Elul

Elul is the sixth month of the Hebrew year, falling in late summer, roughly August to September, and aligned in tradition with the sign of Virgo. It counts twenty-nine days. Elul is the month of spiritual preparation before the High Holy Days, a time of repentance, self-examination, and return; the shofar is sounded each morning, and penitential prayers, selichot, are recited toward its close. Its name is traditionally read as an acronym for a phrase from the Song of Songs expressing the mutual love of God and Israel, and it is glossed with the sense of searching. The Hebrew calendar is lunisolar, kept in step with the solar year by an added leap month. These are the observances of the Jewish calendar tradition, in which Elul leads directly into the new year and the days of awe.

Elul is traditionally treated as a month of penitential preparation leading into the High Holy Days of the following month, Tishrei; a widely cited homiletic tradition reads the Hebrew letters of Elul's name as an acronym for a phrase from the Song of Songs, "Ani LeDodi VeDodi Li," I am my beloved's and my beloved is mine, understood as an image of the intimate divine relationship the month's introspective work is meant to restore. Sephardic communities traditionally recite Selichot, penitential prayers, throughout Elul, while Ashkenazi custom begins them closer to Rosh Hashanah itself; the shofar is also traditionally sounded daily throughout Elul, except on the final day before Rosh Hashanah, as a call to repentance ahead of the new year.

The name comes from the Akkadian Ululu, one of the Babylonian month names adopted wholesale into Hebrew usage. The month runs a fixed 29 days in every year.

The month names are Babylonian. Twelve of them are the Akkadian month names taken into Hebrew during and after the exile, and the biblical books of the return use them freely while the earlier books generally number the months or use a small set of older Canaanite names. The atlas records the borrowing rather than presenting the names as native, because it is one of the clearest visible marks the exile left on Jewish practice.

The Jewish calendar as now kept is calculated rather than observed. Month lengths are fixed by rule except for Cheshvan and Kislev, which absorb the adjustment and may run 29 or 30 days, and a thirteenth month is added in seven years out of nineteen on a fixed cycle so that Passover stays in the spring. A further set of rules, the postponements, shifts Rosh Hashanah off certain weekdays, which is why the year has six possible lengths rather than two.

Elul is the last month of the year in the autumn reckoning and immediately precedes Rosh Hashanah, so it functions as a month of preparation. It is one of the months with no festival of its own, and its character comes entirely from its position before the one that follows.