All of us are transgressors and we all need each other; atonement is to be achieved individually and communally.

kittel

Haaretz:………… Many Jewish men wear a kittel on Yom Kippur, the Day of Attonement. A kittel is a long white robe that a chatan (bridegroom) receives and wears for the first time at his wedding. Afterwards, according to custom, it can be worn on specific holidays, and after 120 years, it is worn as one’s burial shroud.

Passover seder

………….. In polls of Jewish observance, the Passover seder, circumcision, and fasting on Yom Kippur are among those regularly included. For some, fasting on Yom Kippur has taken on other than ritual significance – a spiritual day of purging, of cleansing the body. No matter the motivation, like all of the four children described in the Passover Hagada who attend the seder, the person who fasts on Yom Kippur has chosen that day to be included among his or her people.

Yom Kippur begins in the evening of Tuesday, September 25, 2012, and ends in the evening of Wednesday, September 26, 2012.

Yom Kippur is the one biblically mandated day when we are to be “afflicted.” Our rabbis teach us that affliction is refraining from wearing leather shoes, anointing, bathing, sexual relations, eating and drinking. For most of us, the first four on the list are not difficult abstentions for one day. But, even with preparation, not eating and drinking for 25 hours is challenging and is unquestionably an affliction.

………………… On Yom Kippur, we come together as communities, to plead for our lives, and to rely on G-d’s selective memory. As we say repeatedly from Rosh Hashanah to Yom Kippur in a verse chanted aloud by the congregation from the Avinu Malkeinu (Our Father, Our King) prayer, “Our Father, our King! Let thy remembrance of us be for good,” which is to say “Remember us with a favorable memory before You.” Even with my mitzvah-stained kittel, I don’t want to be measured against a strict standard of justice. (Note – we need to be careful in our judgment of others. As we judge, so we are judged.) Rather, it is G-d’s attribute of rachamim, of mercy, that we need individually and collectively, to gratuitously receive another opportunity to do better the next time.

………… Right after beginning the Yom Kippur Kol Nidre service, we say the words, “With the approval of the Omnipresent and with the approval of the congregation… we sanction prayer with the transgressors.” All of us are transgressors and we all need each other. Atonement is to be achieved individually and communally. “V’ahavta reiacha kamocha,” “You shall love the other as yourself.” What unites us is so much more than what divides us.

May all of us be written and sealed for a year of health, growth, and love.

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