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This is a guest essay by Vanessa Berg, who writes about Judaism and Israel.
You can also listen to the podcast version of this essay on Apple Podcasts, YouTube Music, YouTube, and Spotify.
There is something unusual about the Jewish calendar: It does not allow us to simply move from one year into the next.
Before Rosh Hashanah arrives, before the shofar announces a new year, before we stand in synagogue and ask God to write us into the Book of Life, Judaism gives us an entire month to prepare.
That month is Elul.
Elul is the final Hebrew month before Rosh Hashanah, but it is much more than a date on the calendar. It is a spiritual runway: a period of reflection designed to help us arrive at the High Holidays not merely because another year has passed, but because we have actually thought about the year that passed.
What did I do well? Where did I fail? Who did I hurt? Who do I need to forgive? What habits have quietly taken control of my life? What relationships have I neglected? What kind of Jew have I been? What kind of person have I become?
And perhaps most importantly: Who do I want to be next?
Elul is Judaism’s answer to a problem almost every human being experiences: We are extremely good at moving forward without ever stopping to ask whether we are moving in the right direction.
We live in a culture obsessed with acceleration — faster technology, faster communication, faster growth, faster results. We constantly ask how we can get somewhere more quickly, but rarely stop to ask whether the destination itself is worth reaching.
Acceleration is useful only after navigation. If we are headed in the wrong direction, moving faster does not solve the problem; it simply carries us farther away from where we ought to be. Elul is the Jewish calendar’s insistence that, once a year, we stop pressing the accelerator and check the compass.
Jewish thought has always been deeply concerned with direction. The Hebrew word halacha, usually translated as Jewish law, comes from the root meaning “to walk” or “to go.” Judaism is not merely a collection of beliefs; it is a way of moving through the world.
And teshuvah, the defining work of Elul, literally means “return.” Both ideas assume that the spiritual life is a journey, and that human beings sometimes lose their way. The purpose of Elul is not to stop moving forever. It is to make sure that when we begin moving again, our ambitions, habits, relationships, and choices are carrying us toward the person we actually want to become.
The Month Before the Beginning
In the biblical ordering of the Hebrew calendar, which begins with Nisan, Elul is the sixth month. But in the rhythm of Jewish life, Elul sits immediately before Tishrei, the month containing Rosh Hashanah, Yom Kippur, Sukkot, and Simchat Torah.
That makes Elul a month of preparation.
Jewish tradition connects Elul with one of the defining episodes of the Torah. After the sin of the Golden Calf and the breaking of the first tablets, Moses returned to Mount Sinai. According to rabbinic tradition, Moses ascended the mountain again at the beginning of Elul and remained there for 40 days, descending on Yom Kippur with the second tablets and confirmation that God had forgiven the Jewish People.
The journey from Elul through Yom Kippur therefore became associated with teshuvah — repentance, return, and reconciliation — because the story of Elul begins after catastrophe. The Israelites had failed spectacularly. They stood at Mount Sinai, experienced revelation, accepted the Torah, and shortly afterward built a Golden Calf.
If Judaism wanted to teach that spiritual greatness required perfection, the story could have ended there. Instead, Moses climbed the mountain again. New tablets were made. The covenant continued. That may be the most important lesson of Elul: Judaism demands that we learn how to rebuild.
Teshuvah means return.
The central idea of Elul is teshuvah.
It is usually translated as “repentance,” but the Hebrew word literally carries the idea of returning. Repentance sounds like punishment; return sounds like coming home.
Teshuvah is not primarily about convincing ourselves that we are terrible people. It is about recognizing the distance between the people we are and the people we know we are capable of becoming. Sometimes that distance is enormous. More often, it is created through dozens of small decisions.
We stop telling our spouse that we love them. We become less patient. We become comfortable gossiping. We become consumed by work. We stop learning. We stop praying. We become cynical. We allow resentment to harden. We spend hours looking at screens while telling ourselves we do not have time for the things that supposedly matter most to us.
Rarely does a person wake up one morning and decide to abandon their values. We drift. Elul asks us to notice the drift. That is why the month is traditionally associated with cheshbon hanefesh — an “accounting of the soul.” Companies conduct audits because numbers can reveal realities that intuition hides. Judaism asks us to conduct an audit of ourselves.
Where did our time go this year? Where did our money go? What did we spend our attention on? Who received the best version of us? Who received the worst? What did we repeatedly say was important while repeatedly behaving as though it were not?
These are uncomfortable questions, but they are also liberating ones — because we cannot change what we refuse to examine.
The shofar is an alarm clock.
One of the best-known customs of Elul is the daily sounding of the shofar in many Jewish communities. We usually associate the shofar with Rosh Hashanah, but throughout Elul its voice begins appearing each morning, preparing us for what is coming.
The great medieval Jewish thinker Maimonides famously described the message of the shofar as a spiritual wake-up call: Wake from your sleep, examine your actions, remember your Creator, and change your ways.
That message may be even more relevant today.
Modern life is designed to keep us distracted. There is always another notification, another email, another video, another controversy, another accessory to buy, another person to compare ourselves with. We can spend entire days reacting without ever reflecting. The shofar interrupts that rhythm. It is Judaism’s alarm clock.
Wake up. Our life is happening. We do not have unlimited years. We do not have unlimited conversations with our parents and grandparents. We do not have unlimited moments with our children. We do not have unlimited opportunities to apologize. We do not have unlimited chances to become the person we keep promising ourselves we will eventually become.
Elul reminds us that “eventually” is one of the most dangerous words in the human vocabulary. The right time to begin becoming better is rarely someday. It is usually now.
‘I am my beloved’s, and my beloved is mine.’
Jewish tradition also finds a beautiful hint to Elul in a verse from Song of Songs:
Ani l’dodi v’dodi li — “I am my beloved’s, and my beloved is mine.”
The first Hebrew letters of those four words spell Elul. It is not the linguistic origin of the month’s name, but Jewish tradition adopted the phrase as one of Elul’s defining spiritual ideas. That choice reveals something important: The month preceding Judgment Day is framed through love.
We often imagine religion as God waiting for us to make mistakes. Elul offers a different picture: God is asking us to come closer. The relationship between God and the Jewish People is not supposed to be based solely on fear of punishment. It is a covenant built on responsibility, loyalty, intimacy, and love. Teshuvah, therefore, is not groveling before an angry God. It is repairing a relationship.
The same principle applies between people. Before Yom Kippur, Jewish tradition teaches that wrongs committed against another person cannot simply be erased by asking God for forgiveness. We are supposed to go to the person we harmed. We must apologize. We must repair what we can. That is far more difficult than fasting.
It is easy to say “I’m sorry” abstractly. It is much harder to look someone in the eye and say: I was wrong. I hurt you. I should have handled that differently. What can I do to make it right?
That is Elul.
One of the most hopeful ideas in Judaism is that human beings are capable of change. We sometimes behave as though our personality is destiny.
“I’m impatient.” “I’m angry.” “I’m not religious.” “I’m bad with relationships.” “I’m selfish.” “I’ve never been disciplined.” “This is just who I am.”
Judaism rejects that fatalism. We may have patterns and weaknesses. We may have made the same mistake 50 times, but the entire architecture of the High Holidays rests on the assumption that tomorrow does not have to be identical to yesterday.
Judaism tells us that what we have done matters, but what we do next matters too.
And it requires specificity. Not: “I want to be healthier.” But: “I will change this particular habit.” Not: “I want to be a better spouse.” But: “I will stop speaking to my spouse this particular way.” Not: “I want to be more Jewish.” But: “I will study Torah once a week.” “I will light Shabbat candles.” “I will attend synagogue once a month.” “I will learn Hebrew.” “I will call my relatives and ask about our family.” “I will understand the history of my people.”
And yet, Elul should not only force us to examine our individual behavior. It should force us to examine our Jewish lives.
Am I more knowledgeable about Judaism today than I was one year ago? Do I understand the history of my people? Do I know why Jews do the things we do? Do I have a meaningful relationship with Israel? Do I participate in Jewish community? Am I transmitting anything Jewish to the next generation? Do I experience Judaism primarily as something I inherited, or as something I actively live?
For many Jews, Jewish identity has become something largely reactive. We become Jewish when antisemitism happens. We become Jewish when Israel is attacked. We become Jewish when somebody says something offensive about Jews. But Jewish life cannot survive on reaction alone. Elul asks a deeper question: What are we returning to?
Judaism is not simply a response to antisemitism. Jewish identity is not merely defending ourselves from people who hate us. We inherited thousands of years of history, philosophy, ritual, literature, ethics, memory, humor, community, and wisdom.
Knowing what we are fighting against is not enough. We have to know what we are fighting for.
The goal is not reinvention.
Modern culture loves reinvention — new year, new you. Judaism offers something subtler.
Elul does not ask you to become an entirely different person. It asks you to uncover the person buried underneath the distractions, habits, fears, resentments, and excuses that accumulated during the year. Teshuvah is return — return to our values, return to our people, return to our family, return to God, return to the promises you made yourself and quietly abandoned, return to the things you already know matter, return to the hard work of self-improvement, return to self-awareness, return to reworking our regrets.
Perhaps that is why Elul is so powerful. It does not tell us we have failed because we wandered. It tells us there is still a road home.
Maybe this Elul you apologize to one person. Maybe you begin learning one Jewish text. Maybe you repair one relationship. Maybe you finally abandon one destructive habit. Maybe you start keeping one mitzvah. Maybe you forgive someone. Maybe you call someone more often. Maybe you spend some time asking yourself questions you have avoided for years.
Small changes sound unimpressive, but lives are built from small things repeated. So are civilizations. So is Judaism.
A beautiful piece. Thank you for sharing.
What a fabulous, fabulous piece of writing. Beautifully constructed, inspired and conveyed. Timeless. Thank you.