Yom Kippur: What is the Jewish Day of Atonement?

The ambassador added that he appreciates the United Nations finally recognizing the importance of Yom Kippur. Yom Kippur is the most solemn of Jewish holy days: a time of profound prayer, repentance, fasting, and self-examination.

Yom Kippur was instituted in Leviticus 16 and 23: 26-32, where the people are commanded to do no work on that day on penalty of being “cut off from their people” (verse 29). It falls each year on the 10 day of the Jewish month of Tishrei, which is nine days after the first day of Rosh Hashanah.

In the Jewish tradition, at the conclusion of Yom Kippur, which is an hour past sundown Wednesday, each person’s fate for the coming year is sealed.

Coolest thing about Yom Kippur: During their ever-so-long day of synagogue services, participants take part in a “group confession”. They end at nightfall with a blast on the shofar or ram’s horn.

Rabbi Mark Borovitz, the CEO of Beit T’Shuvah, a nonprofit treatment center and education institute, will be joined by Christian clergy at his Yom Kippur services at Agape worldwide Spiritual Center in Culver City to declare a “state of moral emergency” in relation to incarceration, addiction, lack of empathy and connection to the plight of the poor and homeless, and racism in all forms. “Connection, kinship and forgiveness are the key to seeing each other as human beings and not just objects”. She said, “They know a lot”.

“Our services start Tuesday evening at 8 p.m.”, he said. Wherever you are in the world we’d like you to share your experiences.