Dear Friends,
Tomorrow evening, as the new week begins, we will enter the Hebrew month of Elul. Elul is the season our tradition sets aside each year for reflection and teshuvah, returning to our truest selves, as we prepare for the High Holy Days. It is a month that invites us to slow down, listen carefully, and search our own souls.
It is a beautiful tradition that recognizes what we often forget: real change takes time. It requires preparation and radical honesty with ourselves about our missteps and shortcomings. And yet, this practice of patient self-reflection feels profoundly countercultural in our world today. We live in a culture that thrives on speed, reaction, and outrage rather than thoughtful, measured responses. The greatest culprit of all—the engine that fuels this outrage machine—is social media.
Social media’s business model is built on algorithms designed to keep us online as long as possible. And what keeps us engaged more than anything else? Outrage. The content that gets the most clicks and shares is the content that makes us angry. And so, by design, the algorithms convince us that we are always right while someone else is always wrong. They reward the loudest voices and the harshest takes, leaving little room for nuance, complexity, or humility. What began as a tool of connection has too often become a cancer that metastasizes into cynicism and division—and is even weaponized by those who exploit it for their own ends.
Our tradition knows we are more complex than a tweet. The work of repair—whether with God, with others, or with ourselves—cannot be achieved through judgment and outrage. It requires the discipline to pause, to listen, and to weigh our words before we speak. It calls us to humility and courage—the courage to admit, “Maybe I don’t see the whole picture. Maybe I’m only seeing what others want me to see. Maybe I need to climb the mountain again and take a closer look before I respond.”
That is why during Elul we sound the shofar each morning and add Psalm 27 to our prayers: “To You, my heart says: ‘Seek My face.’ Your face, God, I seek.”
Notice what the psalm does not say. It does not tell us to seek the headline, the argument, or the hot take, and then fire back with a snarky reply. It tells us to search for truth beneath the noise, to look for the humanity in one another and, by so doing, seek the presence of God.
This past July, Raina and I spent a week on a ship with very limited access to the internet. It was glorious. By midweek, I could feel my blood pressure lowering. But that “social media fast” was imposed by circumstance. In our daily lives, we have to choose to disconnect from the outrage machine.
Elul gives us permission to do exactly that. It calls us to step away from the constant barrage of external messages and make space for something deeper. To remember that behind every headline is a human being and a far more complex story than what you see. Behind every disagreement is a far more complex story than we might realize. And behind all of it, according to our tradition, is the God who calls us back to patience, humility, and love.
This Elul is our invitation to slow down, to listen more deeply, and to remember that teshuvah does not begin with shouting louder; it begins with opening our hearts wider.
Shabbat Shalom,
Rabbi Daniel Cohen