The Ten Days of Repentance
The "ten days of repentance" include Rosh Hashanah, Yom Kippur and the days in between, during which time Jews should meditate on the subject of the holidays and ask for forgiveness from anyone they have wronged. They include the Fast of Gedaliah, on the third day of Tishri, and Shabbat Shuvah, which is the Shabbat between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur.
Shabbat Shuvah has a special Haftarah that begins Shuvah Yisrael (come back, oh Israel), hence the name of that Shabbat. Traditionally the rabbi gives a long sermon on that day.
It is held that, while judgment on each person is pronounced on Rosh Hashanah, it is not made absolute until Yom Kippur. The Ten Days are therefore an opportunity to mend one's ways in order to alter the judgment in one's favor.
Read more about this topic: High Holidays
Famous quotes containing the words ten, days and/or repentance:
“We have the power to do any damn fool thing we want to do, and we seem to do it about every ten minutes.”
—J. William Fulbright (b. 1905)
“I, Alphonso, live and learn,
Seeing Nature go astern.
Things deteriorate in kind;
Lemons run to leaves and rind;
Meagre crop of figs and limes;
Shorter days and harder times.
Flowering April cools and dies
In the insufficient skies.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“Try what repentance can. What can it not?
Yet what can it, when one cannot repent?”
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616)