Renew our days as in the past or renew our days as in the beginning.
This phrase, which is sung at the conclusion of every Torah service, originates from the Book of Lamentations recited on Tisha B’av. It expresses the hope that God will restore our days to resemble a time before the destruction of the Temple. The final word, kedem, not only evokes longing for a past time, but a primordial time, a beginning time, when the world was freshly born, creation. Furthermore, the root letters of kedem, kuf-dalet-mem, yield a number of additional meanings. Derived from kadim, which means east, kuf-dalet-mem also paradoxically points to the future and is used to convey forward motion. Kuf-dalet-mem connects a sense of progress and development not only to the past, but to a time that is essentially new.
We are living in a period of global mourning, uncertainty, transition, reflection, and hope. What have we been through, who are we now, and where are we going? This Elul, what does it mean to move forward? What role does looking back, remembering, and restoring play in our personal and collective progress? And how might we be guided by the vision of a new world?
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