12-Step Torah for the High Holidays 12

(4) Notwithstanding that the blowing of the shofar (ram's horn trumpet) on Rosh HaShanah is a Scriptural statute, its blast is symbolic, as if saying: "You that sleep, bestir yourselves from your sleep, and you slumbering, emerge from your slumber, examine your conduct, turn in repentance, and remember your Creator! They that forget the truth because of the vanities of the times, who err all of their years by pursuing vanity and idleness, which are of neither benefit nor of salvation, care for your souls, improve your ways and your tendencies, let each one of you abandon your evil path and your thought which is not pure! It is, therefore, necessary for every person to behold themselves throughout the whole year in a light of being evenly balanced between innocence and guilt, and look upon the entire world as if evenly balanced between innocence and guilt; thus, if a person commit one sin, the person will overbalance themselves and the whole world to the side of guilt, and be a cause of its destruction; but if a person perform one duty, behold, a person will overbalance themselves and the whole world to the side of virtue, and bring about their own and their salvation and escape, even as it is said: "But the righteous is an everlasting foundation" (Prov. 10. 25), it is a person, by whose righteousness they overbalanced the whole world to virtue and saved it. And, because of this matter, it became the custom of the whole house of Israel to excel in giving tzedakah, in good conduct and in the performance of duties during the intervening days of Rosh HaShanah and Yom ha-Kippurim above what they do during the whole year. It also became a universal custom to rise early during those ten days, to deliver in the synagogues prayers of supplication and ardor till the dawn of the day.