There are three Hebrew expressions for the days from Rosh Hashanah through Yom Kippur. Two are well-known: aseret yâ??mey tâ??shuvah, â??the ten days of penitence,â? and ha-yamim ha-noraâ??im, â??the awesome daysâ? or â??days of awe.â? The third, beyn keseh lâ??asor, â??between keseh and the tenth [of the month of Tishrei],â? is used less frequently, perhaps because Jewish tradition has always had its doubts about it.
What is keseh? The word is found in the verse in Psalms 81:4, Tikâ??u baâ???odesh shofar, baâ??keseh lâ??yom ?ageynu, â??Blow the shofar on the new moon, on the keseh of our festival.â? Assuming that the word, spelled ×??×? in Hebrew, derives from the verb lâ??khasot, â??to cover,â? the early rabbis interpreted it as denoting the â??coveredâ? or invisible moonâ??that is, the period at the end of a lunar month when the sky is moonless. Since Rosh Hashanah, with its blowing of the shofar, is the only Jewish holiday to fall on the first day of a new month, when the moon re-emerges, this verse was taken to refer to it. As Rabbi Na?man bar Yitz?ak states in the talmudic tractate of Rosh Hashanah: â??What is the festival [in Psalms] on which the moon is covered? It can only be Rosh Hashanah.â?
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