Elul אלול

All Elul is the antechamber of the Days of Awe: on weekdays after the morning prayer the shofar is sounded; Sephardi communities rise for selichot before dawn from the month's start, Ashkenazim join in the last week. The people read the month's name as the initials of "ani le-dodi ve-dodi li"—"I am my beloved's and my beloved is mine": a Chasidic parable says that in Elul the King goes out into the field, and anyone may approach Him.

The month names now in use are Babylonian: "the names of the months came up with us from Babylon", says the Jerusalem Talmud. In the Torah months are counted—"the first", "the seventh"—from Nisan, the month of the Exodus.