High Holy Days
In Judaism, the High Holy Days, also known as High Holidays or Days of Awe (Yamim Noraim; , ''Yāmīm Nōrāʾīm'') consist of: #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 (); 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. Etymology The term High Holy Days most probably derives from the popular English phrase, "high days and holy days". The Hebrew equivalent, "''Yamim Noraim''" (), is neither Biblical nor Talmudic. Professor Ismar Elbogen avers that it was a medieval usage, reflecting a change in the mood of Rosh Hashanah from a predominantly joyous celebration to a more subdued day that wa ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Sephardi Jews
Sephardic Jews, also known as Sephardi Jews or Sephardim, and rarely as Iberian Peninsular Jews, are a Jewish diaspora population associated with the historic Jewish communities of the Iberian Peninsula (Spain and Portugal) and their descendants. The term "Sephardic" comes from '' Sepharad'', the Hebrew word for Iberia. These communities flourished for centuries in Iberia until they were expelled in the late 15th century. Over time, "Sephardic" has also come to refer more broadly to Jews, particularly in the Middle East and North Africa, who adopted Sephardic religious customs and legal traditions, often due to the influence of exiles. In some cases, Ashkenazi Jews who settled in Sephardic communities and adopted their liturgy are also included under this term. Today, Sephardic Jews form a major component of world Jewry, with the largest population living in Israel. The earliest documented Jewish presence in the Iberian Peninsula dates to the Roman period, beginning in the fir ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Tashlikh
''Tashlikh'' or Tashlich ( "cast off") is a minhag, customary Atonement in Judaism, Jewish atonement ritual performed during the High Holy Days on Rosh Hashanah. In some Judaeo-Spanish-speaking communities the practice is referred to as ''sakudirse las faldas'' ('to shake the flaps [of clothing]') or simply as ''faldas''. Practice The ritual is performed at a large, natural body of flowing water (e.g., river, lake, sea, or ocean) on the afternoon of the first day of Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year, although it may be performed until Hoshana Rabbah. If the first day of Rosh Hashanah falls on Shabbat, most Ashkenazim recite Tashlich on the second day of Rosh Hashanah, whereas most Sephardim recite it on the first day as normal. The Repentance in Judaism, penitent recites a Tanakh, Biblical passage and, optionally, additional Jewish prayer, prayers. During the Tashlikh prayer, the worshipers symbolically throw their sins into a source of water. Some people throw small pieces of bre ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Shofar Blowing
The blowing of the shofar (, ) is a ritual performed by Jews on Rosh Hashanah. The shofar is a musical Horn (instrument), horn, typically made of a Ram (sheep), ram's Horn (anatomy), horn. Jewish law requires that the shofar be blown 30 times on each day of Rosh Hashanah, and by custom it is blown 100, 101 or 102 times on each day. Speak unto the children of Israel, saying: In the seventh month, in the first day of the month, shall be a solemn rest unto you, a memorial proclaimed with the blast of horns, a holy convocation. Modern practice Initially, the blasts made by the ram's horn were blown during the first standing prayer (Amidah) on the Jewish New Year, but by a rabbinic edict, it was enacted that they be blown only during the Mussaf, Mussaf-prayer, because of an incident that happened, whereby congregants who blew the horn during the first standing prayer were suspected by their enemies of staging a war-call and were massacred. Even though the underlining motive for the ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Jewish Holidays
Jewish holidays, also known as Jewish festivals or ''Yamim Tovim'' (, or singular , in transliterated Hebrew []), are holidays observed by Jews throughout the Hebrew calendar.This article focuses on practices of mainstream Rabbinic Judaism. Karaite Judaism#The calendar, Karaite Jews and Samaritans#Samaritanism, Samaritans also observe the biblical festivals, but not in an identical fashion and not always at exactly the same time. They include religious, cultural and national elements, derived from four sources: '' mitzvot'' ("biblical commandments"), rabbinic mandates, the history of Judaism, and the State of Israel. Jewish holidays occur on the same dates every year in the Hebrew calendar, but the dates vary in the Gregorian. This is because the Hebrew calendar is a lunisolar calendar (based on the cycles of both the sun and moon), whereas the Gregorian is a solar calendar. Each holiday can only occur on certain days of the week, four for most, but five for holidays in ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Shabbat
Shabbat (, , or ; , , ) or the Sabbath (), also called Shabbos (, ) by Ashkenazi Hebrew, Ashkenazim, is Judaism's day of rest on the seventh day of the seven-day week, week—i.e., Friday prayer, Friday–Saturday. On this day, religious Jews remember the biblical stories describing the Genesis creation narrative, creation of the heaven and earth in six days and the redemption from slavery and the Exodus from Egypt. Since the Hebrew calendar, Jewish religious calendar counts days from sunset to sunset, Shabbat begins in the evening of what on the civil calendar is Friday. Shabbat observance entails refraining from 39 Melachot, work activities, often with shomer Shabbat, great rigor, and engaging in restful activities to honor the day. Judaism's traditional position is that the unbroken seventh-day Shabbat originated among the Jewish people, as their first and most sacred institution. Variations upon Shabbat are widespread in Judaism and, with adaptations, throughout the Abraham ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Rabbinic Literature
Rabbinic literature, in its broadest sense, is the entire corpus of works authored by rabbis throughout Jewish history. The term typically refers to literature from the Talmudic era (70–640 CE), as opposed to medieval and modern rabbinic writings. It aligns with the Hebrew term ''Sifrut Chazal'' (), which translates to “literature f oursages” and generally pertains only to the sages (''Chazal'') from the Talmudic period. This more specific sense of "Rabbinic literature"—referring to the Talmud, Midrashim (), and related writings, but hardly ever to later texts—is how the term is generally intended when used in contemporary academic writing. The terms ''mefareshim'' and ''parshanim'' (commentaries and commentators) almost always refer to later, post-Talmudic writers of rabbinic glosses on Biblical and Talmudic texts. Mishnaic literature The Midr'she halakha, Mishnah, and Tosefta (compiled from materials pre-dating the year 200 CE) are the earliest extan ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Jubilee (biblical)
The Jubilee ( ''yōḇel;'' Yiddish: ''yoyvl'') is the year that follows the passage of seven "weeks of years" (seven cycles of sabbatical years, or 49 total years). This fiftieth year deals largely with land, property, and property rights. According to regulations found in the Book of Leviticus, certain indentured servants would be released from servitude, some debts would be forgiven, and everyone was supposed to return to their own property in jubilee years. Rabbinic literature mentions a dispute between the Sages and Rabbi Yehuda over whether it was the 49th year (the last year of seven sabbatical cycles, referred to as the Sabbath's Sabbath), or whether it was the following (50th) year. The biblical rules concerning sabbatical years are still observed by many religious Jews in Israel, but the practices prescribed for the Jubilee year have not been observed for many centuries. According to current interpretation of Torah in contemporary Rabbinic Judaism, the observance ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Oral Torah
According to Rabbinic Judaism, the Oral Torah or Oral Law () are statutes and legal interpretations that were not recorded in the Five Books of Moses, the Written Torah (), and which are regarded by Orthodox Judaism, Orthodox Jews as prescriptive and given at the same time. This holistic Jewish code of conduct encompasses a wide swathe of rituals, worship practices, Godman and interpersonal relationships, from Kashrut, dietary laws to Sabbath and festival observance to marital relations, agricultural practices, and civil claims and damages. According to Rabbinic Jewish tradition, the Oral Torah was oral tradition, passed down orally in an unbroken chain from generation to generation until its contents were finally committed to writing following the destruction of the Second Temple in 70 CE, when Jewish civilization was faced with an existential threat, by virtue of the dispersion of the Jewish people. The major repositories of the Oral Torah are the ''Mishnah'', compiled between 2 ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Mishnah
The Mishnah or the Mishna (; , from the verb ''šānā'', "to study and review", also "secondary") is the first written collection of the Jewish oral traditions that are known as the Oral Torah. Having been collected in the 3rd century CE, it is the first work of rabbinic literature, written primarily in Mishnaic Hebrew but also partly in Jewish Palestinian Aramaic. The oldest surviving physical fragments of it are from the 6th to 7th centuries. The Mishnah was literary redaction, redacted by Judah ha-Nasi probably in Beit She'arim (Roman-era Jewish village), Beit Shearim or Sepphoris between the ending of the second century CE and the beginning of the third century. Heinrich Graetz, dissenting, places the Mishnah's compilation in 189 CE (see: H. Graetz, ''History of the Jews'', vol. 6, Philadelphia 1898, p105), and which date follows that penned by Rabbi Abraham ben David in his "Sefer HaKabbalah le-Ravad", or what was then ''anno'' 500 of the Seleucid era. in a time when the p ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Tishrei
Tishrei () or Tishri (; ''tīšrē'' or ''tīšrī''; from Akkadian ''tašrītu'' "beginning", from ''šurrû'' "to begin") is the first month of the civil year (which starts on 1 Tishrei) and the seventh month of the ecclesiastical year (which starts on 1 Nisan) in the Hebrew calendar. The name of the month is Babylonian. It is a month of 30 days. Tishrei usually occurs in September–October on the Gregorian calendar. In the Hebrew Bible the month is called Ethanim ( – ), or simply the seventh month. In the Babylonian calendar the month is known as Araḫ Tišritum, "Month of Beginning" (of the second half-year). Edwin R. Thiele has concluded, in '' The Mysterious Numbers of the Hebrew Kings'', that the ancient Kingdom of Judah counted years using the civil year starting in Tishrei, while the Kingdom of Israel counted years using the ecclesiastical new year starting in Nisan. Tishrei is the month used for the counting of the epoch year – i.e., the count of the year i ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Ashkenazi Jews
Ashkenazi Jews ( ; also known as Ashkenazic Jews or Ashkenazim) form a distinct subgroup of the Jewish diaspora, that emerged in the Holy Roman Empire around the end of the first millennium CE. They traditionally speak Yiddish, a language that originated in the 9th century, and largely migrated towards northern and eastern Europe during the late Middle Ages due to persecution. Hebrew was primarily used as a literary and sacred language until its 20th-century revival as a common language in Israel. Ashkenazim adapted their traditions to Europe and underwent a transformation in their interpretation of Judaism. In the late 18th and 19th centuries, Jews who remained in or returned to historical German lands experienced a cultural reorientation. Under the influence of the Haskalah and the struggle for emancipation, as well as the intellectual and cultural ferment in urban centres, some gradually abandoned Yiddish in favor of German and developed new forms of Jewish relig ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |