We usually think of the Aseres Yemei Teshuvah as the days between Rosh HaShanah and Yom Kippur. But Chazal did not call them the “seven days of repentance.” They are the Ten Days of Repentance, which means that Rosh HaShanah and Yom Kippur themselves are not merely the bookends of the process. They are part of it.
That changes the way we understand these days. Rosh HaShanah, the beginning, and Yom Kippur, the culmination, are woven into one fabric. They are not two separate spiritual events that happen to appear on the calendar near each other. They form one continuum: the recreation of the self.
Rosh HaShanah is the anniversary of the creation of Adam HaRishon. More deeply, it is not merely the commemoration of creation, but the annual renewal of creation. The world comes again before the Ribono Shel Olam, and every part of it is examined. Does it belong in the world that is being renewed? Is it fulfilling its purpose? Is it contributing what it alone was created to contribute?
That question is not only asked of the cosmos. It is asked of us.
If Hashem is, so to speak, recreating His world on Rosh HaShanah, then we must also examine the world we are creating within ourselves. What kind of person am I bringing into being? What kind of home, schedule, set of priorities, relationships, and inner life am I constructing? Is the world of my life one in which Hashem’s presence can dwell?
The Mishnah in Pirkei Avos teaches:
Ba’asarah ma’amaros nivra ha’olam.
With ten utterances the world was created.
The world was created through Divine speech. The Torah repeats again and again: Vayomer Elokim — “And G-d said.” Rav Samson Raphael Hirsch notes that amirah is not merely speech; it is speech addressed to a listener. It calls for a response. It is a word that enters reality and brings something into being.
That is our task during the Ten Days of Repentance. We must make our own ma’amaros — not speeches, not vague aspirations, not “this year I really hope to be better.” We need utterances that have listeners. We need commitments that enter life and change it.
The first utterance is: Bereishis bara Elokim es hashamayim v’es ha’aretz. In the beginning, G-d created the heavens and the earth.
This is the root of Rosh HaShanah: Malchus. Hashem is King. But the question is not only whether we believe that Hashem rules the universe. The question is whether He rules all of our lives.
A person can “believe in G-d” and still keep certain rooms locked. Hashem is welcome in shul, in the beis midrash, perhaps even at the Shabbos table. But is He welcome in the workplace? In the bedroom? In the way we spend money? In the way we speak when we are irritated? In the private corners of ambition, ego, resentment, and indulgence?
The first utterance asks: Is there any part of my life from which I have excluded the King?
The second utterance is Yehi or — “Let there be light.”
Once we accept Hashem’s sovereignty, we need light: a source of truth beyond our own preferences. A person can be very talented at producing justifications. With enough cleverness, almost any desire can be dressed in respectable clothing. The question is whether we are searching for truth or merely for permission.
What is my source of light? Do I allow Torah to illuminate my choices, or do I manipulate Torah until it shines conveniently in the direction I wanted to go anyway?
The third utterance creates the rakia, the firmament, and with it, separation. There are waters above and waters below. There is nearness, and there is distance.
This asks a painful but necessary question: Is my Torah bringing me closer to Hashem, or am I somehow using even religious life to create distance? There is a kind of frumkeit that warms the soul, and there is a kind that only confirms our habits. There is learning that humbles us before truth, and there is learning that merely gives us more sophisticated tools with which to defend ourselves.
Are we drawing nearer or drifting farther away?
The fourth utterance gathers the waters and allows dry land to appear. Here, boundaries come into being. There is sea and land. Later there will be Eretz Yisrael, Yerushalayim, Har HaBayis, the Kodesh, and the Kodesh HaKodashim. Holiness requires boundaries.
So do we.
What kind of space is my home? Is it a place of kedushah, calm, dignity, and warmth? Or is it filled with the same noise, anger, vulgarity, distraction, and despair that fill so much of the outside world?
What kind of space is my workplace? What kind of space is my circle of friends? What kind of space is created by the phone in my hand, the screen in my home, the conversation at my table?
If everything enters everywhere, nothing remains holy.
The fifth utterance brings forth vegetation. For the first time, we encounter growth.
Here the question is simple, but not comfortable: Am I growing? Not merely, do I admire growth? Not, do I respect Torah, kedushah, and chesed in theory? Am I moving? Are there roots in the earth and leaves reaching toward heaven? Do I have goals, a program, some way of measuring whether this year’s “I really should” is becoming this year’s reality?
Vegetation draws from below and above. A life of avodas Hashem must do the same. It cannot float in spiritual abstraction, detached from the practical world. Nor can it remain buried in earthiness. It must turn daily life into fruit.
The sixth utterance creates the heavenly lights, which mark days, seasons, and years. If the fourth utterance created boundaries in space, this one creates boundaries in time.
Do I have sacred time? Not leftover time, not imaginary time, not “one day when things calm down” time. Actual time. Time for learning, davening, reflection, chesed, family, silence, thought.
One of the great crimes we commit is that we murder time. Time is life, and when a moment is squandered, some living possibility has been strangled. A world cannot be built without a calendar. A soul cannot be built without one either.
The seventh utterance fills the waters with life. Rabbi Akiva famously compared Torah to water. A fish may face danger in the water, but outside the water it cannot live at all. Torah is not an extracurricular enrichment program. It is our habitat.
This utterance asks: Is the environment of my life hospitable to Torah life? What enters my mind, my eyes, my ears, my home? Is my environment oxygenated with Torah, modesty, freshness, and spiritual vitality — or polluted by cynicism, coarseness, and distraction?
Fish are also hidden beneath the water. That suggests tznius, not only in the narrow sense in which the word is often used, but as the Navi says: Hatzne’a leches im Elokecha — walking modestly with Hashem. Do I need applause in order to do good? Do I live from an inner compass or from the approval of the crowd?
The eighth utterance calls upon the earth to bring forth living creatures. Rav Hirsch notes a difference: Fish remain bound to the waters that produce them, but animals can rise above the earth from which they emerge.
This challenges one of the most common spiritual excuses: “This is just who I am.” I come from this background. I have this temperament. I had this childhood. My family is like this. My community is like this. What do you expect?
The Torah expects greatness.
Chazal teach that a person must ask: Masai yagiu ma’asai l’ma’asei avosai — when will my deeds reach the deeds of my forefathers? The Rambam writes that every person is capable of becoming righteous like Moshe Rabbeinu. We may not fully understand the reach of that statement, but we dare not ignore its demand.
Am I aiming high enough?
The ninth utterance is Na’aseh adam — “Let us make man.” Man is created in partnership. Hashem gives life, ability, circumstance, and blessing. But man must choose. He must act. He must become.
If we ignore Hashgachah Pratis, we become arrogant in success and crushed by failure. If we use Hashgachah Pratis as an excuse for passivity, we abandon our responsibility. The truth is partnership. We create vessels, and Hashem fills them. We choose, and He gives those choices life.
The tenth utterance gives man permission to consume the resources of the world. Rav Hirsch points out that the Torah emphasizes seed-bearing plants and fruit-bearing trees. Man may consume, but he must preserve the possibility of renewal. He may take, but not in a way that destroys what must come after him.
That is a vast question. How do I consume food, money, pleasure, energy, attention? Do I use the world responsibly? Do I use people responsibly? Or do I drain others — their time, patience, emotions, talents — for my own purposes?
Yom Kippur brings this question to its peak. Its five inuyim, its deprivations, remove us temporarily from the world of consumption. We do not eat or drink. We do not wash for pleasure. We do not anoint. We do not wear leather shoes. We abstain from marital intimacy. We step back from pleasure in order to ask: Have I used Hashem’s world with holiness, restraint, gratitude, and responsibility?
From Rosh HaShanah to Yom Kippur, the ten days form one process. Hashem recreates the world through ten utterances, and we are called upon to recreate the world within ourselves.
We begin with Malchus: Is Hashem truly King over all of me?
We end with Yom Kippur: Have I learned to live in His world without consuming it selfishly?
Between those two points, we ask whether we have light, closeness, boundaries, growth, sacred time, a life-giving environment, the courage to rise beyond our origins, and the willingness to become partners with Hashem in creating ourselves.
These are not small questions. But neither are these small days.
The Aseres Yemei Teshuvah are an invitation to bring a new self into being — a self more honest, more disciplined, more alive, more attached to its Source. If we speak these utterances truthfully, and if we allow them to be more than words, then we may hope that the Ribono Shel Olam will look upon the world we are trying to build and grant us a year of life, sweetness, growth, blessing, and redemption.
Rabbi Yehuda L. Oppenheimer served for approximately twenty years as a congregational rabbi in the United States, most recently at the Young Israel of Forest Hills. He now lives in Afula, works as a tour guide, and writes regularly for The Jewish Press and the Queens Jewish Link.