One Mitzvah is to "Be holy!" -
תִׁהְיוּ קְדשִֹׁים - Tehiyu Kedoshim
The Kotzker Rebbe added, "First be a mensch - then be holy)!".
The meaning of the word Mensch in Yiddish is to be a "good" person.
Be a mensch! According to tradition, one can begin to greet others with L'Shana Tova (Have a good year) from Tu B'Av (the 15th day of Av), this Sunday night. And now comes the question - why do we begin this greeting from Tu B'Av which is 45 days before Rosh Hashana and not Rosh Chodesh Elul which may seem a more likely time as Elul comes exactly one month before Rosh Hashana and the whole month of Elul is considered preparation for a new year?
According to Chassidut and Kabbalah the fact that Tu B'Av is 45 days before Rosh Hashana is very significant and is connected to the Talmudic debate over which month the world was created in: Tishrei, the month in which Rosh Hashanah, the New Year of years falls, or Nisan, the month in which Pesach falls and which is the New Year of the months (Rosh Hashanah 11a). Both sides make numerous arguments, but the Talmud reaches no definitive conclusion. Rabbeinu Tam, a later commentator, explained the underlying unity of both opinions: the world was created in potential or in thought in Tishrei and in actuality in Nisan.
The word for "thought" in Hebrew is machshava. When those letters are permuted they spell choshav-mah - "to think of mah - the essence of a matter; Mah = 45; thus one can read this allegorically as: G-d began to think of creating the world 45 days before Rosh Hashana!!
That day is Tu B'Av - this year the evening of August 18 through sundown the 19th of August. What this tells us is that we too should already begin the process of thinking about the essence of our lives and how we can be better, stronger, deeper - in effect a Mensch or a Menschette. And how we can become a self-actualized Adam/person, to coincide with the birthday of Adam, on Rosh Hashana. [Rosh Hashanah 27a] No coincidence that 45 is also the gematria of the name Adam, man or person. We thus have a 45-day program to think about the essence of our lives. In doing so, we recall the famous teaching of Hillel:
ובמקום שאין אנשים, השתדל להיות איש
Wemakom Sheain Anashim, HaShetadal Lehayot Yish.
"in a place where there are no men, strive to be a man." In short, Be a Mensch! We have 45 days until Rosh Hashana, the birthday of Adam, to contemplate this directive, to use it as the basis for our teshuvah of our miss-takes against G-d, our miss-takes against others, our miss-takes against ourselves.
LaShana Tova!