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:
“Self-revelation is a cruel process. The real picture, the real “you” never emerges. Looking for it is as bewildering as trying to know how you really look. Ten different mirrors show you ten different faces.”
—Shashi Deshpande (b. 1938)
“Every incident connected with the breaking up of the rivers and ponds and the settling of the weather is particularly interesting to us who live in a climate of so great extremes. When the warmer days come, they who dwell near the river hear the ice crack at night with a startling whoop as loud as artillery, as if its icy fetters were rent from end to end, and within a few days see it rapidly going out. So the alligator comes out of the mud with quakings of the earth.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“To sin offers repentance and forgiveness; not to sin offers only punishment.”
—José Bergamín (1895–1983)