“Elul” is the name of the last month on the Hebrew calendar. Like the names of the rest of the Hebrew calendar months, “Elul” was brought from the Babylonian Exile; the meaning of the word comes from the Akkadian for “harvest.” The month of Elul is blessed in synagogues throughout the world on Saturday morning August 8, with the new moon falling out this year beginning on Friday night, August 14. (Interesting side point: Do not expect any advance blessings on the Saturday before the subsequent new Hebrew month of Tishrei—it coincides with Rosh Hashanah and we don’t want to give the Evil One time to prepare his case against us.) Elul is a time for reflection and repentance in advance of the High Holidays; indeed, the Sephardim begin their slichot (penitential prayers) from the very start of Elul (Ashkenazim take it easy until the week before the New Year). As a way to sensually—and powerfully—remind us of the upcoming Day of Judgment, the shofar is sounded at every traditional weekday morning prayer service during the month of Elul (except on the eve of Rosh Hashanah—yes, it seems that You Know Who is easily tricked). Below I translate some remarks by my friend and teacher Rabbi Lior Engelman concerning Elul.
Sometimes we feel that we have missed the big picture because of the little details. We know this feeling from all areas of life. For example, the prospective joy of the Passover holiday gives way to the stress of the onerous cleaning preparations, and the exciting prospect of a shared life together gives way to the thousands of aggravating details attendant upon the upcoming wedding. The month of Elul also falls victim to this phenomenon. The days of Elul are supposed to be days of mercy and penitential prayers, days of divine love and forgiveness. However, for many of us, Elul signifies something else. Elul turns into a difficult and threatening month, a month full of unlimited pounding upon one’s chest. The days of Elul become “days of awe” not in the original sense of “wonder and amazement,” but in the sense of days filled with sorrow and pain. A month of mercy and forgiveness becomes a month of punishment and rebuke.
It doesn’t have to be this way. The days of Elul are days of renewal. Our tradition teaches us that these are days when “the King is in the field” (a reference to this time of year as being particularly apposite for repentance), and as such, a time suffused with graciousness. Elul is a time to free oneself from bothersome habits and unpleasant burdens. These are days when we are welcomed back to being God’s children. Most essentially in Elul, we have a rendezvous with the Lord of the Universe, a chance to again touch the great truth of our lives.
To be sure, in advance of such a meeting we need to prepare. We need to open the backpack that we have carried over our shoulders throughout the year and discover what’s in it. We don’t want to meet our Lord while struggling under a heavy weight of sin. However, the search through our personal backpack is not designed to “catch” us and our faults; it is designed to plant within us the hope of renewal. The sounds of these days are not the depressive sounds of “we have sinned, we have rebelled.” The sounds of Elul are saturated with the certainty that God is “The Lord of Forgiveness.”’ A great meeting with the King of Kings approaches—it’s impossible not to be happy.
By Teddy Weinberger
