The High Holidays or High Holy Days, in Judaism, more properly known as the Yamim Noraim (Hebrew: ימים נוראים "Days of Awe"), may mean:
- strictly, the holidays of Rosh Hashanah ("Jewish New Year") and Yom Kippur ("Day of Atonement");
- by extension, the period of ten days including those holidays, known also as the Ten Days of Repentance (Aseret Yemei Teshuvah); or
- by a further extension, the entire 40-day penitential period in the Jewish year from Rosh Chodesh Elul to Yom Kippur, traditionally taken to represent the forty days Moses spent on Mount Sinai before coming down with the second ("replacement") set of the Tablets of stone.
Read more about High Holy Days: Etymology, The Days Preceding Rosh Hashanah (Jewish New Year), Rosh Hashanah, The Ten Days of Repentance, Yom Kippur, Hoshana Rabbah
Famous quotes containing the words high, holy and/or days:
“The high that proved too high, the heroic for earth too hard,
The passion that left the ground to lose itself in the sky,
Are music sent up to God by the lover and the bard;
Enough that he heard it once; we shall hear it by and by.”
—Robert Browning (1812–1889)
“Let us pray for the whole state of Christ’s Church Militant here in earth.”
—Book Of Common Prayer, The. Holy Communion, “Prayer for the Church Militant,” (1662)
“The arbitrary division of one’s life into weeks and days and hours seemed, on the whole, useless. There was but one day for the men, and that was pay day, and one for the women, and that was rent day. As for the children, every day was theirs, just as it should be in every corner of the world.”
—Alice Caldwell Rice (1870–1942)