Daily Creative
Prompts for Elul 2024
with Rabbi Jordan Braunig
Jewish Studio Project is thrilled to be collaborating with Rabbi Jordan Braunig for the third year running to deliver daily writing prompts for Elul. Daily prompts will appear in your inbox at 6 pm PT / 9 pm ET and be collected here for the 29 days of Elul. If you’d like to experience this journey with a loved one, have them sign up here!
Elul Day 29 - כ"ט באלול
I used to tell a story about my oldest child. When he was close to two years-old, we were playing with some ice cubes from a drink and I asked him if he knew what ice turned into when it melted...
Elul Day 28 - כ"ח באלול
Each year we are meant to imagine receiving the Torah from Mt. Sinai. Some years, as it turns out, we actually get to receive the Torah from Mt. Sinai...
Elul Day 27 - כ"ז באלול
I run about five years behind in my fiction reading. I read The Corrections in 2006. I read Americanah in 2018. I like to wait for all the hubbub to die down before picking up an acclaimed novel...
Elul Day 26 - כ"ו באלול
Considering the significant rainfall that many of us experienced in the last days, I was reminded of a poem by Yehuda Amichai...
Elul Day 25 - כ"ה באלול
No prompt tonight as we enter the weekly day of rest, Shabbat. See you tomorrow for our next Daily Creative Prompt for Elul!
Elul Day 24 - כ"ד באלול
Of the many things that I admire about my dad, I love that he drives around with a plastic bag full of rocks in his trunk...
Elul Day 23 - כ"ג באלול
I have been asked before: are the holidays early this year or are they late? What a wonderfully Jewish question...
Elul Day 22 - כ"ב באלול
Though I don’t often admit it in conversation with students, I regularly thank the heavens that I am not a young person right now...
Elul Day 21 - כ"א באלול
Engaging in cheshbon hanefesh, the soul accounting of this season, requires a certain amount of hope. Without it, the process would feel empty and meaningless...
Elul Day 20 - כ באלול
I sometimes struggle with our kabbalistic traditions. I hit forty a few years ago, but, despite having reached the proper age, I still can’t wrap my head around some of the esoteric traditions that were passed down in the Zohar and elucidated by the Chasidic masters...
Elul Day 19 - י"ט באלול
It is hard to write about brokenness this year. I have no desire to idealize or glorify it, as I may have in the past...
Elul Day 18 - י"ח באלול
No prompt tonight as we enter the weekly day of rest, Shabbat. See you tomorrow for our next Daily Creative Prompt for Elul!
Elul Day 17 - י"ז באלול
Our morning prayers begin, famously, with the words moda/eh ani lefanecha. This initial acknowledgment of gratitude is followed, in the Ashkenazi tradition, by a line from Psalms that might be less familiar...
Elul Day 16 - ט"ז באלול
There is an uneasiness that I sense amongst some of my friends and colleagues during this month of reflection. Is it possible that Elul is being co-opted by the self-help-industrial-complex?
Elul Day 15 - ט"ו באלול
Last week I went to a retirement party at Emory; a long-time facilities employee was leaving his position as the custodian of the university’s chapel...
Elul Day 14 - י"ד באלול
Every now and then I come across a poem during the year and know instantly that it will find its way into Elul. That is how I felt about this poem from a cycle entitled Five Psalms by Mark Jarman...
Elul Day 13 - י"ג באלול
Our kids sometimes complain that our house is too wooden. There is, indeed, a great deal of exposed wood throughout the house...
Elul Day 12 - י"ב באלול
The 12th of Elul marks the yahrzeit of the Chasidic master R’ Simcha Bunim of Peshischa. A great rebbe and a humble apothecary, R’ Simcha Bunim’s name is most often invoked around the famous teaching that a person should always have two pockets...
Elul Day 11 - י"א באלול
No prompt tonight as we enter the weekly day of rest, Shabbat. See you tomorrow for our next Daily Creative Prompt for Elul!
Elul Day 10 - י באלול
The Norwegian novelist, Karl Ove Knausgaard, published a series of shorter autobiographical books based on the four seasons of the year. Though I doubt he was influenced by the rhythms of the Jewish year, his first book in the quartet is Autumn...