As the month of Elul begins and the High Holidays (Yamim Noraim) approach, we find ourselves in the most intensive time of year for Jewish educators. We sound the Shofar for them every morning, we accompany our students through a process of reflection and soul-searching, and we help them to prepare cards with greetings and wishes for a Shana Tova.
I want to use this space to expand our view of Elul and the High Holy Days so that we can use this period not only for spiritual growth but also for socio-emotional growth from within our tradition and religious practices.
Socio-emotional learning is defined as the process through which children, youth, and adults acquire and apply the skills and attitudes that promote the development of healthy identities (CASEL 2020). These include, inter alia, recognizing, regulating, and expressing emotions; achieving personal and collective goals; feeling and showing empathy for others; establishing and maintaining supportive relationships; and making responsible decisions, considering their effect on the world.
When Elul begins and the elements and traditions of this time of year make their appearance in our schools, a wonderful opportunity opens up to enhance socio-emotional learning among our students as well as within ourselves.
During Elul, we hear the Shofar every morning (except on Shabbat). The Shofar is a call to awaken the soul and arouse it to repentance (Teshuva). When the soul awakens, we attain a heightened sensitivity and awareness of ourselves and our surroundings. Self-awareness and social awareness are two of the five socio-emotional competencies. Awakening self-awareness gives us space to recognize ourselves as developing beings and to recognize what we feel, need, and desire. It involves knowing ourselves and being aware of our emotions, ideas, values, virtues, and personal challenges. Social awareness, on the other hand, allows us to realize the otherness of others, individual and collective differences, the emotions, needs, and desires of other people, as well as how these others influence us. This is why social awareness is the basis for gratitude and empathy and is a necessary quality for implementing Tikun Olam, with action arising from the sensitive recognition of need.
On each of the days of Elul we can aim for different directions of reflection through guided questions and group discussions. One way to do this is to create a plan of questions aimed at developing both self-awareness and social awareness over the period of time in which we will be hearing the Shofar. The questions can be presented before the Shofar is sounded, so that the students can think about them while listening, and then time can be dedicated to a group reflection afterwards.
Some possible questions for developing self-awareness are: What are the things I enjoy doing the most, and why? What situations generate difficult or unpleasant emotions for me, and why? What emotion am I feeling right now, and why? How do I connect with G-d? What are the most important things in my life, and why? What are the most important values to me, and why?
Questions that can help develop social awareness include the following: In what ways am I similar to and different from my peers? Which aspects of diversity enrich my class the most, and why? What emotion do I think the classmate sitting next to me is feeling, and why do I think he/she feels that way? How do my classmates feel when I respect them and when I don't? What can I do to help my classmates feel better? What am I grateful for today?
In Elul, we can also develop relational skills, another socio-emotional competence that allows us to establish and maintain healthy relationships with those around us. We are social beings, and we realize our social selves in society, so the quality of the relationships we develop defines and determines, in part, our happiness. The tradition of sending greeting cards to wish others a good year is an opportunity to review and evaluate which of our relationships need work, which nourish us and do us good, and which do not. In which of our relationships should we try to invest more, where have we made mistakes, and where do we need to ask for forgiveness?
One way to do this is to invite the students to make a list of important people in their lives and think about what they could write to each one to improve the relationship they have with them. It could be a declaration of intention to spend more time together, a request for forgiveness, or the mention of an unresolved issue and proposal of a way to resolve it. Alternatively, it could be an expression of thanks for the relationship and its enriching contribution; explicit valuing of the person or the relationship; or the recollection of an incident that was relevant to the strengthening of that relationship. This is would be a preparatory step before preparing the cards, enhancing the opportunity to review and improve each of the relationships.
Finally, we have the task of personal accounting (heshbon nefesh), where we review our behavior over the past year and set goals to improve in the coming year. (Some use the image of a scale to graphically represent our successes and mistakes and thereby evaluate our situation.) This exercise invites us to develop two very important socio-emotional competencies. First, self-management, which is the sum of skills aimed at making us the best version of ourselves: learning to regulate our emotions; to live and express them in healthy ways; setting goals with determination, and persevering to achieve them despite obstacles; and being proactive in physical and emotional self-care, delaying gratification when necessary. When we self-evaluate through a process of heshbon nefesh, we can review which of these skills needs our attention so that the coming year we will be better than the one that is ending.
Secondly, we can develop responsible decision-making, which is the set of skills that allows us to actively participate in the groups to which we belong, weighing the ethics and ramifications of our decisions with critical thinking and forward-looking vision. If we really want to make positive changes for ourselves and our environment, this is an extremely relevant competency.
We can enhance the exercise of heshbon nefesh by creating a table with three columns. In the first, we write our goals for the coming year. These goals can relate to different areas: social, family, academic, spiritual, emotional, etc. In the second column, we write what we need to achieve each of those goals. Maybe it's a skill (determination, perseverance, proactivity, self-control, emotional regulation, self-care, etc.); maybe it's external support (taking a course, asking for help, etc.), or perhaps a specific strategy (using a schedule or calendar, practicing mindfulness, etc.). In the third column, we write what the consequence or benefit of achieving that particular goal will be. To gain optimal benefit from this reflection, it's important to think about the consequences for concentric circles starting with oneself, moving to the immediate environment, and then the wider world, as well as in temporal terms— consequences for the short-, medium-, and long-term.
Sometimes, due to the intensive demands that this time of year places on Jewish educators, we tend to focus all our energies on our students and their stage of development. But our tradition in its richness is far from being limited to the level of schoolchildren. The month of Elul invites us to use these techniques to work on ourselves as well. We have an opportunity to review, thank, grow, and improve. Let's not let it pass.
Eliana is a graduate of the Melton Centre's International Master in Education.