The Ten Days of Awe – Celebrating the Jewish High Holy Days
The Ten Days of Awe – Celebrating the Jewish High Holy Days.
“Seek the Lord while He lets Himself be found. Call upon Him while He is nearby. Let the evildoers abandon their ways, and the sinful ones banish every evil thought. Let them turn to the Lord, and He will have merciful compassion on them. Yes, let them return to God, for He will lavish forgiveness upon them.” (55:6-7).
While He is Near. This theme verse in Isaiah sets the stage for The Ten Days of Awe. Jewish believers considered these Ten Days to be a time when God drew especially near to His people. God is always near at hand, but it was believed he Lord was more intimate with them during these high holy days, and He expected His believers to draw close to Him for this yearly season of spiritual renewal.
The Ten Days: This season of high holy days started with two days of Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Years. This was followed by seven days of increased Torah study, a focus on performing good deeds, reconciling with others, reciting special prayers, and attending services to prepare for the holiest day of all… Yom Kippur, The Day of Atonement. All of these aspects of The Ten Days of Awe will receive more particular focus in other articles in this blog category.
“Lord Yahweh, there is no God like You! You are wondrously great, and Your name is mighty in power. You are unrivalled in Your greatness! Who can fail to be impressed by You, King of the nations. It is completely proper to reverence You, for who could fail to stand in awe before You! It is in Your very nature to be worshipped. Among all the elite of the world, there is still no one as magnificent as You, no one who could compare with you.” (Jeremiah 10:7).
AWE: To encounter vastness, something beyond one’s frame of reference, outside of one’s mental grasp; inspires a profound curiosity, a desire to stretch into and explore the source of the awe; surrendering reverently to something greater than oneself; an outward-focused sense of wonder and astonishment; not just a momentary feeling, but a spiritual way of life. So, Jewish believers might say that these Ten Days of Awe is a season of gravity, a time of standing naked in the Divine Light in a state of reverence, humility and fear before God. These high holy days are focused on spiritual accountability, of self-examination, of not being paralyzed with terror before God but instead inspired to consider a deeper walk with the Lord as they are forgiven by His grace.
Main Themes of the Ten Days: Remembrance; Repentance; Judgment; Forgiveness.
(1.) Days of Remembrance… Lord Yahweh implored His people to “remember” more than 150 times in the Hebrew Bible. But God’s version of remembering is much more than simply recalling something or being mindful of a memory. The Biblical sense of remembering is active and experiential, not just a passive mental exercise. To be biblically mindful of something means that a person is not content with merely recalling something or bringing something to mind. Remembering involves participating in the memory. It seems that to God’s way of thinking, being mindful of something requires a high level of personal involvement. A memory is not just an offhanded activity of the brain, an incidental exercise of the mind, or something to put on our mental back-shelf. The biblical way of remembering is to go wherever the remembrance leads, to follow through, to remember with an active purpose in mind. To remember is to actively follow up on the memory, to allow the memory to move you to action, to take responsibility for the memory by following up on whatever is inspired by the memory. These momentous words are on the lips of all those living into the Ten Days of Awe: “Then I thought, ‘To this I will appeal: the years of the right hand of the Most High.’ I will remember the deeds of the Lord; yes, I will remember Your miracles of long ago. I will meditate on all Your works, and consider all Your mighty deeds.” (Psalm 77:10-12).
(2.) Days of Repentance… Because of the important Hebrew word “Teshuva,” this season is also known as the “Days of Return.” Remember the theme verse for the Days of Awe includes Isaiah 55:7, “Let them turn (teshuva) to the Lord, and He will have merciful compassion on them. Yes, let them return (teshuva) to God, for He will lavish forgiveness upon them.” The root word “shuv” means to turn back, to return, to change your direction, to turn away from wrongdoing by returning to God. So Jewish believers consider teshuva to be a lifestyle, not just a one-time action, of turning back once again to the Lord, an active spiritual movement. Repentance is perpetual, a spiritual habit, that is confirmed during these high holy days. A believer who is a true penitent was called a “master of returning,” always turning away from self-centeredness to God-centeredness. So the Ten Days of Awe are yelling at the top of God’s voice… Come Back! So return to God, Isaiah says. Repent! Reject your unrighteous impulses. Stop your wicked deeds. Quit your evil scheming and impure inclinations. Turn your back on your godless motivations, your shameless imaginations. Repair any brokenness you have caused between you and God and with others. Make changes, turn from your wicked thoughts and tainted deeds. Return to the Lord. He is waiting for you, He wants to renew your intimacy. You will find Him to be rich in compassion, abundant in mercy. When you turn to God, He is waiting with open arms to receive you unto Himself. He will forgive you. He will pardon you in His grace. His lovingkindness will envelop you and your fellowship with Him will be renewed. Showing compassion, putting love into action, having mercy is not the normal way of the world. Forgiveness is not the customary way of the world. It is not the way of the world to “abundantly pardon” as the Lord does. God’s ways are not the world’s ways. God loves justice, yet is pure mercy, motivated by compassion. God is all about accountability, but also forgiveness and pardon. His ways are so much higher than our ways, there is no possibility that we will understand His thoughts, His plans, His actions. His justice, motivated by mercy, goes higher than we could ever understand. His forgiveness is higher than our forgiveness, as far as the heavens is from the earth. When God perplexes us, we need ultimately to trust in His character of mercy, justice, and righteousness. According to rabbinic tradition, “The gates of repentance are always open.”
(3.) God’s Judgment… The Jewish tradition is that by successfully remembering, repenting, repairing relationships, increasing good deeds as well as Torah study, a believer will be able to seal his/her name in the Book of Life, as opposed to the Book of Death. On the one hand, their fear of God terrifies them as they seek to avoid His judgment. On the other hand, underneath all this terror is a strong current of God’s mercy. “No word is God’s final word. Judgment, far from being absolute, is conditional. A change in one’s conduct brings about a change in God’s judgment.” (Abraham Joshua Heschel, The Prophets). Rabbi Heschel’s thought here is well-grounded in Scripture… The Hebrew Bible reveals a Lord of creation who established a pattern of restoring whatever He has judged. The Father would relent of His promised judgment when the people would repent. He would heal those who were punished. His anger was not forever, and whatever punishment He meted out was intentionally redemptive. Yahweh time and again revealed Himself as a God “who does not take pleasure in the death of anyone.” (Ezekiel 18:32, 33:11). In the same breath, God would say, “Moab will be destroyed,” and then “I will restore the fortunes of Moab.” (Jer. 48:4,47); “I will bring disaster on Elam, making an end to them,” and then declaring, “I will restore the fortunes of Elam.” (Jer. 49:37); “I will strike Egypt and then I will heal them! Blessed be Egypt my people!” (Is.19:21-25); “I will restore the fortunes of Sodom and of Samaria.” (Ezek. 16:53-55). Or how about the famous complaint of Jonah after the Lord relented from destroying the Ninevites, an amazing, backhanded compliment... “Isn’t this what I said, Yahweh, when I was still at home? This is what I tried to delay when I fled to Tarshish! I knew that you are a gracious and compassionate God, slow to anger and abounding in love! Yes, you are truly a God who relents from sending calamity!” (Jonah 4:2-3). Time and again in the Psalms we see that the Lord’s anger lasts only for a moment. (eg, Ps. 30:5). There is always a redemptive purpose motivating God’s punishments and judgments. Jeremiah 23:20 and 30:24 declares, “The anger of the Lord will not turn back until He fully accomplishes the purposes of His heart.” It seems clear that the God of the Hebrew Bible will not abandon anyone forever, He ultimately doesn’t give up any anybody, and that He continues to love those whom He has judged.
(4.) God’s Forgiveness… The final goal of the Ten Days of Awe is to find atonement for one’s sins, for God to refrain from punishment because of a substituting sacrifice. In Jewish tradition, in order for forgiveness to occur, first one must repent as they request God’s mercy; then one must seek forgiveness of those who had been hurt by him; then to forgive others who had offended or hurt him and completely reconcile with anyone with whom there was a damaged relationship; then finally, they believe that God will forgive them. In other words, Jewish believers were convinced that they could not be forgiven by God until there was forgiveness between the believer and his/her neighbors. Making amends was a crucial part of divine forgiveness. There is plenty of evidence in the New Testament that Jesus followed right along with those beliefs. This theme of forgiveness is so huge that there will be more articles on it in this series on the Ten Days of Awe: Article 1 is “The Jewish Roots of Forgiveness“; Article 2 is “Reconciliation and Shalom“; and Article 3 is “The Big IF of Forgiveness.“