Yet I want to suggest that it is the month of Elul – though it contains no holidays at all – that may be the key to the entire year. There is a concept in Judaism called hachana l’mitzvah, the ...

The month of Elul is approaching and with it the High Holidays when each of us has to take stock of ourselves. In order to properly take advantage of the days of Elul, it is necessary to make a halt ...

Elul, the month immediately preceding Tishrei, serves as the spiritual preparation for the Days of Awe – Rosh Hashana and Yom Kippur. It is the month of repentance, when an honest cheshbon hanefesh, ...

The new month of Elul has begun, the month prior to beginning the Jewish New Year, Rosh Hashanah. Elul represents the spiritual alarm clock that reminds us of the period we are entering, the shift ...

Elul is the only month in the Jewish calendar where we are not busy with fasts or chagim and have the gift of a full month to contemplate and introspect. It’s an opportunity for inward reflection, ...

Every year, on the last Shabbat before Elul—the final month of the year, we read a Torah portion that begins with the word re'eh—see. The passage reads, “See, I set before you a blessing and a curse.

Elul is the final month of the Jewish year, when counting from Rosh Hashanah. The color associated with Elul is red. Red is the color associated with the sefirah of might, whose inner experience is ...

Children dressed in crisp white shirts and dark blue skirts and slacks were accompanied by a special light that brightened classrooms in Jewish schools around the world Monday as Chassidim celebrated ...

Abraham Joshua Heschel published The Earth Is the Lord’s in 1949. In his preface, he writes that, “The story about the life of the Jews in Eastern Europe which has come to an end in our days is what I ...

This week, Shabbat and Sunday marked Rosh Chodesh Elul, the start of the last month of the Jewish year – the countdown to the ever impending Rosh Hashanah begins now. For some, this simply invokes a ...

Summer is hard to take seriously with nobody in the office, and everybody running around half-dressed. No wonder High Holidays fall when school resumes and the air grows brisk — when life starts ...