source.

* In the Jewish reckoning of time, days begin and end at sunset, an echo of the world’s creation as described in Bere’shit, or Genesis: “And there was evening and there was morning, a first day.” As something of a night owl, given my druthers, this has always struck me as the sensible way to set things up.

#BlogElul, the brainchild of Rabbi Phyllis Sommer, invites participants to chronicle the month leading up to the Jewish High Holy Days through blog posts, photos, and other social media expressions.

I find it appropriate that in the list of topics for this year’s #BlogElul project, “Act” precedes “Believe.”

What people think about that which one science fiction author dubbed “Life, the Universe, and Everything” is enthralling, I will readily admit. A fascination with the glittering variety of belief systems to which human beings have ascribed in different times and places is one of the things that first drew me to the academic study of religion in college. I can (and did) while away many an intellectually stimulating hour in gleeful discussion and debate over theology, all the juicy details and bizarre minutiae and sweeping emotions and contradictions that coalesce into our thoughts about God.

It’s fun for a religion geek like me to talk about beliefs. It would be foolish — perhaps even dangerous — of me to declare “belief” the defining aspect of a religious life.

The temptation to reduce religion to the acceptance of a certain set of statements about the nature of the divine is there, no question. Even the language we often use to discuss religion bears the mark of our preoccupation with what we think about God rather than how we behave. As Karen Armstrong notes in The Case for God, “today we often speak of religious people as ‘believers,’ as though accepting orthodox dogma ‘on faith’ were their most important activity.”

Those “I believe” declarations, no matter how interesting they are or how satisfying they might feel to formulate, may serve only to obfuscate the critical issue: how do we behave toward others? Toward the capital-‘O’ Other? Is it more important that I affirm in my mind, I believe God calls us to pursue justice, or that I behave justly? Does it matter that I think compassion is a divine ideal if I fail to act compassionately? Without actions to reify the beliefs we seem to enjoy discussing so much, religion becomes an empty intellectual exercise, idle speculation that accomplishes nothing and helps no one beyond providing an entertaining mental diversion.

As we approach the Days of Awe, I must ask myself whether my actions are worthy of the beliefs I claim to hold dear. None of the things I “intend,” “hope,” or “believe” will do me or the universe I share with all of you a bit of good unless I act, here and now, to better myself and to help my fellows. In that way may I serve as a partner to the Holy One in tikkun olam, repairing the world.

#BlogElul, the brainchild of Rabbi Phyllis Sommer, invites participants to chronicle the month leading up to the Jewish High Holy Days through blog posts, photos, and other social media expressions.