High Holidays (Paperback)

The High Holidays or High Holy Days, in Judaism, more properly known as the Yamim Noraim may mean: 1. strictly, the holidays of Rosh Hashanah ("Jewish New Year") and Yom Kippur ("Day of Atonement"); 2. by extension, the period of ten days including those holidays, known also as the Ten Days of Repentance (Aseret Yemei Teshuvah); or 3. 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. Many prefer the term High Holy Days because it emphasizes the personal, reflective, introspective aspects of this period, while Holidays suggests a time of communal celebrations of events in the history of the Jewish people-Purim and Passover as examples.