Rosh Chodesh Ellul

Sir Jonathan Sacks is the Chief Rabbi of the United Hebrew Congregations of the Commonwealth.

The Two Moods of Ellul

There are two ways of conceptualizing the mood of the Yamim Noraim (High Holy Days) - and with them the days of preparation and anticipation that begin on Ellul.

One is given expression in the Unetaneh tokef prayer, one of the supreme masterpieces of medieval Jewish liturgy. "The great shofar is sounded. A still, small voice is heard. The angels are alarmed. Fear and trembling take hold of them, and they say: 'Behold the day of judgement'." The same note is sounded in the selichot (special prayers for forgiveness). "They tremble and quake at the day of Your coming; they feel the pangs of Your burning wrath like one who gives birth to her first child."

These prayers come from the world of medieval North European piety, the age of the Crusades and terrifying assaults by Christians against Jews, the era the historian R. I. Moore calls the "formation of a persecuting society". They speak the language of fear and terror of Divine wrath.

But there is another mood altogether, an alternative tonality. According to tradition, Moses ascended Mount Sinai on Rosh Chodesh Ellul and stayed there for forty days, descending on 10th Tishri, Yom Kippur, with the second set of tablets in his hands: the sign of Divine forgiveness and the restoration of love between G-d and His people.

In a sense, then, as a result of Moses' prayers, by the beginning of Ellul the people had already been forgiven. They had achieved selichah (forgiveness). All that remained was kapparah, literally a "covering over" of the past. The word we use in English for kapparah - "atonement" - has a beauty of its own. It suggests at-one-ment, the re-unification of two partners after separation. That sense belongs in Hebrew to the word teshuvah itself, meaning homecoming after spiritual exile. In the beautiful words of Malachi, G-d says: "Return to Me and I will return to You".

Here the forty days from the beginning of Ellul to Yom Kippur speak the language of love, not fear. Faith is a marriage; marriage is the moralization of love; and love forgives.

The two moods are conjoined with exquisite sensitivity in the twin customs Ashkenazim have throughout the month of Ellul. One is the blowing of the shofar, herald and forewarning of the Day of Judgement. "Will a shofar be sounded in the city and the people not be afraid?" (Amos 3: 6). We hear and tremble.

The other custom is diametrically opposite. Morning and night we say Psalm 27, the supreme expression in Tanakh of the absence of fear: "The Lord is my light and my salvation: whom then shall I fear? The Lord is the stronghold of my life: of whom shall I be afraid?" We rest in G-d's loving arms. "Were my father and my mother to forsake me, the Lord would take me in." G-d never rejects. Love forgives.

These same two emotions are implicit in the word Ellul itself. On the one hand, the word, Babylonian in origin, suggests fear and trembling (as in the lament Allelai li). The sobbing note of the shofar, teruah, is translated in Aramaic as yellala. On the other, tradition linked it to the initial letters of the phrase from the Song of Songs: Ani le-dodi ve-dodi li, "I am for my beloved and my beloved is for me."

Where there is faith there is challenge, and where there is challenge there is fear. But there is also the love that conquers fear. G-d's hand is there to lift us when we stumble, giving us the strength to face the coming year.