Rabbi Weinberg's Elul Thought for the Day

Wednesday September 16
Today is the twenty-seventh day of Elul!
In the Mizmor “L’David Hashem Ori” which we are saying in Elul, David HaMelech desperately pleads for closeness to Hashem. What prompted this urgency and what can we learn from it? Rabbi David Kimchi (Radak) (1160-1235) explains that David HaMelech was concerned that the war he was fighting, albeit a noble cause, would distract him from the most important things in his life such as his spiritual pursuits. Therefore, it is as if David said “even though I trust you implicitly to save me, I do have one thing (i.e. one more thing) to ask of you:  Help me to save my soul even as you save my body.  Help me to continue to be connected to you even when I am busy with war.” There is no more fundamental aspiration of Jewish life than that:  In the busyness of our lives as we exert great time and energy on our physical survival, let us never be too busy to focus on our spiritual pursuits, let us never lose our connection to Hashem. David provides a model for us to strive for:  No matter how much or how little time we can devote to our spiritual goals when we are “fighting for our lives,” it must always remain a supreme concern to each of us.