Week 1: Attunement

a note from Wendie and Micah, August 21st, 2023.

Hello Unbound-ers!

We wanted to share with you a little bit about why we chose this particular theme for the first week of Elul. What is attunement? Why talk about it now?

On the High Holidays, Jews often undergo communal ritual experiences as a means to inspire personal introspection and divine connection. The sound of the shofar and the structures of High Holiday liturgy are traditional technologies which can bring us to attention and make us awake– awake to ourselves, awake to the possibility of the divine, awake to our shortcomings as well as our potential. 

Merriam Webster defines “attune” as a verb meaning both “to bring into harmony; to tune” and “to make aware or responsive.” To attune to something, then, is both to become in sync with something and to become attentive to something: to awaken and perceive, and to be in accord.

In a sense, attunement is a word to describe the kind of activity that the High Holidays seems to be all about. This word could be applied to someone trying “attune to” or perceive a sense of God in the world, or “attune” to themselves via engaging in self-reflection or some other method. We could also talk about attunement as focus, or seeking, or perception, and these would all be encompassed within the broader idea. The beauty of the word is that it’s, well, vague.

A good thing is that this term is expansive enough to allow us to ask sensitive questions about what we as individuals or collectives want to prioritize during the opportunity that this time of year provides. Maybe some of us want to ask personal questions about what we find meaningful or spiritual in the world, or to question the very nature of what is considered “spiritual.” Maybe some of us want to use this as a time to discern political priorities. Maybe some of us want to attune better to the needs of loved ones. The very word “attune” implies directionality and begs the necessary question: to what, or whom, are we attuning? It forces us to consider more precisely what we find important and to ask big questions about why we should value it.

There’s also the “how” of attunement. Attuning to something, whatever it may be, requires containers, strategies, tools, and technologies to make us aware of something which had previously flown beyond our perception. Attunement requires stopping, considering other ways of knowing or being, and reckoning with the discovery of something new.

Elul is a great time to be thinking about the “what” and “how” of attunement. What are we are searching for, or hoping cultivating awareness of? Is it God, or something else? We may discover that old ways of High Holidays “attuning”– like sitting in synagogue– don’t always help us to ask the best questions about what is important to us at this point in the year. What are other ways to do this that might suit us better?

We don’t have any of the answers, but we’re excited to join you in asking the questions.

Happy Elul,

Wendie and Micah <3