The month before

Elul & Selichot

The King is in the field. For one month of the year, the Chassidic image goes, the King leaves the palace and walks in the fields, and anybody at all may come out and speak to him — no appointment, no protocol, no permission. That month is Elul, and it is now.

The name of the month is read as an acronym. אֲנִי לְדוֹדִי וְדוֹדִי לִי — ani l’dodi v’dodi li, “I am my beloved’s and my beloved is mine.” Which is the whole character of the month: not a summons, an approach.

The Shofar, every morning

From the second day of Elul the Shofar is sounded at the end of the morning service, every weekday, right through the month. It is a short thing — thirty seconds — and it is the oldest alarm clock in the world. Maimonides writes that its message is: sleepers, wake up; look at what you are doing with your life.

On the last day of the month, erev Rosh Hashanah, it is deliberately not blown. A month of daily shofar is broken off for one day so that the Shofar of Rosh Hashanah arrives as itself and not as more of the same.

Selichot

Selichot are the prayers of forgiveness said in the last days of the year. The first night is the one people remember: a Shul at one in the morning, most of the lights off, the chazan taking the Rosh Hashanah tunes for the first time that year. If you come to one Jewish thing in Elul, this is a good candidate.

You do not need Hebrew. You do not need to stay to the end. You do not need to have been the year before.

The other things people do in Elul

• Psalm 27 — “The Lord is my light and my salvation” — added to the morning and evening prayers from Rosh Chodesh Elul until Shmini Atzeret.
• Checking Tefillin and mezuzot. The custom is to have them examined during Elul. Bring yours in, or ask and we will arrange for a scribe to look at them. More about mezuzot.
• Three chapters of Tehillim a day, every day from Rosh Chodesh Elul, so that the book is finished on Yom Kippur. This is the Chabad practice and it is in addition to the ordinary monthly cycle. Any Chabad calendar sets out which chapters fall on which day; ask us for one.
• Writing to the Rebbe for a blessing for the year ahead — which is what a great many people do in these weeks. You can write one here; it goes straight to the Ohel and nobody reads it.
• Kever avot — visiting the graves of parents and grandparents before Rosh Hashanah.
• Asking, and being asked, for forgiveness. Yom Kippur atones for what is between a person and God; what is between two people has to be settled by those two people. Elul is when that call gets made.
• Giving more Tzedakah than usual, through the month. Ways to give.
• Chai Elul, the eighteenth of the month — the birthday of the Baal Shem Tov and of the Alter Rebbe, and by long custom the day the last twelve days of the year are each dedicated to taking stock of one month of the year that is ending.

When to come

Selichot, the daily Shofar, and everything else on the calendar between now and Rosh Hashanah.