The ten days starting with Rosh Hashanah (Feast of Trumpets), 21 September 2017, 1 Tishrei 5778, and ending with Yom Kippur, 30 September 2017 or 10 Tishrei 5778, are commonly known as the Days of Awe (Yamim Noraim) or the Days of Repentance (High holidays). This is a time for serious introspection, a time to consider the sins of the previous year and repent before Yom Kippur. On Wednesday September we have Erev Rosh Hashanah, followed by the 1st and 2nd Rosh Hashjanah days and the Yamim Nora’im or Days of Awe closing on September 30 with Yom Kippur or Day of Atonement.
Starting the Hebrew Year 5778 we should seriously think about how we want to continue is this particular time where there is so much anxiety and where we can find in so many places religious groups fighting against each other. Jews and Christians are already a few years under fire and now we curiously also find Buddhists fighting Muslim groups.
What was our reaction when we heard all that bad news about terrorism and fighting (so called) religious people? Did we dare to come up or defend those who were attacked for things they did not do or for which their religion was not guilty?
Gary Bowers questions
What is your level of insecurity over menacing events conjectured by some geopolitical and socioeconomic experts? Such as: the dysfunctional disintegration of the European Union that could cause a chain reaction melt-down of the entire European economy; collapse of the financial system in the United States linked to or independent of Europe’s demise; Iran launching a first nuclear strike to make good on its threat to wipe Israel from the face of the earth and the United States along with it; North Korea doing the same thing; Russia’s ominous intrusion into the Middle East, potentially taking on the United States should we do anything to oppose Russia’s real agenda for being there; an all-out conventional attack by a powerful Islamic coalition of nations against Israel; and other harbingers of man-made catastrophes and natural disasters. {Yom Kippur / With Or Without Atonement?}
These days we should take time to search our heart, look for how we want to approach our life but also the life of others, and draw close to God in preparation for the coming Day of Judgement, Rosh Hashanah, and Day of Atonement, Yom Kippur.
We have all different ways of handling ourself and our way of life. We also are eager to look at others and often do not mind judging them or pointing with a finger at them.
According to vain Jewish tradition, God supposedly weighs every man’s work to determine who will be written in His books, who will live and die, who will have a good life or a bad life for the next year. The judgement is based on one’s works during the Days of Awe (e.g., repentance, prayer, obedience, acts of charity). The individual’s fate is then sealed on Yom Kippur.
But we should know that we all are already written in the book of life and death from the beginning of times. Also from the moment we are born we do have our own choice to make the right or the wrong decisions, all the time. Nothing is decided just in one day or in one week or in ten days.
Rabbi Mark Glickman
The Days of Awe encourage us not to get other people to take responsibility for their misdeeds, but rather to get each of us to take responsibility for our own. The emphasis isn’t on what they’ve done wrong; its on what you’ve done wrong. Rabbi Mark Glickman, the spiritual leader of Temple B’nai Tikvah in Calgary, suggests:
During the upcoming Days of Awe, when you feel your finger starting to pop out and point at someone else – and pop out it surely will – then just bend that finger back so that it points at you. Focus your efforts not on what others have done to you, but on the ways you’ve fallen short and can improve in the future.
Check what you have done this last year, which past so fast. I am sure you, probably like me, wanted to do so many things and have to admit lots of things we wanted to have done are not done or we did not succeed to do. Let us do teshuva, to give tzedakah and to reflect on how we may improve ourselves. And let us consider how we can help others on that path to the Most High Elohim.
A Temani (Yemeni Jewish) style shofar made from a horn of the greater kudu. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
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With best wishes to you, your family, and all klal Yisroel for a good, sweet, safe and healthy year, full of success spiritually and materially, with much nachas ruach, and a geula shlema for the coming year.
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Please come to read:
On the Virtue of a Bent Finger: A Challenge for the Days of Awe
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Preceding article
Elul Observances
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Additional reading
- Perhaps a little bit late, though not less well ment: Happy Rosh Hashanah
- From dust and breath into living beings
- Prophets making excuses
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Further reading
- What about Blowing the Esrog on Shavuos?
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- Days of Awe
- A Sober Israel Experience
- Looking Back to Look Forward
- Day 1081: Days of Awe
- Elul Journey: A New Year Is Emerging 5775 – 11 More Days
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- Rosh Hashanah’s Shout for Joy
- Comfort for a Traumatized Age
- Respite
- Elul: Month of Return and Renewal
- Days of Teshuva 2017
- Embracing Elul by Heather Rosenberg
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- Melodies for the Days of Awe
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- High Holy Days 2017: Finding Interfaith Community
- About this weekend: Selichot and cemetery service
- Yom Kippur / With Or Without Atonement?
- Hurricane Harvey & A Year of Prophetic Milestones (2017)
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Also at your times of rejoicing–your appointed festivals and New Moon feasts–you are to sound the trumpets over your burnt offerings and fellowship offerings, and they will be a memorial for you before your God. I am the LORD your God. Numbers 10:10
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