Elul is here, and the King is in the field. These days approaching Rosh Hashanah are designated for teshuva – a time when the universe is ripe for personal growth, when we concentrate on our middos and our Yiddishkeit. But how do we use the power of Elul to be our best selves? To make even one small change?

For more than 20 years, Rabbi Aryeh Nivin has focused on this work and guided thousands of others on how to do the Elul avoda, using Torah sources such as the Arizal, Derech Hashem, and the Slonimer Rebbe.

Jews will do anything to celebrate simchas, even if it means creating a “drive-by” bar mitzvah, like the one my nextdoor neighbors planned for their son during the pandemic. Wearing his new black hat pushed back on his head and a personalized tee shirt, the star of the simcha stood behind a table in front of a balloon arch. As cars passed by, his parents gave out bags of wrapped sweets and mini-monogrammed basketballs. The boy’s friends jumped out of cars and ran up to the table to briefly wish their classmate mazel tov and, with an individual Sharpie, sign his board. When we walked out of our house, the bar mitzvah boy ran over and, from several feet away (maybe it wasn’t six, but only for a few seconds), he handed us a bag of those sweets. His face was shining.

My connection to Tehillim began when I was 12 years old and part of a bas mitzva celebration with six other girls on a Sunday morning at Congregation Agudas Achim Anshe Sphard, in Lower Park Heights. In the faded green play folder I saved from the 50s is a cantata on “The Seven Days of Creation,” written by Rabbi Harry Bolensky. In the cantata, Rabbi Bolensky wrote “King David looked up and sang Hashamayim misaprim kvod Kel, uma’aseh yadav yagid harake’ah, the Heavens declare the glory of the Lord, and the sky testifies to the work of His hands.” Because I only had a Sunday School education, I needed the transliterated words. My Hebrew wasn’t good yet, but the message was clear: King David in this psalm said, Look up to G-d and appreciate the beauty He created. That was my first contact with Tehillim.

“It’s a safe place to share what’s going on in our minds,” says Sara Brejt about Jewish Women of Wisdom (JWOW!), a new international organization she helped found for women in their 50s and 60s. After engaging audiences in Lakewood, Monsey, Brooklyn, and the Five Towns, JWOW! is bringing the conversation to Maryland.

Several years ago, Mrs. Brejt, a lawyer, career coach, and teacher at Women’s Institute of Torah (WIT), was listening to an interview about women’s midlife issues on Chazaq Radio. She recognized the speakers, whom she had met at conventions: Miriam Liebermann, author and inspirational speaker, and Faigie Horowitz, Rebbetzin of Agudas Achim in Lawrence, activist, and prolific writer for Jewish publications. Mrs. Brejt contacted them. Around the same age, the three frequently spoke about their challenges and opportunities as midlifers and empty nesters.

I was shopping at Seven Mile Market when I bumped into Shlomo Tzvi Baden, who over 20 years ago, when he was a student at Georgia Tech, boarded in my home in Atlanta. He asked me if I would be interested in hosting singles for a Shabbos meal once a month. After filling out a form answering questions on preferences, etc., for his project, Singles on the First (SotF), my husband and I had the privilege of hosting two young women for Shabbos lunch. When recently I asked to host singles again, Mr. Baden said, “I need more people, both singles and hosts, in your neighborhood and others.”

SotF is one of the latest efforts by Baltimore individuals and organizations to focus on singles. Mr. Baden started this project a little over a year ago after reading an article by a divorced woman. She felt frustrated and neglected and asked others to please reach out to to her. Mr. Baden felt that he “had to step up and do something” for all singles. First he contacted several rabbis to ask if anyone was setting up singles for Shabbos meals. Rabbi Daniel Rose, of Congregation B’nai Jacob Shaarei Zion, told him that Steve Schwarz had recently asked him a similar question. Soon, Mr. Baden and Mr. Schwarz started SotF. Although they confer with each other, Mr. Schwarz mainly arranges formal meals several times a year for 10 or more singles, while Mr. Baden sets up singles once a month for Shabbos meals.

SotF’s purpose may be for singles to have a place to eat on Shabbos, but it has a side benefit: When singles meet more people in the community, and their hosts get to know them, magical things might happen, like dating suggestions.

When I was a very young child on Loyola Southway in Lower Park Heights, every night, my father held me in his arms and slowly danced around our living room singing “La La Lee.” One day, he went to visit his parents in Atlantic City, where they owned a boarding house. That night, I wouldn’t go to sleep. “I want ‘La La Lee,’” I cried over and over again. The next morning, my mother packed our bags, and we boarded a bus to join my father. Eventually, I outgrew “La La Lee,” grew up, married, and moved to Atlanta, Georgia. But I still feel the warmth of my father’s arms as he danced and sang to me.

Both my beloved parents died in Cheshvan, four years apart: my mother in 1986 and my father in 1990. Since my mother was nifteres first, I observed her yahrtzeit by hosting a group of women in my home to speak of her virtues. Sometimes, I sponsored a class in her memory as part of Bena, the women’s division of the Atlanta Scholars Kollel (ASK). But what to do for my father?