ELUL
During this month it is encouraged to fast and pray as the Days of Awe approach.
The number of Bnei-Yisrael—heads of clans, officers of thousands and hundreds, and their officers who served the king in all matters of the divisions that came in and went out month by month throughout the year—each division had 24,000.
1 Chronicles 27:9 the sixth commander was sent (Ira was one of the thirty).
1st – On this day Haggai received a prophesy for Zerubbabel to rebuild the Temple (Haggai 1:1)
5th – On this day Ezekiel was translated in the Spirit and shown idolatry in the Temple (Ezekiel 8:1)
24th – On this day the Israelites resumed building the second Temple after sixteen years suspension (Haggai 1:14-15)
25th – The wall around Jerusalem was completed on this day (Nehemiah 6:15-16)
On this month the Angel Gabriel was sent to the Galilee, to a virgin there and proclaimed favor upon her from Adonai (Luke 1:26-38).
Special note for the month of Elul from Michael Strassfeld: From Tu be-Av we are ready to move on to Elul, a prelude to the High Holiday season with its themes of renewal and return. In fact, the period of Elul embodies a process of courtship between us and God. This theme of courtship is captured in the traditional belief that the Hebrew letters of the word Elul are an abbreviation for the phrase Ani le-dodi ve-dodi li—“I am my beloved’s, and my beloved is mine,” referring to God and Israel. Estranged from each other during the Three Weeks, Israel and God rediscover each other beginning with Tu be-Av and initiate the slow and at times painful process of becoming lovers again. This process climaxes with Yom Kippur, when we are forgiven for that original breach of faith, the incident of the golden calf, which began this whole process of mourning and renewing on the seventeenth of Tammuz.