Want to participate in the Ten Days of Awe, but you don’t have a synagogue, and you have low spoons and a brain that does not vibe with fire-and-brimstone? Same. This post is your calm guide to the peak season of Jewish reflection – the stretch between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur where we focus on three simple moves: Teshuvah (returning), Tefilah (prayer), and Tzedakah (generous action).
No Hebrew required. No spiritual perfection test. Just tiny daily steps you can actually do whether or not you have access to the Jewish community.
In the video below, I walk you through a clear, at-home plan – what to try, how to keep it human-sized, and how to start even if you feel late. We also talk honestly about the parts that might not land for you – Book of Life language, big judgement metaphors – and how to hold them lightly while still doing the work. Because Judaism is lived in practice, not in theory.
What you’ll get from this guide:
- A 10-day rhythm you can follow from your kitchen table
- Repair scripts that are kind and concrete
- Prayer options in plain English – Psalm 27, small Amidah tweaks, or your own words
- Tzedakah ideas that are not just money
- Permission to begin where you are and keep it small
You’re building your Jewish life step by step – and that counts. G’mar Chatima Tovah.
Transcript below.
Transcript:
What are the 10 Days of Awe and why do Jews treat this like spiritual prime time?
If you’re observing the High Holidays at home or without a synagogue, this is your roadmap for making these days clear, grounded, and genuinely meaningful.
Hi, I’m Kochava. I am a Jewish convert, and I’ve been helping people convert to Judaism since 2010 through my blog, Building a Jewish Life.com.
This is the third video in the High Holidays at Home series. The first two videos were about how to celebrate Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur when you don’t have a Jewish community to celebrate with.
This video, we’re gonna be talking about the days in between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur. The 10 Days of Awe, also called the 10 Days of Repentance.
In Hebrew, they’re called Aseret Yemei Teshuva.
10 days dedicated to Teshuvah, which is traditionally translated as repentance, but it actually means turning or returning.
It’s about coming back to what matters. In fact, we call someone who becomes more Jewishly religious later in life a Baal Teshuvah, a son or daughter of Teshuvah, of repentance.
So think of this period as a focused time to realign your life with what matters most.
And traditionally we measure those actions through three activities: teshuvah. turning back, Tefilah, prayer and Tzedakah, generous action.
Tzedakah is usually translated as charity, but it’s actually comes from the root word for justice. And it’s not just limited to money. Tzedakah can be an action. It can be making a meal for a sick neighbor. It can be helping someone get a new job.
Tzedakah is actually a wide range of options for you. So if monetary contributions aren’t in your budget, don’t assume this pathway is cut off to you.
Most Jewish communities treat these days as a time of heightened closeness to Hashem, to God, and of momentum in order to achieve closer closeness.
So in this video, I’m gonna give you a simple at-home plan so you can participate in the Days of Awe fully wherever you are.
Because here on this channel, we start where you are.
Begin with what you’ve got. Be practical about it instead of feeling bad that the situation isn’t better.
These 10 days give you focus.
It’s a short window of time with a very clear purpose and very clear outcome goals.
Momentum is easier because of that time constraint, and the goal is simple: return to what matters.
You are not having to think about the entire rest of your life from here on out.
It’s like a challenge. It’s not forever, and that makes it easier for you to accomplish your goals.
Different communities have different ways of measuring what matters. So that’s my question to you: what matters to you?
Where is Judaism calling you to be today?
You don’t have to aim for some pie in the sky ideal.
Do what you can with what you got.
The key is that Jewish time is cyclical. You’re always coming back around to the same holidays every year from a new position, and every year you have the opportunity to take the holiday and your Jewish practice deeper. You are not stuck at this level of Jewish practice forever.
You are always growing and changing.
So whatever your next steps are today, start there. The rest will come in time.
And I know that for the majority of the people who watch my videos, you don’t have access to a Jewish community, or at least not easily.
I will never lie to you and say that Jewish community isn’t important, especially if you’re pursuing a conversion. If you wanna convert to Judaism, you will have to find a way to have an in-person Jewish community. That is the position of every group within Judaism. Anyone who says differently is trying to sell you something.
But almost none of us start in a place where there is a Jewish community, and your actions before you move or before you make those connections still matter.
You can still have a holy and meaningful holiday, even if you’re just home alone or home alone with a roommate who kind of hates this Jewish phase you’re going through. It is what it is.
If you don’t have a synagogue, you don’t have a synagogue, so what can you do next?
Daily simple moves during this period: a prayer, an act of repair with other people that you’ve harmed, recommitting to a mitzvah, an act of Tzedakah.
These actions add up fast, and that is how you build a Jewish life, one act at a time.
It’s not about perfection. And you’re never going to have perfection. Just write that off as a possibility.
It’s all about turning a little bit every day, always moving towards your goal. No matter how slow it sometimes feels, or how meandering the path may be. Lots of us have meandered in our journeys towards Judaism. It’s still a valid Jewish journey.
So let’s dig into those three core practices we mentioned: Teshuvah, Tefilah, Tzedakah. It comes from a prayer that we say in the Mussaf prayer service of Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur.
I will spare you my horrible Hebrew and just tell you that it’s commonly translated as “repentance, prayer, and charity avert the evil of the decree.” Sometimes people translate evil as harshness.
People get into debates over whether “avert” is really the right verb.
Whether it should be mitigate instead of like erasing it. I learned that there are three ways to view what that means.
One: mitigation. The bad event that was decreed for you is mitigated or reduced in some way. It still happens. But something like the timing, the consequences or the impact is a little gentler.
Second: transformation.
The decree plays out differently than it would have otherwise. Judgment tilts towards mercy.
And then the third is that we change through Teshuvah, prayer and Tzedakah.
We become different people, and the past decree no longer “fits” us, or we’re more resourced to bear it.
This morning, I had a Zoom meeting with some of the members in my Bayit membership program, and we got into this idea about kind of ” fire and brimstone” type teachings, and I would classify this emphasis on the Book of Life and the Book of Death as fire and brimstone teachings.
If you’re new around here, I was born and raised in Tennessee, in the south, in the Bible Belt, and I was raised in an atheist home. I did not go to church, and I was relentlessly bullied for that and told I was going to hell from my earliest ages. I have a lot of religious trauma around Christian views of the afterlife and hell. I don’t like fire and brimstone teachings. They don’t do it for me. If anything, they turn me off. I am allergic to them.
Does that mean that I can’t find any value in these teachings of the High Holidays? And honestly, that’s a great question.
I wish I had a good answer for it ‘ cause I don’t really, but I think it goes to the greater principle of how do we interact with Judaism? Because it’s not always going to make sense to us. It’s not always going to align perfectly with what we agree with or believe.
And I don’t know if this is right or not, but the answer that I came to on off the top of my head this morning was that there’s a bit of cognitive dissonance there, and I think we give cognitive dissonance short shift.
We always assume cognitive dissonance is a bad thing, but I don’t think cognitive dissonance is a bad thing when it’s done intentionally, as much as you can do it intentionally and with your knowledge that you’re doing it.
These teachings, if anything, would damage my relationship with Judaism just because of the life that I’ve lived and the experiences I’ve had and the trauma that I have faced from it.
But I also understand that a lot of people do find value in that sort of motivation. I don’t get it. I’m not gonna lie to you. I don’t understand it. But I cannot deny that some people find that valuable, and Judaism has to speak to all of us. As someone in the Bayit said in such a wise way is that we teach that the Torah has 70 faces and we can each find the face that speaks to us.
And for me, the Book of Life and the Book of Death, ain’t it.
But I also don’t have to let it damage my relationship with Judaism.
This is a place where I intentionally use cognitive dissonance of I just don’t think too hard about this part of it.
It’s not the answer that anyone’s proud to give, but this is why people come to my content because I tell you the dirty laundry parts that no one wants to talk about, but that are very real. And we feel very isolated when we feel that way. I know I am not alone in finding that there are certain parts of Judaism that I don’t get, and I don’t know what to do with them, so I put ’em on the shelf.
If there is a human being who doesn’t do that, I would love to meet them because they must be the Dalai Lama. Although I have a sneaking suspicion, the Dalai Lama would absolutely say he puts things on the shelf. He strikes me as that kind of guy.
And I’m here to tell you that’s okay.
But also those may not be the kinds of conversations you wanna have with certain rabbis. And that is because rabbis are human, and especially if you’re in the conversion process, these rabbis hold power over your life. In an ideal world, you would be able to talk through your doubts, your difficulties, your frustrations with your rabbi, but we live in the real world, and that’s not always true.
I am here to reassure you that these things are normal and expected, and you’re not broken, and you’re not a bad Jew, and you’re not a bad person for doing this.
It is part of the human condition, and it is fundamentally a part of all philosophies and religions around the world.
Anyone who makes you feel differently is not someone you should trust with your deepest emotions.
So as you’ll always hear me say, especially if you’re in the conversion process… when people tell you who they are and they’re not a nice person, believe them. And protect yourself accordingly.
We do the best we can with what we have. And that applies to religious leaders as well.
Boy, that was a bird path, wasn’t it? When I planned this video this morning, I did not plan to get into philosophy.
So getting back to the meat and potatoes of this video. We’ve got Teshuvah, Tefilah, Tzedakah: repentance/returning, prayer, and generous acts.
You don’t need fire and brimstone in order to be motivated to do any of those things. Those are inherently good things to do.
So even if you are uncomfortable with this framing of life and death, these practices are still accessible to you and valuable for you.
My suggestion would be to pick one a day to do something small. Performing mitzvot is like building a muscle; you gotta put in the reps. So let’s start with Teshuvah, and I’ll link up here. I made a video about how Jews apologize. I think it’s a great system psychologically for how to repair relationships, but we’ll do a mini version of that here.
In essence, if you have hurt someone somehow, The Teshuvah process has five steps.
You need to state explicitly what happened. Acknowledge how it impacted that person.
Propose a concrete repair if, for instance, restitution needs to be made. State how you’re gonna change so that this doesn’t happen again. And invite their response to that.
A simple script for that could be, ” I realize I blank. I see that I hurt you or embarrassed you in front of others. Would it help if I blank? I’m committing to blank. Would you be willing to talk about it when you’re ready?”
And the flip side of all of that is it’s sometimes not appropriate to apologize to a person. If they have asked you to not contact them, or if you contacting them would create more harm and upset, you shouldn’t. You’re going to have to find different ways to make Teshuvah and make sure that you’re changing yourself so that these behaviors don’t repeat.
But be careful that you don’t just use that as an excuse to not make Teshuvah with anyone. ” Oh, no. It’ll hurt their feelings. It’ll reopen the wound.” Like be honest with yourself about that.
So during these 10 days of Teshuvah, we most talk about repairing relationships with other people. And that’s because Yom Kippur only forgives you for the sins you commit between you and G-d. The sins between you and other people cannot be forgiven by G-d until you have tried to make Teshuvah with them.
Again that’s an idea that also makes me a little uncomfortable. The idea of like the fear that these people are gonna reject my apology and therefore I could never be forgiven by God. Like, if I take that very seriously, that is a scary thought. So I don’t take it very seriously. I get what the message is trying to say.
What’s the point? And did I get the point?
Because that’s another side of apologies. Judaism says that if you’ve apologized to someone three times and they still don’t forgive you, you’ve done your part and that’s on them. They have the right to not forgive you, but that’s not gonna be held over you anymore.
So we’re focusing a lot on relationships, but it’s not actually just about relationships. Teshuvah is a huge realm of possibilities that you could turn to trying to find something to make your 10 Days of Repentance more meaningful.
The most basic form of Teshuvah is just taking on a new mitzvah or picking up a mitzvah that you’ve dropped at some point. Or deepening a practice you already have.
Another good choice of Teshuvah is having mindful speech times; choosing to go an hour with no gossip or snarking..
And yes, I said, no snark. I don’t like it anymore than you do, but this is what we’re here to learn, right?
Another common form of Teshuvah is learning. Learn one prayer. Read 10 pages from a Jewish book.
Listen to a lecture on YouTube. These are all ways of deepening your Jewish practice and turning towards it more. Teshuvah at its best for nerds like us. And I know that most of you are nerds. Time has taught me that.
So now we come to part two: Tefilah.
Prayer is also a huge topic. If you know much about Judaism, you probably know that Judaism has very prescribed prayers that are written in Hebrew, and people tend to pray in Hebrew even if they don’t understand the language. You don’t have to pray in Hebrew. You can pray in English. That’s okay. You can also pray in your own words.
That is also okay. Ideally, yes, you’re gonna build up a practice of saying more of these prescribed prayers because there are certain values within reciting the same prayers on a schedule regularly over the course of years. But that is a much deeper topic than we’re getting into right now.
If you were starting from zero, go with whatever works. If you feel like you don’t have the words and you don’t know what to say, which was absolutely my case. The written prayers are gold. It is so nice to just open up a book and have something that I can say.
So specifically during this time period, starting in the month of Elul before Rosh Hashanah, the community started saying Psalm 27 every day. Many communities continue through the 10 days and are still saying it now. So that is a choice that you could use.
It’s also very easy to find, even if you don’t have a Jewish prayer book.
If you do have a Jewish prayer book, you may find that there are certain changes marked in the Siddur for the 10 Days of Repentance.
You’ll just wanna keep your eyes out for instructions that tell you to do something a little different, usually inserting a few words here and there. Primarily during the Amidah, the main, silent prayer of the service. Which you can say at home too.
And then the two other additions that you might find is, again, Psalm 27 and also probably Avinu Malkeinu.
If you have a rabbi, follow your rabbi’s guidance. If you don’t have a rabbi, as most of you don’t, just do what the instructions in the prayer book tell you. It’s great. I love the instructions. I’ll link up there that, the moment when I knew Judaism was for me was the first time I went to an Orthodox synagogue, and I sat down and I opened up the prayer book and the instructions told me what to do if I made a mistake in a prayer. It was like, “if you forgot to do X, go do Y.”
I think Judaism is a very honest religion about human psychology, and I love that.
Another suggestion for your Tefila during this time period is to make kind of a prayer corner. Set aside a place where you’re going to do these prayers. Just tidy it a little. Put a nice tablecloth on a side table. Put a comfy blanket there. Put a picture of your loved ones. Do something to make it special, and it’s only for 10 days.
So it’s not like you have to make like a big change and live with it.
Now the third prong: Tzedakah.
So again, we’re defining Tzedakah here as generous actions.
Make a plan.
You could set aside a modest amount of money you’ll donate each day this week, or a larger amount once.
But if you’re on a tight budget or you wanna go more than that, the options are limitless.
Do Chesed, which we translate as lovingkindness.
Check in on an elderly neighbor.
Share a meal with someone who recently had a baby.
Volunteer for an hour somewhere.
Donate some canned goods to a food pantry. Donate old coats to a coat drive.
Boost a mutual aid post online.
Think about who you know who’s looking for a job, and how you could help them.
Think of who is looking for a romantic relationship. Can you help them?
With their permission, of course.
These small actions add up to a Jewish life of meaning and purpose.
This is Judaism in action.
Judaism is a very action oriented religion. Another thing that I really liked about it.
But what might stop you from taking action? There are a lot of common roadblocks that I see, and here’s how to handle them.
Perfection pressure.
The antidote to perfection is take messy action.
Pick one small step, do it before you’re ready. And you’ll probably have motivation to do more. And if you don’t, you’ve still already done something.
Practice makes progress not perfection.
Two, this one is going to be, uh, for the people watching this video right now. I started late. I am releasing this video in the middle of the 10 Days of Awe.
If you haven’t been doing anything yet, you’re by definition late. And you know what? That’s okay.
Begin on the day you’re on. It’s the old proverb. You know, “the best time to plant a tree was yesterday. The second best time is today.”
Don’t let guilt about the past stop you from building a better future.
These 10 days are built for momentum, not a perfect start.
Three: conflicting advice online.
If you’re trying to do something like take on a mitzvah and you’re finding multiple ways of practicing it online, just pick one. That’s the best you can do.
It’s probably best to not try to mishmash them together, because you’ll probably end up with something that no Jew would even recognize. Ask me how I know.
Four: loneliness. And if you are watching this video, I know that you probably feel really alone in this journey because most people that I talk to do.
I will link it here. I talked in the Rosh Hashanah at Home video about building a DIY community for yourself. That’s what I want you to do. That is part of Teshuvah for you.
Turning towards what matters means turning towards community.
And as they say, “if you can’t make it at home, store bought is fine.” And by that, I mean digital community is just fine and normal. And where most of us start when we live outside of a Jewish community.
For you, I want you to reach out to someone and say, G’mar Chatima Tovah. I’ll link up there to the video about the greetings we do at this time of the year.
So I want you to say to them, may you be sealed for the good. G’mar Chatima Tovah.
Make that connection, and if you don’t know anyone Jewish or Jewish-interested, make a connection with someone who’s not Jewish. Build community, whatever that community looks like. That is where you are right now and that’s fine.
Take this loneliness seriously and give it the respect it deserves.
We tend to poo poo all the DIY methods and pretend that online friendships don’t really matter, but that’s not true. Humans are made to connect.
You don’t have to be a schmoozer. I am autistic. I am certainly no schmoozer.
Not a successful schoo schmoozer, at least.
Reach out because odds are good that the other person is at least a little lonely too.
Roadblock number five: low energy and little time.
Easiest method: set a five minute timer. Pick one short thing. Make a donation over the internet to a group like Mazon, which is a Jewish organization that helps feed hungry people.
Pray Psalm 27. Read Psalm 27, and see what you learn from it.
I think you’ll find that most of these practices will probably give you more energy than they take. The problem is initiation. Believe me, I am very well versed in the difficulties of that.
Number six: Hebrew hesitations.
I’ll tell you again, you don’t have to do anything in Hebrew. You can do it all in English or French or Russian or whatever your language is.
If you do know some Hebrew and you have the time, you can use transliteration. You can read slowly. You can read one line or one paragraph. It’s not all or nothing.
Your intention, your kavanah, matters.
Speaking of intentions, you’re building up to the day of Yom Kippur. Do you have a plan for it yet? What are you doing on Yom Kippur? Are you driving two hours to go to a synagogue in a neighboring town?
Are you going to livestream a service?
Are you just gonna be reading Reddit posts about what Yom Kippur means?
I have had all of those Yom Kippurs.
But have a plan. Build with intention. Don’t just fall into doing something on Yom Kippur because of inertia.
And I’ll link up here to the video about how to celebrate Yom Kippur without a community. Biggest thing to remember is that most synagogues are gonna have a paid ticketing process. And if you don’t have a ticket, you may not be able to enter.
Not for any nefarious sort of reasons. It’s usually just the building is too small for the amount of people who wanna walk in the door. But there’s a lot more detail in that video above, about discounted and free tickets.
So we took some, we took some.
What’s the word?
We meandered a little bit in this video, but I think we finally covered it. You can let me know down in the comments below what you thought that I missed. Always happy to find out more.
If you are preparing for Yom Kippur coming up, I’ve linked down below to the free High Holidays at Home Resource Guide that is paired with the Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur videos that I linked above, and they’ll be linked down below as well.
That’ll help you plan for a meaningful, doable Yom Kippur this year.
If you’re planning to fast for Yom Kippur, and especially if you’re a new faster, I have a guide that I’ll link to down below as well that’s called Fasting (or Not) With Intention. There is a wide range of fasting and fasting alternatives that you can do on Yom Kippur, and it’s full of like tips and guides to help you get through the longest fast of the year as easily as possible. But spoiler alert, it’s really hard and it’s like a muscle that you’re gonna build up probably over the course of several years. It’s probably not going to be perfect your first time.
And there’s a bit more about fasting as well, like warning signs you should be on the lookout for, in that Yom Kippur video.
So begin where you are. Use what you have. Don’t feel guilt or shame about what you’re not doing.
One small turn each day is more than enough to get you started.
I’m rooting for you. G’mar Chatima Tovah.
