One of the acronyms of Elul is, "Ish l're'ayhu u'matanat l'evyonim." (Man to his friend, let him give gifts to the poor.) Hashem measures how we interact with our fellow man. The poor refers not only to physical impoverishment but to spiritual and emotional impoverishment as well. We need to be sensitive to the needs of others.

The verse describes Hashem as, "Chafetz chesed hu." He desires kindness. When the Jews sin, the angels show Hashem all our chesed and this mitigates our judgment. One way to do kindness is to pray for others. The Sichus Hischazkus explains the verse, "Hashmi'ini et koleich ki koleich arev. Let me hear your voice because it is sweet." When one has areivut, when one feels the responsibility for others, one's judgment can be sweetened.

Hurting someone, even indirectly, has repercussions. The Torah recounts the story of how Menashe hid the goblet in Binyamin's sack at the command of his father. When the goblet was found the brothers ripped their clothes. The Chizkuni notes that because Menashe caused the brothers pain, his tribe was split in half. One part remained on one side of the Jordan and the other lived on the other side. In Elul we have to stop and introspect, "Who have I hurt this year and what can I do to repair?"

Rav Wagschal notes that there are two types of sins, those we transgress rarely and those we trip over all the time. The second category is more difficult to correct but we have to try. Hashem won't ask us why we weren't successful, but He will ask why we didn't try. Pick one or two things and commit yourself to work on it during the year. Determine a maximum and a minimum. Let's say you want to bring in Shabbat early. You can say, "I want to bring in Shabbos maximally ten minutes early and minimally three minutes early."

Unfortunately, once the High Holy days are over, we often regress back to our old pattern. How do we keep the momentum going? The Tiv Hamoadim compares it to a building. When cracks appear, patching it up with plaster won't help. One must deal with the problem at the foundation. The foundation of our spiritual edifice is emunah. Everything is predicated on our relationship with Hashem. Getting angry means you do not recognize the larger picture. Hashem wanted things to happen to test your patience.

"Ani ledodi v'dodi li," is the essence of Elul. Working on awareness of Hashem strengthens our bein adam l'chaveiro. If we sense His presence, how can we harm His children? May we succeed in increasing unity and friendship, giving of ourselves to others, and creating a renewed and intimate bond with Hashem.

The Maharal explains that everything in creation bears testimony to Hashem's reality and goodness. The yetzer hara is that which conceals and makes Hashem seem absent. The yetzer hara in its most blatant form conceals good, and presents evil in its place.

Moshe called the yetzer hara uncircumcised. A man who is uncircumcised is a completely different creation than one who is. Evil signifies people not reaching their fulfillment and completion. Moshe was on such a high level that the yetzer hara was despicable to him. He said of the yetzer hara that it was like an orlah that conceals purity.  For David, the yetzer hara was impure and something he wanted to distance himself from.

Shlomo saw it as the enemy. He harbored no illusions of its evil nature, but he wasn't afraid to touch it. When King Shlomo married many foreign women, his intent was to take whatever holiness there was in the society from which they came and elevate it. He wanted to convert the softest part of evil and lift it up to kedusha. But it didn't work. The fact that Hashem forbade marrying gentile women should have made the act itself repulsive to him.

Yeshaya called the forces of evil a stumbling block. There was no hatred there, it was just something you had to get past. He should have known that any good that is hidden is a lost opportunity, and anything that conceals purity should be despised.

Yechezkel saw it as a stone. We've all experienced times in our lives when our hearts were like stone, when our mitzvot weren't mitzvot and our tefilot weren't tefilah and our love of our fellow Jew was mechanical. But we don't view the stone as our enemy. We make peace with it and consider it normal and it becomes a part of our personality.

Yoel called it tzafun, a viper, which is the same letters as tzafun, meaning concealed. The yetzer hara is hidden in our hearts until we no longer know it is there.

Evil is the absence of reality. The yetzer hara disguises itself as the things that give us satisfaction. The number seven, sheva, is the same letters as the word sova satisfaction. A person's yearning for meaning can take him to satisfy the empty place within him with forbidden acts. Rebbetzin Heller recounts, "I have a friend who recently came back from India. She told me that there's an area in Northern India where the street signs are in Ivrit because there are so many Israelis. The viper in their heart that presents itself as the self is saying, 'Satisfy me through immorality and idol worship.' They don't feel that it will ultimately distance them further from Hashem."

The consensus of our Torah leaders is that the biggest problem of our generation are not philosophical questions but that we no longer despise sin. Sin seems almost positive and good. This comes from living in a society where tolerance is a virtue. We have to reframe ourselves to view sin as harmful, tragic, and distancing; as something that transforms us to something foreign to our true elves.