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Entering the High Holy Days: A Guide to the Origins, Themes, and Prayers is unavailable, but you can change that!

Entering the High Holy Days provides historical background and an interpretation of the ideas, practices, and the liturgy of Judaism’s High Holy Days, giving them contemporary relevance. This classic guide to the most important days of the Jewish year was a recipient of the 1998 National Jewish Book Award. The High Holy Days—Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur—are for many Jews the highlight of the...

The prayer echoes the climactic moment of the biblical creation story, when God breathes the breath of life into the first human being: “And He blew into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living being” (Gen. 2:7). Thus each day’s awakening is a recapitulation of the creation of Adam. Judaism’s love affair with life is expressed in the overriding rule of Jewish law: pikuaḥ nefesh doḥeh et ha-kol, that is, saving a life comes before all else. Even when there is only a slight chance
Pages xii–xiii
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