BOB ABERNETHY: This weekend marks the beginning of the Jewish high holidays, the most sacred time of the year for Jews, a 10-day period of prayer and penitence beginning with Rosh Hashana, the Jewish new year, and ending with Yom Kippur, the day of atonement. But as Lucky Severson reports, the high holidays did not always have the significance they have today.LUCKY SEVERSON: When you look back through history, what have become the most important and sacred Jewish holidays were mere mentions in the Bible. Rosh Hashana was a day for blowing horns, actually a ram's horn called a shofar, and remembering God as king. And Yom Kippur was known as a day of atonement, a day of affliction.
Professor JUDITH HAUPTMAN (Jewish Theological Seminary): It was only around the year 200 Common Era that the rabbis of the Talmud first called it a new year and turned it into much more than the Bible ever imagined it would become, a day of introspection, a day of reflection, a day of hoping to become better people in the coming year, and, in particular, a day in which we hope God will remember us.
SEVERSON: Ironically, it was the destruction of the holy temple in Jerusalem by the Romans in the year 70 A.D. that led to the holiday's increased importance. No longer was Judaism a religion centered in a temple in Jerusalem. Jews were dispersed throughout the world, and in the process, the religious practices evolved and sometimes changed.Prof. HAUPTMAN: The rabbis were trying to transform Judaism in ways that Judaism could maintain itself, taking it from a temple-based religion to a home-based religion to a -- perhaps a synagogue-based religion. So in addition to agricultural themes for Jewish holidays, the rabbis gave personal themes, religious themes, spiritual themes. This could replace Jews going to the temple to offer sacrifices.
SEVERSON: Some rabbis believed it was a lack of faith that led to the temple's destruction and the Jews' exile from Israel. Over time, they made the holiday more introspective to prompt Jews to change their ways. Twelfth-century scholar Maimonides suggested some ways to repent.Rabbi IRWIN KULA: The first thing is you have to actually realize that you've done something wrong, which is, in some ways, the most difficult. The next is there needs to be some regret, some remorse. Then there needs to be some reconciliation. If it is something that you've done to somebody else, you need to actually ask for forgiveness, and only then is there repentance.
Rabbi KULA: As Yom Kippur emerges in the years of rabbinic Judaism -- 600, 700 years that it takes to emerge -- a set of customs evolved, customs of not eating, not washing, not making love, not anointing your body, not drinking, certain ways or forms that allow you to experience your death, confronting your death face to face, and of course, in the confrontation with death, there's a further vitality and affirmation of life.
Prof. HAUPTMAN: By Yom Kippur, we believe that we have been forgiven for all of our misdemeanors and we start again afresh. This is a powerful idea, this notion of starting anew and being under God's scrutiny. There is the sense of closeness.
