Adath Jeshurun

Yom Kip­pur in the Community

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

Since Yom Kip­pur, the Day of Atone­ment, is a day of com­mu­nal prayer and self-deprivation, the obser­vance of the hol­i­day is cen­tered within the com­mu­nity. The first prayer ser­vice of Yom Kip­pur actu­ally takes place imme­di­ately prior to sun­set on the evening of Yom Kip­pur. This ser­vice is called “Kol Nidrei,” which means “all vows.” These are the first words of a legal for­mula that is recited at the begin­ning of this ser­vice and chanted three times.

The ori­gins of Kol Nidrei can be traced to the fact that at var­i­ous times in Jew­ish his­tory Jews were forced to con­vert to other reli­gions on pain of death. How­ever, after the dan­ger had passed, many of these forced con­verts would want to return to the Jew­ish com­mu­nity, in spite of their forced oaths of loy­alty to other faiths. Because of the seri­ous­ness with which the Jew­ish tra­di­tion holds words and promises, the Kol Nidrei for­mula was devel­oped in order to enable forced con­verts to return and pray with the Jew­ish com­mu­nity, absolv­ing them of their vows made under duress. This ancient cer­e­mony is an espe­cially solemn and mov­ing intro­duc­tion to the hol­i­day evening ser­vice of Yom Kip­pur. Even those most estranged from the Jew­ish com­mu­nity will return on this one evening a year in order to hear the age-old chant.

Sym­bol­iz­ing the spir­i­tual purity toward which we strive, it is tra­di­tional to wear white clothes on Yom Kip­pur, and many peo­ple wear a white robe-like gar­ment called a kit­tel. In addi­tion, Yom Kip­pur is the only day of the year when one wears one’s tal­lit (prayer shawl) all day, rather than just in the morning.

Yom Kip­pur prayer ser­vices are char­ac­ter­ized by their empha­sis on the two major themes of for­give­ness from sin and of teshu­vah, or repen­tance. Sin is not viewed as a per­ma­nent state in Judaism. On the con­trary, it means that we are chal­lenged to repent and improve our­selves. God for­gives us for the sins against the divine. In order to stand before God on Yom Kip­pur ready for true repen­tance, we must have first apol­o­gized and sought for­give­ness from those whom we have hurt over the course of the pre­vi­ous year. Only then are we truly pre­pared to repent before God on Yom Kippur.

Begin­ning with Sha­harit, the morn­ing ser­vice, the themes of seek­ing for­give­ness for sin and engag­ing in the process of teshu­vah form the core of the liturgy. The Torah read­ing details the ancient Yom Kip­pur rit­ual in which a scape­goat would sym­bol­i­cally carry the people’s sins into the desert (Leviti­cus 16). The Haf­tarah, or prophetic read­ing, is taken from the book of Isa­iah (Chap­ters 57 and 58), in which the prophet crit­i­cizes the reli­gious rit­u­als of the ancient Israelites when they are not accom­pa­nied by acts of right­eous­ness, char­ity, and morality.

One of the cen­tral aspects of the liturgy of Yom Kip­pur is called the Vidui, or “con­fes­sional.” In these prayers, the com­mu­nity recites a list of dif­fer­ent trans­gres­sions it has com­mit­ted, lit­er­ally from A to Z. [Since the vidui is actu­ally in Hebrew, the list of sins fol­lows the Hebrew alpha­bet, from aleph to tav.] Since no one sin­gle per­son has com­mit­ted all of these sins, the con­fes­sions are in the plural, in order to indi­cate that we as a com­mu­nity are col­lec­tively respon­si­ble for one another. When recit­ing the lists of sins, it is cus­tom­ary to softly beat one’s breast in a sym­bolic act of self-remonstration.

Two other addi­tions to the Yom Kip­pur liturgy are the Mar­ty­rol­ogy and the Avo­dah ser­vice, both of which are found in the Musaf (“addi­tional”) ser­vice. The Mar­ty­rol­ogy is actu­ally a long medieval poem that describes in painfully grue­some detail the deaths of famous rab­bis dur­ing ancient Roman per­se­cu­tions. This poem and sub­se­quent addi­tions from the time of the Cru­sades and (in some com­mu­ni­ties) the Holo­caust are intended to impress upon us the spir­i­tual devo­tion of our ances­tors, in addi­tion to inten­si­fy­ing the reli­gious and emo­tional tenor of the day. This is fol­lowed by the Avo­dah (“wor­ship”) ser­vice, which describes the rit­u­als enacted on Yom Kip­pur in the Jerusalem Tem­ple in antiq­uity, when the high priest would enter the Holy of Holies to utter the name of God at the height of the atone­ment rit­u­als. [Through­out the ser­vice, as we recount our trans­gres­sions, there is also a con­stant reminder in the liturgy that despite our sins, God has shown unwa­ver­ing com­pas­sion and mercy towards us.]

The Musaf ser­vice also repeats the main themes of the Sha­harit ser­vice and includes many ancient and medieval reli­gious poems. After the after­noon Torah read­ing, the Haf­tarah is the book of Jonah, whose well-known story of the prophet swal­lowed by a huge fish deals entirely with the theme of repentance.

The final ser­vice of Yom Kip­pur is unique to the day. Called Neilah (“clos­ing”), it refers to the sym­bolic clos­ing of the gates of heaven and the book of life, in which God inscribes the fate of each per­son for the com­ing year. There is a sense of spir­i­tual urgency that char­ac­ter­izes this ser­vice, as the sun is begin­ning to set and most peo­ple are light-headed and exhausted from the fast and pro­longed prayers. For a lengthy por­tion of Neilah, the doors of the Ark are opened, reveal­ing the Torahs inside. It is cus­tom­ary to stand when­ever these doors are opened.

Neilah builds in inten­sity until it con­cludes with a final tekiah gedolah, a “great blast” of the Sho­far, the ram’s horn. This awe-inspiring sound sig­nals the con­clu­sion of the Day of Atone­ment, after which it is cus­tom­ary to pre­pare or attend a fes­tive break-the-fast meal.