Renewal in Elul: Discovering the meaning of new
When I think back to the Jewish month of Elul in high school, the experience feels so different from how I live it now. Back then, my service of Hashem was shaped by black-and-white thinking. Either I focused on every single word in prayer, or I considered the whole tefillah a failure.
Growth, to me, meant starting over from scratch. With time and maturity, I’ve come to realize something deeper: renewal does not always mean a complete restart. The Torah’s concept of chadash, newness, is not creation from nothing. It can mean renovation, redirection, or uncovering potential already present. This shift reframes Elul: it is not about erasing who we have been, but about refining who we are and directing our lives toward higher purpose.
Picture the battlefield. The soldiers are lined up, weapons in hand, hearts pounding. The war is about to begin. And then, unexpectedly, one soldier is pulled aside. He is told not to fight, but to go home. Why? Because he has just built a new house, and the Torah in this week parsha, Shoftim, exempts him until he inaugurates it.
At first glance, this law seems straightforward. A “new house” is one that never existed before. But the Mishnah in Sotah (43a) raises a question: what about someone who renovates an existing house, adding a new wing, expanding the structure, or extensively refurbishing it? Rabbi Yehudah rules that such a person must still go to war. For him, the house remains the same in essence. Only something entirely new qualifies as chadash.
The Rambam, however, in his Perush HaMishnayos rules differently. He holds that even significant renovations render a house halachically new, exempting the owner from battle. This is surprising, since the Mishnah itself only records Rabbi Yehudah’s opinion, usually signaling that this is the accepted view. Why does the Rambam broaden the definition of chadash?
The Ben Ish Chai offers a key. To understand a Torah term, he suggests, trace its very first appearance in Tanach. The word chadash first appears in Shemos 1:8: “A new king arose over Egypt who did not know Yosef.”
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The Gemara in Sotah (11a) debates what “new” means. Rav says it was literally a different Pharaoh. Shmuel insists it was the same Pharaoh who adopted a new policy. He chose to ignore Yosef’s legacy and turn against the Jewish people.
According to that second view, chadash doesn’t require total novelty. It can mean a shift in attitude, a reorientation of perspective, or a new philosophy guiding old realities.
This debate illuminates the Rambam’s comment on Rabbi Yehudah. Rabbi Yehudah sides with Rav: new means fundamentally new. The Rambam leans toward Shmuel’s broader reading: a house deeply renovated is no longer the same house; its transformation is enough to call it new.
And this is the message of Elul. Many people approach these days with crushing pressure, believing they must become someone entirely different in preparation for Rosh Hashanah. They feel that to do Teshuvah they must erase their past identity and begin again. But the Rambam teaches otherwise. Renewal is not demolition, it is renovation. It means taking the self that already exists and orienting it toward higher service.
The Shofar each morning is not a demand to invent ourselves anew, but a call to awaken what already lies dormant inside. Just as a house becomes halachically new after deep renovation, a soul becomes spiritually new through decisive re-alignment. The Sfas Emes captures this truth when he writes that the Avodah of Elul is to “find the newness within the old,” uncovering freshness within the life we already live.
Rav Soloveitchik deepens this further. For him, teshuvah is not about becoming someone else, but about reclaiming the authentic self, buried beneath sin and distraction. Renewal is not reinvention, but restoration.
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Could we truly rebuild ourselves from scratch? That is extraordinarily difficult.
The other day, I was standing in Shemoneh Esrei, reciting the blessing to restore judges, when suddenly an image of the iced coffee in my freezer floated into my mind. My focus was not perfect, but far better than it had been ten years ago. And I continue to grow. Each year, I can add another wing to my spiritual house, slowly expanding it in the right direction.
When I look back at my younger self, I see how I misunderstood. I thought that one misstep ruined everything, that renewal required perfection.
Now I understand that chadash is not about perfection, but about direction. It is about renovation, about uncovering potential that has always been there, waiting to be awakened.
This Elul, the Shofar’s cry is not calling us to abandon our past. It is calling us to reframe it, to find the newness within what we already are, to bring light into familiar places, and to rediscover the authenticity that was always ours.
That is chadash. That is renewal. That is the gift of Elul.
Rabbi Benny Berlin is spiritual leader of BACH Jewish Center in Long Beach.
Write: Columnist@TheJewishStar.com
