High Holidays · Elul
What is the month of Elul, and what is done in it?
Elul is the Hebrew month before Rosh Hashanah, lived as a season of teshuvah — return to Hashem and to who you were meant to be. For a little over four weeks the tradition sounds the shofar each weekday morning and adds Psalm 27, so that the heart is ready when the Days of Awe arrive.
A month lived as return
Elul is not merely the last month of the year on the way to Rosh Hashanah; it is the ramp that leads up to it. The word the tradition uses is teshuvah (return) — not a frantic self-improvement, but a turning back toward the One who has been waiting. The Jewish people did not invent a new practice for this; they took an ordinary month and made it holy by how they lived it, morning by morning.
The name that reads like a love letter
The custom reads the very letters of Elul — אלול — as an acronym for a verse from the Song of Songs (6:3): אֲנִי לְדוֹדִי וְדוֹדִי לִי, Ani ledodi vedodi li — "I am my beloved's and my beloved is mine." That is the key to the whole month. The judgment ahead is real, and it asks something of you; and at the same time the closeness is real. Elul says the door is not only open — you are wanted on the other side of it.
What to do
From Rosh Chodesh Elul the shofar is sounded each weekday morning after the prayers (the one exception is the eve of Rosh Hashanah), and Psalm 27 is added to the daily prayers. You need not carry all of it at once. Maybe this year it is one thing: hearing the shofar once this week, or saying Psalm 27 slowly before your day begins. Hashem counts the steps, not the falls — and the first step is already a return.
Source: Song of Songs 6:3 ("Ani ledodi vedodi li"), read as the acronym of Elul; the Elul custom of the daily shofar and Psalm 27..
When you want the shofar days, Psalm 27, and the shape of Elul to find you at the right hour, let My Jewish Day (siddur, zmanim, the Hebrew calendar) keep the month for you.
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