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Quotes About Yom Kippur

only the high priest can enter the Holy of Holies, and on only one day a year, Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement, when all sins of Israel are wiped clean. On this day, the high priest comes into presence of God to atone for the whole nation. If he is worthy of God's blessing, Israel's sins are forgiven. If he is not, a rope tied to his waist ensures that when God strikes him dead, he can be dragged out of the Holy of Holies without anyone else defiling the sanctuary.
~ Reza Aslan
'Kol Nidrei' is probably the most important prayer in the Jewish religion. It comes on the evening of Yom Kippur. There are so many different renditions of it.
~ Itzhak Perlman
Yom Kippur. The day of Atonement. Should we fast? The question was hotly debated. To fast would mean a surer, swifter death. We fasted here the whole year round. The whole year was Yom Kippur.
~ Elie Wiesel
On 6 October 1973, the Yom Kippur war broke out between a coalition of Arab states and Israel. At 6 A.M. that morning, Kissinger, asleep in the Waldorf, was taken by surprise by the Arab attack - as were the CIA and the rest of the world.
~ Alistair Horne
But how could Yoel, of all people, not realize that Gush Emunim, with its vision of unrestrained power and occupation, was repeating the very sin of arrogance that had led to Yom Kippur?
~ Yossi Klein Halevi
In Yom Kippur, the status of being unclean fades before the divine presence. Yet if one cannot distinguish between God and Satan, if one calls evil good, if one's religion places limits on the love of God, if one claims that being God's chosen means that all others are God's rejected, then there can be no atonement, and Yom Kippur is a failure.
~ John Shelby Spong
Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement, is the holy of holies of Jewish time. It is that rarest of phenomena, a Jewish festival without food. Instead it is a day of fasting and prayer, introspection and self-judgment when, collectively and repeatedly, we confess our sins and pray to be written into God's Book of Life.
~ Jonathan Sacks
To those who fully open themselves to it, Yom Kippur is a life-transforming experience. It tells us that God, who created the universe in love and forgiveness, reaches out to us in love and forgiveness, asking us to love and forgive others. God never asked us not to make mistakes. All He asks is that we acknowledge our mistakes, learn from them, grow through them and make amends where we can.
~ Jonathan Sacks
People can't function without forgiveness. It's why the Catholics have confession and the Jews have Yom Kippur. You recognize your failings, and you move on.
~ Simon Wood
There are things about the Jewish religion that I carry with me to this day. Chief among them is Yom Kippur, or the Day of Atonement, as it's so happily called. It had a profound effect on my innocent young mind. The service opens with the organ playing "Kol Nidre," one of the spookiest pieces of music ever written. You hear it and literally are surprised bats and sh*t aren't flying around.
~ black lewis ii
Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement, is the holy of holies of Jewish time. It is that rarest of phenomena, a Jewish festival without food. Instead it is a day of fasting and prayer, introspection and self-judgment when, collectively and repeatedly, we confess our sins and pray to be written into God's Book of Life.
~ Jonathan Sacks
Most people, including many Jews, think of Yom Kippur as a 25-hour caffeine headache capped off by a lox-and-bagels binge. It's undeniably that. But it is also, at its deepest level, a dry run. It is the one day of the year when we Jews are asked to look our mortality in the face.
~ Bari Weiss
Every Yom Kippur, Jewish tradition requires a strict spiritual inventory. You aren't supposed to just sit around feeling guilty, but to take action in the real world to set things right.
~ Naomi Wolf
In Judaism, almost every ritual entails either food or the absence of food. Yom Kippur, for instance, is the absence of food. Part of it is Talmudic, part of it is custom. So much of Judaism was bound up in dietary laws. So everything you ate - the very act itself - was part of religion.
~ Gil Marks
The prophetic vision of the Temple was revealed to Ezekiel on Yom Kippur in the year 3352 (408 B.C.E.), a Jubilee Year.6 On Yom Kippur in the Jubilee Year, Jewish slaves are freed and land in Israel that had been sold during the previous forty-nine years, is returned to its original tribal ownership.
~ Chaim Clorfene
A friend of mine tells a story about some Israeli students who were called up in the 1973 Yom Kippur War. As soon as they were notified, they went back to their rooms at University, and each packed his gear, a rifle, and a book of Yehuda Amichai's poems.
~ Chana Bloch
Yom Kippur. For Jews this is the day when we ask forgiveness for our sins, the holiest day of our calendar.
~ Colum McCann
The announcement of the verdicts was completed on October 1, 1946. Appropriately, this date fell on Yom Kippur, the climax of the High Holy Days in Judaism. This sacred Day of Atonement is the day to face up to one's sins and their consequences. On this day, the tribunal would announce the consequences of the sins committed against humanity by the twenty-two Nazi defendants.
~ James Waller
There are things about the Jewish religion that I carry with me to this day. Chief among them is Yom Kippur, or the Day of Atonement, as it's so happily called. It had a profound effect on my innocent young mind. The service opens with the organ playing "Kol Nidre," one of the spookiest pieces of music ever written. You hear it and literally are surprised bats and shit aren't flying around.
~ Lewis Niles Black
The New Testament varies widely as well, with the Gospel writers understanding Jesus' death as a Passover sacrifice and the author of Hebrews considering it a Yom Kippur sacrifice. Mixing those two is a bit like putting a Christmas tree up on Easter, which is basically what Paul does in his various letters.
~ Unknown
Since a year encompasses a great deal of events, so do our services in the month of Elul. As we prepare for the redemption offered us by Yom Kippur, we focus on what I like to call the three T's: Torah, tefilah, and tzedakah.
~ Unknown
For on Yom Kippur not only work is forbidden, as on the Sabbath, but there are five innuyim, or forms of self-discipline: the prohibitions of eating and drinking (counted as one), anointing with oils, sexual relations, washing (for pleasure), and wearing leather shoes.
~ Unknown