Yom Kippur is the Jewish day of atonement, and begins last night at sunset and continues until nightfall today. (The Jewish day begins in the evening.) Traditionally, YK is a time of fasting, prayer, and repentance. Work is prohibited and much of the day is spent at synagogue. It is common to wear white, a symbol of the purity which results from the removal of sin.

The liturgy at synagogue includes several important components, a few of which I will mention here. First, prayers of confession of sin are spoken aloud and always use the language of “we” to acknowledge community responsibility for sin. In particular, confession of sins of speech–gossip, slander, lying–is made, as they are considered particularly heinous behaviors. During the final service of the day on YK, the ark which contains that synagogue’s Torah is left open, and so all in attendance must remain respectfully standing throughout the hour-long service, making their final confessions and pleas.

One, I am hugely intrigued by the notion of a ‘complete Sabbath.’ My hubby and I often reflect that our weekends are the busiest part of our lives, and come Sunday night we are often relieved to see Monday come, rather than relaxed and refreshed after a few days off. A weekly program of working diligently for 6 days and resting completely for 1 just sounds like something I’d like to try.

Two, I think we all have a lot to learn from the Jewish strictures against ‘sins of the tongue.’ Christians (and I am NO exception) have a way of making gossip seem holy–we share people’s dirty laundry in prayer requests, we mention what they’ve done wrong because we care, we treat meddling in people’s business like a sort of ministry. Of course there is room for the truth to be spoken about the ways others wrong us and the needs they have, but it would be good to be dilligent about speaking carefully, or not at all when we can’t be sure of our own motives or the benefits of speech. The Jewish approach to sin as a communal act is revealed nicely in this focus on ‘sins of speech,’ as gossip is definitely a way a whole community can commit a sin against particular members, and so against itself.

Three, I love the reverence shown in the synagogue for the word of God. American Christians are scientific realists–there is nothing special about the paper on which we print the words of our Bible. Ok. But what if treating even the paper–the physical book–as special transfers into helping us understand just how special the words contained therein truly are? A little mystery and ritual couldn’t possibly hurt Christians who have grown used to treating the things of their faith like they are ordinary.

This entry was posted on Monday, October 2nd, 2006 at 10:49 am and is filed under From the nation of Indig. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.