The Jewish calendar has a weekly festival on the seventh day of the week, called in Hebrew Shabbat, and throughout the year a sequence of what are termed Major and Minor Festivals.

Major Festivals (in addition to Shabbat), during which work-related activity is not permitted, are:

• Rosh Hashanah (New Year) – a time of contemplation and prayer for a physical and spiritual blessing in the year ahead.
• Yom Kippur (the Day of Atonement) – on the tenth day of the new year, a day of fasting for 25 hours from sunset to sunset, seeking forgiveness for past misdeeds and determining to behave righteously in future, the most solemn day in the Jewish calendar.
• Succot (Tabernacles or Booths) – starting five days after Yom Kippur, an eight day commemoration of the Israelites’ forty years in the desert after leaving Egypt, and a festival celebrating the harvest of fruits. 
• Simchat Torah (the Rejoicing of the Law) – ends Succot and celebrates the conclusion of reading each year the first five books of the Old Testament.
• Pesach (Passover) – an eight day festival in Spring, a recollection of exile commemorating the ending for the Israelites of slavery in Egypt (the exodus), and noting the start of the barley harvest.
• Shavuot (Pentecost or the Feast of Weeks) – seven weeks after Pesach, partly a harvest festival marking the gathering in of the wheat harvest, but principally commemorating the giving of the Ten Commandments.