Yom Kippur (Yom: Day, Kippur: Atonement)

Yom Kippur is the second of the holidays since I arrived. Rosh Hashana (“Head of the Year”) is the New Year’s celebration. I was out of the country during this few day celebration, but you can read about it on one of the blogs I'm following if you'd like (he is another Fulbright scholar, and his family is living down in Tel Aviv):

http://avi-rubin.blogspot.com/2010/09/rosh-hashana.html

I was sad to miss Rosh Hashana in Haifa, but you know, choices...

Yom Kippur is the “Day of Atonement”. The tradition holds that at the start of the new year God puts everyone’s name in the Book of Life and then between then and Yom Kippur, ten days later, it either gets sealed in there, or removed. So it is a time of repentance for the former year’s wrongs, apologizing to God for sins committed against Him and to humans for wrongs against them. Then on Yom Kippur there is fasting from sunset to sunset and four services at the synagogue for congregational and personal repentance.

I am not sure where the traditions came from. There’s no mention of all that in the Bible that I’m aware of, but the original Day of Atonement was established when God commanded Moses to have Aaron keep it annually, described in Leviticus 16. There we read about the sacrifices the priest made in the temple each year for the temple’s atonement, his own, and that of the people, as well as the live sacrifice of the scapegoat that represented the sins of the people (set free in the wilderness, to take the sins away).

Because this is the most holy day of the year of course there is no public transportation. All the stores are closed. There’s even no television or radio broadcasts (which doesn’t really matter since a lot of people fast technology in addition to food and sometimes water).

Some of my friends were going with their roommate to synagogue Friday night and I really wanted to join, so we had planned that I would walk down from the university and join them, then hoof it back up, and then Saturday night I would walk down to the service at our congregation…well at 13:45 on Friday my friend called me and suggested instead of me walking back and forth down and up the mountain, that I could spend the night with them down in the city and return after sunset on Saturday, by bus. Perfect! That gave me 15 minutes to pack and grab the last bus.

It was a great time hanging out with them, going to synagogue (my first time!), and spending some good time reading and praying. And it was so cool to see all the streets empty of cars, and filled with kids on bikes and people walking with friends and family, and dogs. :-D (Sorry I don’t have pictures. Even though riding bikes and walking long distances is not considered work, pressing the button to take a picture is, so out of respect to those strictly following traditions I left my camera at home.)

We spent the morning reading and chatting and laughing and napping, and then in the afternoon walked down to another friend’s house partway to congregation and after a bit of a rest we all wandered down there for service, prayer, communion, and breaking the fast together with soup and bread (almost two hours after the rest of the city, but better late than early ;-)).

We all helped clean up the tables and chairs and then since the sun had been down for a bit, a friend gave us a ride back to the flat, I gathered my things and hopped a bus back up the hill to my dorm, ready to start the new week. :-)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yom_Kippur