Yom Kippur 2021

 This is a troubled year and these are troubled times. Personally I am doing fine, but many aren't. Yom Kippur is a time of personal repentance, but it is also a time of collective repentance so in addition to praying for correction for my own shortcomings I will pray that the people of G-d will seek atonement with Him and in so doing find safety, adequate sustenance and peace.

Yom Kippur is the Day of Atonement, At-One-Ment. The holiest day in Judaism. Basically a day for seeking to bury the hatchet with G-d. The sins that separate you from G-d, you seek to make penance for. It's kind of a prefigurement of the Day of Judgment.

The Bible actually says that Yom Kippur is to be a day when you voluntarily "afflict" yourself. Generally that has been taken to mean that you fast from sundown to sundown. You like that coffee in the morning? Don't have it. Like your food? On this day you aren't eating it. Sex is also abstained from. It's a Sabbath, even though it doesn't fall on the Sabbath Day, so no work.

This will be the first year that I am attempting to do Yom Kippur right. That means I will be fasting, I won't be drinking coffee or anything but plain water. My track record with fasting isn't great, but nevertheless I am going to undertake it.

Repentance is very unfashionable these days. Atonement is unfashionable. The modern idea is that we are all peachy keen just the way we are. Self-esteem first and foremost. Unconditional self-acceptance is practically a modern commandment.

I look around the world: is this what peachy keen looks like? This is NOT what peachy keen looks like. And we will never get there in this world or even close until we conform our lives to G-d first and foremost.

Now, and I am not proud to say this, one thing I will probably not be abstaining from this Yom Kippur is tobacco. I go quite crazy when I can't smoke, and I think being crazy will make this already somber occasion unmanageable. For people with medical issues and the elderly, not going full out on Yom Kippur is acceptable. But while my condition may prohibit me from putting down the smokes, nothing prevents me from not eating so I will do that.

I was born and raised a Gentile, so there may be aspects of Yom Kippur that I may not get. Also among the Jews it is almost always a collective event, Jews gather together and suffer together and repent together. I am alone, I do not ascribe to Rabbinical Judaism exactly and even if I did, there is likely not an orthodox community within 80 miles of me. So that is also different from the typical Jewish experience of Yom Kippur.

Nevertheless, I will do it the best I can, and I hope it will be acceptable to G-d.

May your name be written in the Book of Life.

Maurycy Gottlieb - Jews Praying in the Synagogue on Yom Kippur