I’m sure you’ve heard this joke before. Many attribute it to Jack Benny, but it’s not his originally. In any event, here goes…

How do you get to Carnegie Hall?  Practice, Practice, Practice.

Now there is a lot of lore and bubbe-maisehs surrounding the practice of practice, one of the more famous (and utterly false) dictums was promulgated by Malcolm Gladwell.  In his book Outliers, he states that it takes 10,000 hours of practice to become an expert in one’s field. 10,000 hours is not the only metric of mention in North America. There is also the magical 10,000 steps a day. 10,000 is also the average advance for a single book as well as the average number of copies an individual title will sell before it goes out of print.

It seems that, in North America, 10,000 is one of those numbers that grabs the imagination like the archetypal 40 in the Jewish Bible. Mentioned over 150 times in a variety of context, 40 is more a metaphor than a real statistic. It’s supposed to denote a long time.

So, 10,000 hours does not an expert make. Even without digging too deep into the data, one only need consider that expertise is based on the quality of the practice not mere quantity.

Why am I going on about practice in today’s instalment of the ADRABA blog?

Because today is the First of Elul - and Elul is all about practice. In the Jewish calendar, the month of Elul is the last month of the year and the month that leads into Rosh HaShanah - and ten days after that, Yom Kippur.

We are about to enter a very heady time of year, one dedicated to spiritual introspection and accounting for oneself. In other words, we have to prepare to face judgment over our actions.

Can one do any of that off the cuff? Can one simply show up for the “Days of Awe” and hope for the best

Hardly!  And for that reason, Jewish tradition has piled on a series of practices for the month of Elul to get us ready for what awaits us in Tishrei.

At the end of every weekday service for the whole month of Elul, we blow the shofar. The blast of the ram’s horn on the BIG DAY is meant to snap us out of our smug self-regard.  It doesn’t hurt to hear it during the run-up as well, getting us to think about what awaits us and how we can make amends in the interim.

Some congregations also add Psalm 27 to the liturgy. Although this tradition is barely two centuries old, this psalm is redolent with themes of hopefulness and faith that, despite seeming catastrophe (self-wrought or otherwise), God will redeem us.

Many congregations will add a special Selichot service to their roster. This tradition goes back at least 1,000 years as evidenced by a quote in the Mahzor Vitry, (11th c. France): “[I]t is a custom to begin on the Saturday night before Rosh HaShanah to rise early to the synagogue, before the sun rises, and beg for mercy.”

In short, Elul is all about practice, practice, practice. And hopefully, by the time Tishrei rolls around, we’ll have done enough amends-work within our families and communities that we will merit what Rabbi Amnon of Mainz imagined as the desirable conclusion of all of this in his Rosh Hashanah themed “U’Netaneh Tokef” prayer: mitigation of the “Harsh Decree.”

This year especially, we could all benefit from a little mitigation.  Amen.