The Shabbat prior to the beginning of a new month is typically referred to as Shabbat M'vorhim Hahodesh, because on that Shabbat, we liturgically "bless" the new month that will dawn during the coming week. But we do not follow this practice this Shabbat, the Shabbat prior to the beginning of the new month of Tishrei. Tishrei, of course, is the first month of the year and the first day of Tishrei is Rosh Hashana, hardly another simple Rosh Hodesh.

Whatever the origins of the practice of blessing the new month, it functions to draw our attention to this forthcoming transition in our liturgical calendar. But this Shabbat, we hardly need to be alerted to the fact that Rosh Hashana is around the corner. The shofar has been sounded every morning since the beginning of Elul (though not on Shabbat), the final month of the year, and Psalm 27 has been recited twice daily throughout this month.

And this Saturday night, typically at or close to midnight, we will recite the Selihot, the penitential liturgy, for the first time. These prayers will be repeated every morning until Yom Kippur, except on the intervening Shabbat and on Rosh Hashana.

For me, personally, it is the music of the Selihot service, preeminently the nusach for the first Kaddish of the service, traditionally chanted in the High Holy Day Musaf mode, that signals the imminent arrival of the season.

There are some indications, then, that this is a notable Shabbat, but neither the Torah reading nor the haftara alerts us to its special standing. The haftara is the last of the seven haftarot of consolation; it refers us back to Tisha B'Av. And the twin Torah portions, the concluding passage of Moses' address prior to his death, points us ahead to Simhat Torah and to Joshua's succession.

I was intrigued, then, when I read the Etz Hayyim commentary to the first 10 verses of D'varim, chapter 30, in this Torah portion. The commentary notes that there are seven separate references to repentance in these 10 verses and adds, "This repetition is appropriate to its being read at the season of penitence, the High Holy Day season."

What the commentary fails to note is that there is a profound difference between the kind of penitence referred to in the Torah, and the repentance we celebrate on these High Holy Days. The first verses of the passage refer to an experience of penitence that will occur "amidst the various nations to which the Lord your God has banished you," in other words, after God's punishment has been meted out, when Israel will have been exiled. Then, we are reassured, God will welcome our repentance, "restore our fortunes, and take us back in love."

In contrast, the repentance celebrated in the High Holy Day liturgy is preemptive. It abrogates the very need for punishment. This kind of repentance is nowhere to be found in the Torah itself. It emerges later, in the books of the Prophets, in the rabbinic tradition, and in the High Holy Day liturgy.

Contrast the implicit theology of these 10 verses from the Torah reading with the message of the Book of Jonah, which we will read liturgically on Yom Kippur, or with these words from the U'netaneh Tokef piyyut, the high point of the Musaf service: "You [God] are slow to anger and ready to forgive. You do not desire the death of the sinner but that he return from his evil ways and live. Even until his dying day, You wait for him, perchance he will repent and You will immediately receive him."

In Jonah, the Ninevites attend to the words of the prophet and repent. God notes their repentance and determines not to destroy.

This week's Torah reading may prepare us for the High Holy Days then, but it does so in a peculiar way, not by echoing the High Holy Day theme, but by showing us how Jewish thinking about repentance was transformed by the prophets.

The contrast is only superficially about repentance. It is ultimately about how our ancestors portrayed God. The God of the prophets is infinitely patient and quick to forgive. The God of the prophets waits for us and takes us back "in love," now, immediately.

We read this Torah portion on the Shabbat before the High Holy Days because that's what the cycle of Torah readings mandates. But on Rosh Hashana and on Yom Kippur, it is the God of Jonah and of the U'netaneh Tokef piyyut that we celebrate. And we also celebrate the way in which our tradition superimposes the latter image upon the former, and thus transforms itself.