The Time of the Season by Rabbi Alexandra Wright

The month we are about to enter, the sixth month of the Hebrew calendar is called Ellul and is derived from the Akkadian word for ‘harvest’.  The Talmud describes the treading of the wine or olive press as al’la or ul’la, while the Mishnah mentions the first day of the month of Ellul in relation to the farming cycle of the year.

For our ancestors in the Land of Israel, Ellul marked the beginning of the end of the agricultural season – the Autumn ingathering, a time of anticipation and hoped for produce. The month is mentioned in the biblical book of Nehemiah and in the famous Mishnah (Rosh Hashanah 1:1) in relation to four new years in the Hebrew calendar. The first of Ellul is for the tithing of livestock; in ancient times, every tenth animal of the herd or flock would be donated to the Temple, which meant it would be sacrificed.

In the liturgical calendar the month, which begins at the end of this week has its own religious significance and resonance.  The Hebrew root, as well as referring to the seasonal harvest, also means ‘to circle’ or ‘go around’ or to ‘search out’.  It is said to be a month auspicious for weddings because the Hebrew letters of Ellul, are an acrostic for the phrase from the Song of Songs: Ani l’dodi v’dodi li – ‘I am my beloved’s and my beloved is mine,’ words that celebrate human love and that are sometimes recited or sung at a wedding.

But coming as it does just before Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, the arrival of Ellul is also seen as a time to express our longing for wholeness, for seeking something beyond ourselves, or deep within ourselves.  It marks the countdown to those great festivals that compel us to repent and seek out forgiveness from those we have wronged.

At what point did this month become a period of self-reflection and repentance? Ancient traditions spoke of Moses ascending Mount Sinai for the second time on the 1st Ellul, remaining there for forty days and receiving the second tablets of stone on Yom Kippur – the maths is correct!  The same midrash speaks of the Israelites sounding the Shofar throughout the camp to mark Moses’ ascent. ‘Therefore,’ it adds, ‘the Sages instituted that the Shofar should be sounded on the new moon of Ellul every year’ (Pirkei d’Rabbi Eliezer, 46:2).

The Talmud records a discussion between Rabbi Eliezer and Rabbi Joshua – two contemporary sparring partners of the first and second centuries CE.  Rabbi Eliezer says that the world was created in Tishri, while Rabbi Joshua argues that the world was created on the first of Nisan.  It’s a strange kind of argument, wrapped up in a debate about other significant events, such as when the patriarchs were born and died, when Sarah, Rachel and Hannah were remembered by God and conceived their children, when slavery in Egypt ceased and other such anniversaries.

You have to ask yourself what these arguments are really about.  Are they to be understood literally?

To us the debate is absurd, but I wonder if the Rabbis are actually pinning down a chronological anniversary for creation or whether they are arguing about something else.  Perhaps about the significance of the months? Nisan, after all is the first month of the calendar year, as January is for us.  Tishri is the seventh month and perhaps, like September in our own calendar, marks the beginning of another new year – a time when we can, as it were, re-create ourselves through repentance, prayer and good deeds.

Perhaps what they are really arguing about is whether it is more auspicious and symbolic for us to repent in the springtime when everything is already new and growing, or whether the autumn, heralding the dying year, embodies best the ideas of returning and renewal.  What does Rabbi Eliezer see at the end of the summer:  the leaves turning gold and copper and falling from the trees, the fruit ripening and the harvest being gathered.  The natural world, in its dying, is already beginning the process of renewing itself.

And that is why it is the Autumn month of Ellul that begins this cycle of searching.  T.S Eliot’s words from Four Quartets come to mind:

‘What we call the beginning is often the end
And to make an end is to make a beginning…’

Our journey to renew ourselves begins as the seasonal year anticipates its end. And yet, in this drawn-out finale, one also finds the seeds of something new and an everlasting cycle of searching and renewing, as it written: ‘You shall seek Me, and you shall find Me, if you search for Me with all your heart’ (Jeremiah 29:13).