Adath Jeshurun

Prayer Ser­vices for Yom Kippur

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

Yom Kip­pur, the Day of Atone­ment, falls nine days after Rosh Hashanah and con­cludes the Ten Days of Awe (Yamim Nora’im). Yom Kip­pur is a solemn day of prayer and fast­ing, on which Jews pray for spir­i­tual purifi­ca­tion from past transgressions.

Kol Nidre

The first com­mu­nal prayer ser­vice of Yom Kip­pur actu­ally takes place imme­di­ately prior to sun­set on the evening of Yom Kip­pur. This ser­vice is called Kol Nidrei (“All Vows”). These are the first words of a spe­cial legal for­mula that is recited at the begin­ning of this ser­vice and is chanted three times. This legal rit­ual is believed to have devel­oped in early medieval times as a result of per­se­cu­tions against the Jews. At var­i­ous times in Jew­ish his­tory, Jews were forced to con­vert to either Chris­tian­ity or Islam upon pain of death.

How­ever, after the dan­ger had passed, many of these forced con­verts wanted to return to the Jew­ish com­mu­nity. How­ever, this was com­pli­cated by the fact that they had been forced to swear vows of fealty to another reli­gion. Because of the seri­ous­ness with which the Jew­ish tra­di­tion views ver­bal promises, the Kol Nidrei legal for­mula was devel­oped pre­cisely in order to enable those forced con­verts to return and pray with the Jew­ish com­mu­nity, absolv­ing them of the vows that they made under duress.

This ancient cer­e­mony found a spe­cial place in the hearts of the Jew­ish peo­ple and has been main­tained for cen­turies as an espe­cially solemn and mov­ing intro­duc­tion to the hol­i­day evening ser­vice of Yom Kip­pur. Kol Nidrei has no effect upon vows or promises that we make and break with other peo­ple. They still remain valid and, if bro­ken, for­give­ness and abso­lu­tion must be sought from the peo­ple affected–and not from God. As the Tal­mud teach­ers, “Yom Kip­pur does not for­give trans­gres­sions between a man and his fellow–until (or unless) he seeks for­give­ness from him (directly)” (Mish­nah Yoma 8:9).

Erev [the evening of] Yom Kip­pur is the only night of the entire Jew­ish cal­en­dar when a tal­lit (prayer shawl) is worn in the evening. As a mat­ter of fact, it is tra­di­tional to wear a tal­lit or a white gar­ment for the whole of the hol­i­day, the color white sym­bol­iz­ing both our spir­i­tual purity and our with­drawal from the van­i­ties of this world. [A white robe, called a kit­tel is worn by tra­di­ton­ally obser­vant men over their hol­i­day clothes. Lib­er­ally obser­vant indi­vid­u­als may choose to wear a white item of cloth­ing, or dress com­pletely in white.]

Day­time Services

The day­time ser­vices of Yom Kip­pur are char­ac­ter­ized by their empha­sis on the two major themes of for­give­ness from sin and teshu­vah, or repen­tance. Accord­ing to the tra­di­tional Jew­ish prayers, God imme­di­ately for­gives us for the sins that affect no one else other than our rela­tion­ship with God. For sins that affect and harm oth­ers, we must first apol­o­gize and seek for­give­ness from those whom we have hurt. Only then are the prayers of Yom Kip­pur con­sid­ered effec­tive in absolv­ing our sins. Teshu­vah is the process by which we rec­og­nize our sins, feel regret for hav­ing com­mit­ted them, and then resolve not to do them again and make resti­tu­tion for any harm we may have caused. All of the major prayers of the Yom Kip­pur liturgy focus on these themes.

Because Yom Kip­pur is a day on which we strive to achieve spir­i­tual purity, there is a tra­di­tion to wear white clothes to syn­a­gogue ser­vices. In addi­tion, due to the fact that Yom Kip­pur is a fast day, there need not be any breaks for lunch or other meals. There­fore, Yom Kip­pur has evolved over the cen­turies into a full day of com­mu­nal wor­ship ser­vices, although many com­mu­ni­ties still do break for a short period before Min­cha, the after­noon ser­vice. Begin­ning with Sha­harit, the morn­ing ser­vice, the prayers occupy them­selves with the above-mentioned themes of seek­ing for­give­ness for sin and engag­ing in the process of Teshu­vah or repentance.

Torah Ser­vice

The Torah por­tion read on Yom Kip­pur morn­ing is taken from Leviti­cus 16, which details the ancient bib­li­cal Yom Kip­pur rit­u­als in which two goats would be selected as sym­bolic sac­ri­fices. One would be sac­ri­ficed to God in the ancient belief that ani­mal sac­ri­fice could achieve divine ablu­tion from sin, and the other goat lit­er­ally became the “scape­goat” upon which the High Priest would sym­bol­i­cally place all the sins of the Jew­ish peo­ple. This scape­goat would then be sent off into the desert to a demon known as Azazel (pre­sum­ably to die there), thus car­ry­ing away the sins of the peo­ple. (Reform Jews read selec­tions from Deuteron­omy 29 and 30, as a reaf­fir­ma­tion of accept­ing covenan­tal responsibility.)

The Haf­tarah, or addi­tional bib­li­cal read­ing, is taken from the book of Isa­iah, Chap­ters 57 and 58, in which the prophet crit­i­cizes the empty, super­fi­cial reli­gious rit­u­als of the ancient Israelites when the rites are not accom­pa­nied by acts of right­eous­ness, char­ity, and morality.

Vid­dui

One of the unique aspects of the liturgy of Yom Kip­pur is a sec­tion of prayers called the Vid­dui or con­fes­sion. In these prayers, the com­mu­nity lit­er­ally recites an alpha­bet of dif­fer­ent trans­gres­sions it has com­mit­ted, from A to Z (or, actu­ally, Aleph to Tav, the first and last let­ters of the Hebrew alpha­bet in which the prayers were writ­ten). The lan­guage of the prayers, how­ever, is instruc­tional, for they are all in the plural; the point is that no one sin­gle per­son has com­mit­ted all of these sins, but rather we, as a com­mu­nity, are col­lec­tively respon­si­ble. When recit­ing the lists of sins, it is tra­di­tional to gen­tly beat on one’s breast over the heart in a sym­bolic act of self-remonstration.

Musaf

The Musaf, or addi­tional ser­vice, that fol­lows is a rep­e­ti­tion of the main themes of the Sha­harit ser­vice and includes many ancient and medieval reli­gious poems included over the cen­turies to con­tinue to heighten the spir­i­tual expe­ri­ence of the day. Two unique addi­tions to the Yom Kip­pur Musaf liturgy are the Mar­ty­rol­ogy and the Avo­dah, or wor­ship, 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, often­times includ­ing addi­tions from the time of the Holo­caust, is intended to impress upon us the spir­i­tual devo­tion of our ances­tors, as well as to inten­sify the reli­gious and emo­tional tenor of the day.

This is fol­lowed by the Avo­dah ser­vice, which refers to the rit­u­als enacted on Yom Kip­pur in the Tem­ple in Jerusalem in ancient times. Bas­ing itself on bib­li­cal prece­dents, the Avo­dah ser­vice is taken from rab­binic and Tal­mu­dic sources and describes the his­tor­i­cal high­lights of the awe­some and over­whelm­ing pageantry of the priests and Levites in the Tem­ple, with the peo­ple in atten­dance. The high­light of this ancient ser­vice describes how the high priest would enter the Holy of Holies, the inner­most and holi­est sanc­tu­ary of the Tem­ple, to present an offer­ing of incense and then emerge tri­umphantly to declare God’s accep­tance of the peo­ples’ prayers for atonement.

Min­cha

Depend­ing upon the length of ser­vices, there may or may not be a short break in the after­noon before the Min­cha ser­vice. At this ser­vice, the Torah is once again read, this time con­cern­ing the laws of for­bid­den mar­riages (Leviti­cus 18). Because sex­u­al­ity can and should be a vehi­cle for cre­at­ing the divine pres­ence in our lives, it is appro­pri­ate that such a seem­ingly pro­fane topic should be read in pub­lic on Yom Kip­pur. (Reform Jews read Leviti­cus 19, “the holi­ness code.”) The Haf­tarah for the Min­cha ser­vice is the entire bib­li­cal book of Jonah, which deals with the theme of repentance.

Neilah

The final ser­vice of Yom Kip­pur is the Neilah ser­vice. Neilah lit­er­ally means “clos­ing” and refers to the sym­bolic clos­ing of the gates of heaven and, hence, God’s will­ing­ness to hear the prayers of the Jew­ish peo­ple. There is, there­fore, a spir­i­tual urgency moti­vat­ing prayer at this ser­vice, as the sun is begin­ning to set and most peo­ple are light-headed and exhausted from the long day of fast­ing and pray­ing. The high­light of this ser­vice is that, for a lengthy por­tion of it, the doors of the Ark are opened, reveal­ing the Torahs inside.

When­ever the doors of the Ark are opened, it is cus­tom­ary to stand out of honor and def­er­ence to the holi­ness of the divine words con­tained in them. Since the doors of the Ark are then left open through­out the lengthy last part of the ser­vice, the entire con­gre­ga­tion is tra­di­tion­ally expected to remain stand­ing for quite a while dur­ing this final, spir­i­tu­ally urgent prayer ser­vice. Although, it should be noted, that if this period of pro­longed stand­ing proves to be too uncom­fort­able or even dan­ger­ous to the health of some in the con­gre­ga­tion, it is appro­pri­ate to sit down.

The Ne’ilah ser­vice builds in inten­sity until it con­cludes with a final Tekiah Gedolah or great blast of the Sho­far, the ram’s horn. This blast, usu­ally blown as soon as the stars come out, sig­nals the con­clu­sion of the Day of Atone­ment. Once they have heard the sho­far, most peo­ple rush off to attend the fes­tive and much needed “break the fast” meal imme­di­ately fol­low­ing ser­vices, ready to enter the new year with their spir­i­tual bat­ter­ies recharged. In many con­gre­ga­tions, this rush is delayed by a few min­utes for the recita­tion of ma’ariv, the evening prayer; because days, in Jew­ish tra­di­tion, begin at sun­down, this actu­ally is the ma’ariv prayer of the day after Yom Kip­pur, and is empha­sized by many con­gre­ga­tions so that the clean slate after Yom Kip­pur is not imme­di­ately sul­lied by skip­ping a daily prayer service.