On This Day in Jewish History: 25 Elul - Creation Began - 1

On this day, according to our tradition, the world was created. The Midrash in Vayikra Rabbah states it plainly in the name of Rabbi Eliezer: on the twenty-fifth of Elul the world was created. This seems at first to contradict the liturgy of Rosh Hashanah, which calls that day the beginning of Your works. But the two fit together precisely. Rosh Hashanah is not the first day of creation. It is the sixth, the day on which Adam was formed, and the Midrash lays out the hours of that day in detail: in the first hour the thought arose, in the third the dust was gathered, in the sixth he was formed, in the seventh the soul was breathed into him, and in the twelfth he emerged from judgment pardoned. Count back five days from the sixth and you arrive here, at the twenty-fifth of Elul.

The reckoning is confirmed from another direction. Pirkei DeRabbi Eliezer teaches that the sun and moon were created on the twenty-eighth of Elul, which was the fourth day of creation. Counting backward from that date lands on the same starting point. Two classical works, working from different details, arrive at the same day.
Later generations built a practice around it. The Kaf HaChaim records the custom of studying the account of creation across these final days of Elul, one day's portion each day, so that on Rosh Hashanah one is learning the passage of the sixth day, the day man was created. There is a companion custom for the day before, drawn from the Arizal, of reading the list of the kings who reigned in Edom before any king reigned in Israel. The Kabbalists understood those kings as a hint to worlds that were built and shattered before ours took hold, a process running through the days just past. Then, on this day, the building that would last began. It is a fitting thought for the closing days of Elul, when a Jew stands before the judgment of Rosh Hashanah and is asked to begin again himself.