Adath Jeshurun

Yom Kip­pur at Home

Reprinted with per­mis­sion. For more about Jew­ish hol­i­days and Jew­ish life, visit MyJewishLearning.com.

Although Yom Kip­pur is the syn­a­gogue hol­i­day par excel­lence, with five sep­a­rate ser­vices span­ning much of its 25 hours, cus­toms at home help set the tone for the day. These prepa­ra­tions range from the sym­bolic and spir­i­tual to prag­matic con­cerns, such as eat­ing well before begin­ning a fast.

The for­mal litur­gi­cal con­fes­sion of sins, or vid­dui, begins on Erev Yom Kip­pur, the day pre­ced­ing the hol­i­day, usu­ally at the min­chah, or after­noon ser­vice, but it can also be done at home. This admis­sion of sins, which begins Yom Kippur’s process of repen­tance, is the first step in the strug­gle to achieve inner purity. This quest for purity is embod­ied both in the tra­di­tional trip to the mik­vah, or rit­ual bath, on Erev Yom Kip­pur and in the wear­ing of white cloth­ing dur­ing Yom Kip­pur itself.

Erev Yom Kip­pur is also the time for the sym­bolic enact­ments of per­sonal atone­ment known as kap­parot, or atone­ments. These cer­e­monies also cre­ate an oppor­tu­nity to give tzedakah, or char­ity, one means offered by the tra­di­tion to “avert the severe decree” and be writ­ten in the book of life. In the old­est tra­di­tional form of kap­parot, a per­son twirls a live chicken over his or her head three times as an atone­ment for sin, while recit­ing an ancient for­mula (which can be found in a tra­di­tional mach­zor, or High Hol­i­day prayer­book). The chicken is then slaugh­tered and given to the poor as tzedakah. Although today many per­form the kap­parot cer­e­mony with coins in a hand­ker­chief that are then donated to tzedakah–while many oth­ers have elim­i­nated this tra­di­tional altogether–a live chicken embod­ies the vul­ner­a­bil­ity of human beings who will be judged by God on Yom Kippur.

This sense of vul­ner­a­bil­ity is height­ened by an aware­ness of life’s tran­sience. There are two Yom Kip­pur cus­toms that serve to remind us of the inevitabil­ity of death. The first is to light a memo­r­ial can­dle for par­ents who have died. The sec­ond is to wear a kit­tel, a white gar­ment that can sym­bol­ize both purity and death, dur­ing the Yom Kip­pur services.

The spir­i­tual work of repen­tance also demands a turn­ing away from bod­ily plea­sures, hence the fol­low­ing activ­i­ties are pro­hib­ited by tra­di­tional Jew­ish law on Yom Kip­pur: eat­ing and drink­ing, wash­ing, anoint­ing with per­fumes or lotions, sex­ual inter­course, and wear­ing leather shoes. The rea­son for not wear­ing leather is that it rep­re­sents mate­r­ial and finan­cial com­fort, which is con­trary to the humil­ity of spirit required for repentance.

Before Yom Kip­pur begins, every Jew is urged to under­take one other action that is not merely prepara­tory to repen­tance, but inte­gral to the process: request­ing for­give­ness from human beings against whom one has com­mit­ted trans­gres­sions. This is nec­es­sary in order to wipe the slate of inter­per­sonal rela­tion­ships clean before the start of the hol­i­day, since only sins human beings and God are addressed dur­ing Yom Kip­pur itself.

A good place to request for­give­ness from fam­ily mem­bers is at the seu­dah hamaf­seket, the con­clud­ing meal before the Yom Kip­pur fast. The meal should be sub­stan­tial, fol­low­ing the tal­mu­dic dic­tum that it is a mitz­vah to eat on Erev Yom Kip­pur, just as it is a mitz­vah to fast on Yom Kip­pur itself. The meal begins with the tra­di­tional hamotzi bless­ing over a chal­lah (rit­ual bread); because Yom Kip­pur has not actu­ally started yet when the meal is eaten, there is no Kiddush–sanctification over wine–recited.

After the meal, can­dles are lit to usher in Yom Kip­pur. Then the She­hecheyanu–bless­ing, thank­ing God for enabling us to reach this sea­son, is recited and the fast begins. Many par­ents bless their chil­dren with the priestly bless­ing before leav­ing for the Kol Nidre ser­vice with which the hol­i­day begins, and peo­ple wish each other “an easy fast.”

To sym­bol­i­cally con­nect Yom Kip­pur to the hol­i­day of Sukkot that begins five days later, it is tra­di­tional after the hav­dalah ser­vice at the end of Yom Kip­pur to go imme­di­ately and pound the first nail into the sukkah, the tem­po­rary shel­ter that serves as the cen­tral sym­bol of the lat­ter holiday.