Monthly Archives: August 2026

The Second Day of Elul

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מוֹדֶה אֲנִי לְפָנֶיךָ מֶלֶךְ חַי וְקַיָּם שֶׁהֶחֱזַרְתָּ בִּי נִשְׁמָתִי בְּחֶמְלָה, רַבָּה אֱמוּנָתֶךָ:
I give thanks to You living and everlasting Sovereign, for You have restored my soul with mercy. Great is Your faithfulness. (Weekday shacharit service, prayers of preparation)
Every morning our liturgy gives us these words of gratitude. Jewish tradition views sleep as being like one sixtieth of death (Berachot 57b) and the Gemara goes on to suggest prayers before sleeping “One who enters to sleep on his bed recites in his bed from Shema Yisrael.. Then he recites: Blessed…Who makes the bands of sleep fall upon my eyes and slumber upon my eyelids, and illuminates the pupil of the eye. May it be Your will, Eternal my God, that You make me lie down in peace …. Let neither bad dreams nor troubling thoughts disturb me…. Enlighten my eyes in the morning lest I sleep the sleep of death, never to awaken. Blessed are You, God, Who gives light to the whole world in Your glory. (Berachot 60b)
Many religions see sleep as being related to death, and describe this observable loss of consciousness as the soul leaving the body; dreams become the experiences the soul encounters, portents from another place. And Judaism is no exception – we thank God for restoring our souls to our bodies upon awakening. But this prayer goes further than gratitude for another day of life. The two words “rabbah emunatecha” – your faith/faithfulness is great” add an extra layer of meaning for us. Most prayers elaborate on our faith in God, or at least our aspiration to have such faith. But here we describe the entity with faith not as the human being grateful to God, but God themself – who has faith in us.
The phrase comes into the liturgy from the book of Lamentations (3:22) and reminds us that however hard we are finding life, however low we might feel, or dislocated from and abandoned by God, God continues to have mercy on us, God continues to have faith in us. All we have to do is to turn and find our way back to God, and God will be ready to greet us. A repeated message in the liturgy of the season of the Yamim Noraim, that God is waiting for our teshuvah. But also a daily message – this may be the season for teshuvah, but the gates of repentance are never closed.
“To recall my distress and my misery/ Was wormwood and poison;
Whenever I thought of them, I was bowed low.
But this do I call to mind, Therefore I have hope:
The kindness of GOD has not ended / And God’s mercies are not spent.
They are renewed every morning— Ample is Your grace!
“GOD is my portion,” I say with full heart; This is the One in whom I have hope.
(Lam. 3 :19-24)

First Day of Elul

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Elul is traditionally a month of introspection and preparation for the coming Yamim Noraim – Days of Awe.
Like many months of the Hebrew calendar its name is Babylonian in origin and probably has its roots in the Akkadian word for a harvest, though it has resonances also of the verb “to protrude” אלל (‘alal), and of the noun “a futile thing” אלול (‘elul)
In Aramaic, the verb אלל (‘alal), means “to encircle” or “to search out”, which corresponds to the Hebrew verb עלל (‘alal), to glean.
We might drash on this that Elul is month that demands our attention, a month we might use to search our lives and the way we are living, both in order to gather together and celebrate our best characteristics and allow them to nourish the way we live our lives, and at the same time to sift out the empty and futile aspects of ourselves and our lives.
There are many rabbinic explanations for the name of this month, two of which are:
That it is an acronymic reference to the first letters of the phrase in the Song of Songs אני לדודי ודודי לי “I am by Beloved’s and my Beloved is mine” – the “Beloved” in this reading being God rather than a more temporal partner. And
That it is a reference to a verse in the Book of Esther אִישׁ לְרֵעֵהוּ, וּמַתָּנוֹת לָאֶבְיֹנִים “Each person to their neighbour, and gifts to the poor”
Wildly different books and contexts – but what brings them together?
The four words in each reading not only have the letters of “Elul” represented, but each word asks a similar question for us while we glean and search ourselves, separating the futile from the worthwhile as we turn ourselves towards God once more.
The first word Ani/Ish represents our human selves. Who am I? What is my “selfhood”? What is my humanity about?
The second word – LeDodi/l’Rei’eihu bespeaks relationship with others or the “Other”.
The third word “V’dodi”/Matanot asks “What does God want from me?” “What can/do I contribute to the world?”
The fourth word Li/le’evyonim nudges us into asking “How do I get to my best self?” How do I bring about change?
The verse from Esther is set in the context of change – turning mourning to joy. It reminds us that such a journey can be made, change can happen – even in the most unlikely circumstances
The journey of Elul begins with the self and ends with the self, but the self at the end of the process is not the same as the one who began it.