High Holy Days - The Ten Days of Repentance

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 Holy Days

Famous quotes containing the words ten, days and/or repentance:

    For parents, the terrible twos are a psychological preview of puberty.... At the age of two or three, children eat only bananas and refuse to get a haircut. Ten years later, they eat only bananas and refuse to get a haircut.
    Carin Rubenstein (20th century)

    The years teach much which the days never know.
    Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)

    Enthusiasm. A distemper of youth, curable by small doses of repentance in connection with outward applications of experience.
    Ambrose Bierce (1842–1914)