close
close

Yiamastaverna

Trusted News & Timely Insights

    • How is Yom Kippur celebrated? A Beginner’s Guide to Atonement
    Idaho

    How is Yom Kippur celebrated? A Beginner’s Guide to Atonement

    Madoc Meredith Posted on

    Growing up, I had a sort of grudging appreciation for Yom Kippur. The services were long and the fasting uncomfortable, but I appreciated the way it required silence.

    play

    Rosh Hashanah has come and gone and with it the joy of welcoming a new year. What follows is the great Jewish anti-celebration: Yom Kippur.

    The most important day in the Jewish calendar, Yom Kippur – or the Day of Atonement – ​​offers the opportunity to ask for forgiveness. It concludes the “10 Days of Awe,” which, sandwiched between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, gives Jews a short period of time to perform “teshuvah,” or repentance.

    Growing up, I had a sort of grudging appreciation for Yom Kippur. The services were long and the fasting uncomfortable, but I appreciated the way it required silence. While there were always more prayers for those who sought them, my family usually returned home after the main service and let the time pass lazily until the sun set. We shared notes on the sermon and eagerly awaited the oversized Costco muffins that usually came at our community breakfast.

    In this year, as the world becomes increasingly restless, it seems particularly important to us to dedicate a day exclusively to solemn reflection.

    Yom Kippur calls for a generosity of spirit and the idea that God will see the best parts of us and that we may be able to find them ourselves. In the name of that generosity, this year I am offering a guide—for both Jewish and non-Jewish readers.

    Here’s how to hack the atonement.

    Consider mortality

    If there’s one thing Yom Kippur requires of us, it’s acknowledging our fragile view of life. At the heart of the holiday is a reading, Unetaneh Tokef, which literally imagines how a believer might die in the coming year.

    Look at the sharp edges of the world, it seems to say, see how you could impale yourself? Don’t think that you are too big and invincible: you might forget that life is a precious thing to be honored with Good Life.

    Opinion: Hamas held my grandfather hostage for a year. We’re running out of time.

    But that Good The life imagined on Yom Kippur is not based on indulgence – it requires acts of kindness: giving excess wealth to those in need, having patience for friends in difficult times, reaching out to stop the subway doors so that a commuter in a hurry can make it inside.

    Ultimately, the world is more likely to be repaired with small patches than with a major rebuild.

    Humble yourself

    “We all live with a gun to our heads and no one knows when it will go off,” Rabbi David Wolpe of Sinai Temple in Los Angeles told a New York Times columnist in 2018. Yom Kippur offers us the opportunity to forego retinol. We strive for eternal youth and humbly recognize that, despite our best efforts, no tomorrow is guaranteed.

    Asking for forgiveness also requires humility. Yom Kippur is not a passive holiday. You must bring your atonement to the world, humble yourself before others, and apologize sincerely, with no guarantee that you will be forgiven.

    Opinion: Israel is here to stay. We will not allow Hezbollah to destroy us.

    In doing so, believers must perform good deeds without the security of a reward at the other end. Goodness cannot exist as a mere gateway to recognition or validation, it must spread itself.

    Create space for hope

    There is a reason Yom Kippur exists alongside Rosh Hashanah. We look back at our shortcomings – individually and as humanity – with the aim of creating a better year.

    The hope that arises then becomes not just a blind wish, but a more honest endeavor, guided by the knowledge of where we have gone wrong.

    This is the hope that we as Jews express every year as the sun sets on Yom Kippur. It is a clear admission of the improbability of good and a solemn vow to fill our lives, our communities, and our world as full of it as we can.

    Anna Kaufman is search and optimization editor for USA TODAY. She covers trending news and lives in New York.

    Tagged:

    LEAVE A RESPONSE

    Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

    Madoc Meredith
    View all posts

    You Might Also Like

    ads