The Days Preceding Rosh Hashanah (Jewish New Year)
The Hebrew month preceding Rosh Hashanah, Elul, is designated as a month of introspection and repentance. In preparation for the Jewish New Year, special prayers are recited. Psalm 27 is added at the end of morning and evening prayers, and the shofar (ram's horn) is blown at the end of morning services on weekdays (except for the eve of Rosh Hashanah itself). Among Sephardi Jews, Selichot are recited at dawn on weekdays throughout the month. Also, many complete the entire Book of Psalms twice during the month. It is customary to increase the giving of charity (Tzedakah) and to ask forgiveness from friends.
At midnight on the Saturday night before Rosh Hashanah, Ashkenazi Jews begin reciting selichot. On the following days, however, they generally recite the selichot before the regular morning prayers. On the eve of Rosh Hashanah, extra prayers are recited and many fast until noon.
Read more about this topic: High Holidays
Famous quotes containing the words days and/or preceding:
“After which you led me to water
And bade me drink, which I did, owing to your kindness.
You would not let me out for two days and three nights,
Bringing me books bound in wild thyme and scented wild grasses
As if reading had any interest for me ...”
—John Ashbery (b. 1927)
“Postmodernism is, almost by definition, a transitional cusp of social, cultural, economic and ideological history when modernism’s high-minded principles and preoccupations have ceased to function, but before they have been replaced with a totally new system of values. It represents a moment of suspension before the batteries are recharged for the new millennium, an acknowledgment that preceding the future is a strange and hybrid interregnum that might be called the last gasp of the past.”
—Gilbert Adair, British author, critic. Sunday Times: Books (London, April 21, 1991)