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:
“Ten or twelve, only ten or twelve
Strokes of havoc únselve
The sweet especial scene,
Rural scene, a rural scene,
Sweet especial rural scene.”
—Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844–1889)
“I doubt if men ever made a trade of heroism. In the days of Achilles, even, they delighted in big barns, and perchance in pressed hay, and he who possessed the most valuable team was the best fellow.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“Wooing, wedding, and repenting, is as a Scotch jig, a measure, and a cinquepace; the first suit is hot and hasty, like a Scotch jig, and full as fantastical; the wedding, mannerly-modest, as a measure, full of state and ancientry; and then comes repentance and, with his bad legs, falls into the cinquepace faster and faster, till he sink into his grave.”
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616)