The ten days between Rosh HaShanah and Yom Kippur are called Aseret Yemei Teshuvah (Ten Days of Penitence). As the prophet says:
Seek G-d while He may be found; call upon Him while He is near. (Isaiah 55:6)
According to the kabbalistic tradition, the seven days between Rosh HaShanah and Yom Kippur are special: each day has the power to rectify and elevate the corresponding weekday of the previous year. Thus, this Friday rectifies and elevates every Friday of the past year; the Shabbat that begins tonight can rectify and elevate every Shabbat of the previous year, and so on. Is this not an extraordinary gift from above, allowing us to repair an entire year in just one week? The question, however, is how this works.
Quantum mechanics offers a helpful analogy. One of its most remarkable features is entanglement, where two separate particles form a single whole, so that by probing one, we reveal information about the other without ever touching it. The idea of entanglement also applies to space and time.
Temporal entanglement considers a single particle linked to its own past. Imagine a particle prepared with a special rule: if it is measured in State A today, it must have been in State B yesterday. While its state on Thursday was an uncertain quantum blur (a superposition), the moment you measure it on Friday and find it in State A, that past uncertainty collapses. Your observation in the present reveals a definitive, hidden fact—you now know with certainty that the particle was in State B on Thursday. Yet that certainty is created at the moment of Friday’s measurement.
Perhaps something similar happens here. If we interpret this kabbalistic teaching to mean that each day of the week during the Aseret Yemei Teshuvah is entangled with the corresponding weekdays of the past year, it is no wonder we can fix those days now. By focusing on our thoughts, speech, and actions from every Friday of the past year, we can rectify and elevate them today.
A careful reader will note that this analogy works only if the system before measurement is in a state of superposition. Our thoughts, speech, and actions over the past year were concrete and defined—so where is the superposition? It is no accident that this works specifically between Rosh HaShanah and Yom Kippur. On the eve of Rosh HaShanah, the divine will to create the world is withdrawn, and the world reverts, as it were, to a primordial blur of being and non-being (somewhat akin to Schrödinger’s cat). By analogy, a differentiated tissue cell can revert to a pluripotent stem-cell state. Similarly, at the end of the year, time—and the whole world with it—reverts to a kind of pluripotent state. We return the world to tangible existence by sounding the shofar on Rosh HaShanah; however, the past still lingers in a state of superposition until Yom Kippur. Hence, by attending to our past deeds, words, and thoughts during these auspicious days, we can rectify them by fixing their metaphysical state.
Such an opportunity is rare, and it should not be missed. So let us get right to it, shall we?
Shabbat Shalom and G’mar Chatimah Tovah!