Origins of The Ten Days of Repentance
Maimonides' (1135–1204) Laws of Repentance in his Mishneh Torah is one of the most authoritative sources for the name and function of these days, but he draws on earlier sources:
- "The term ... is not found in the Talmud Bavli, although the days referred to are mentioned there. The expression used in the Bavli is "the ten days between Rosh HaShanah and Yom HaKippurim." In the literature of the Geonim, we also find "the ten days from the beginning of Tishrei to Yom HaKippurim," "the first ten days of the month of Tishrei," "(the time) between Rosh HaShanah and Yom HaKippurim." But the term commonly used now, "Aseret Yemai Teshuvah," is also found in early sources. It is used in the Talmud Yerushalmi, by Pesikta Rabbati, a Midrash, and it is also found in the literature of the Geonim. But ever since the days of the Rishonim, literally the "first" or the "early" ones, referring to post-Talmudic and Geonic times; actually Torah scholars from approximately the eleventh century through the fifteenth, "Aseret Yemai Teshuvah" is the most popular title for this period of time in the Hebrew Calendar. The special character of these days ... in emphasis on "Teshuvah," Repentance, "Tefilla," Prayer and "Zehirut," Spiritual Vigilance."
Read more about this topic: Ten Days Of Repentance
Famous quotes containing the words origins of, origins, ten, days and/or repentance:
“Grown onto every inch of plate, except
Where the hinges let it move, were living things,
Barnacles, mussels, water weeds—and one
Blue bit of polished glass, glued there by time:
The origins of art.”
—Howard Moss (b. 1922)
“Compare the history of the novel to that of rock ‘n’ roll. Both started out a minority taste, became a mass taste, and then splintered into several subgenres. Both have been the typical cultural expressions of classes and epochs. Both started out aggressively fighting for their share of attention, novels attacking the drama, the tract, and the poem, rock attacking jazz and pop and rolling over classical music.”
—W. T. Lhamon, U.S. educator, critic. “Material Differences,” Deliberate Speed: The Origins of a Cultural Style in the American 1950s, Smithsonian (1990)
“... in nine out of ten cases the original wish to write is the wish to make oneself felt ... [ellipsis in source] the non-essential writer never gets past that wish.”
—Elizabeth Bowen (1899–1973)
“You must not eat with it anything leavened. For seven days you shall eat unleavened bread with it -the bread of affliction -because you came out of the land of Egypt in great haste, so that all the days of your life you may remember the day of your departure from the land of Egypt.”
—Bible: Hebrew, Deuteronomy 16:3.
“Try what repentance can. What can it not?
Yet what can it, when one cannot repent?”
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616)