Yom Kippur Prayers Text

[Cecelia Seiner]

ThisMahzor marries the sophisticated graphic approach for which Koren Publishers Jerusalem is renowned with the insight and eloquence of Rabbi Sacks, one of today's leading Jewish thinkers. The Koren Sacks Yom Kippur Mahzor brings out the inner meaning of the Yom Kippur prayers by aligning the Hebrew and English texts, highlighting key words, distinguishing poetry from prose, and using beautiful fonts designed by master typographer Eliyahu Koren.

Rabbi Sacks' translation brings readers closer than ever before to the authentic meaning of the Hebrew text, while his introduction and commentary provide new ways of understanding and experiencing the Yom Kippur service. Includes additional Piyutim and Selihot as well as the full text of the Mishnah Yoma with commentary.

From there we move on to the Holocaust, with two poems, one by Jacob Glatstein, and another by Yehuda Amichai. The tone differs immediately from that of the previous texts, since these are personal, autobiographical accounts. No longer is the writer speaking for the community to God; he is this lone individual, telling the poetry-reading public with nostalgia and sadness about his father, his mother, and the passing of a way of life. Now, Glatstein is a fine poet and Amichai a great one, but it is hard to imagine what purpose these poems might serve as prayers, unless we assume that God is a literary critic. There is something provisional, tentative about the inclusion of these two testimonies in our prayer books; a thousand others on the subject might have been chosen. And here we see the dilemma of the Conservative Jewish authorities who assembled these memorial texts, trying to update the prayer book. If, as Adorno cautioned, no poetry should be written after the Holocaust, and by extension, any attempt to make literary capital out of the subject is likely to trivialize, then these modern poems are bound to disappoint as martyrdom texts.

Phillip Lopate is director of Columbia University's nonfiction program, editor of The Art of the Personal Essay, and author of Against Joie de Vivre, Portrait of My Body, and To Show and to Tell, among other books.

The formal Hebrew name of the holiday is Yom HaKippurim, 'day [of] the atonements'.[6] This name is used in the Bible,[7] Mishnah,[8] and Shulchan Aruch.[9] The word kippurim 'atonement' is one of many Biblical Hebrew words which, while using a grammatical plural form, refers to a singular abstract concept.[6]

Beginning in the classical period, the singular form kippur began to be used in piyyut, for example in Unetanneh Tokef, alongside the standard plural form kippurim. Use of kippur spread in the medieval period, with Yom Kippur becoming the holiday's name in Yiddish and Kippur in Ladino. In modern Hebrew, Yom Kippur or simply Kippur is the common name, while Yom HaKippurim is used in formal writing.[6]

Yom Kippur is one of the two High Holy Days, or Days of Awe (Hebrew yamim noraim), alongside Rosh Hashanah (which falls nine days previously).[10] According to Jewish tradition, on Rosh Hashanah God inscribes each person's fate for the coming year into the Book of Life, and waits until Yom Kippur to "seal" the verdict.[11] This process is described dramatically in the poem Unetanneh Tokef, which is recited on Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur:

A great shofar will be blown, and a small still voice will be heard. The angels will make haste, and be seized with fear and trembling, and will say: "Behold, the day of judgment!"... On Rosh Hashanah it is written, and on the Yom Kippur fast it is sealed, how many will pass and how many will be created, who will live and who will die, who in his time and who not in his time... But repentance, prayer, and charity remove the evil of the decree... For You do not desire a person's death, but rather that he repent and live. Until the day of his death You wait for him; if he repents, You accept him immediately.

During the Days of Awe, a Jew reflects on the year, goals, and past actions, how his or her behavior has possibly hurt others and seek forgiveness for wrongs done against God and against other human beings.

While repentance for one's sins can and should be done at any time, it is considered especially desirable during the Ten Days of Repentance between Rosh Hashana and Yom Kippur, and particularly on Yom Kippur itself.[13] Thus, the Yom Kippur prayers contain extended confessions which list varieties of errors and sins, and to which one can add their own missteps, along with requests for forgiveness from God.

According to the Talmud, "Yom Kippur atones for sins done against God (bein adam leMakom), but does not atone for sins done against other human beings (bein adam lechavero) until the other person has been appeased."[14] Therefore, it is considered imperative to repair the harm that one has done to others before or during Yom Kippur. Yom Kippur is described in the prayers as "a day of creating love and brotherhood, a day of abandoning jealousy and strife".[15] It is said that "if one does not remove hatred [from their heart] on Yom Kippur, their prayers are not heard".[16]

According to the Bible, after the golden calf sin, Moses descended from Mount Sinai and broke the Tablets of Stone, which contained the Ten Commandments and symbolized the covenant with God.[17] After God agreed to forgive the people's sin, Moses was told to return to Mount Sinai for a second 40-day period, in order to receive a second set of tablets.[18] According to rabbinic tradition, the date Moses descended with the second set of tablets was Yom Kippur. On this day Moses announced to the people that they had been forgiven; as a result the Torah fixed this date as a permanent holiday of forgiveness.[19][20][21]

The new covenant, which God announced by proclaiming the Thirteen Attributes of Mercy to Moses, is textually similar to the covenant of the Ten Commandments except that God's nature is described as merciful and forgiving, rather than zealous.[22] When the Jewish people sinned in later eras, prophets would repeatedly quote the Thirteen Attributes to God as a reminder of God's commitment to mercy and forgiveness.[23] This is continued to the present day, as recitation of the Thirteen Attributes remains an important part of the Yom Kippur prayers (in Maariv and Neilah).

Yom Kippur was also unique as a time of closeness to God in the Yom Kippur Temple service. Yom Kippur was the only occasion on which the High Priest of Israel was allowed to enter the Holy of Holies, the innermost chamber of the Temple in Jerusalem, where God's presence was said to dwell. On Yom Kippur the High Priest entered the Holy of Holies several times, first to create a cloud of incense smoke in which (the Bible promises) God would reveal Himself without being seen,[26] and later to offer sacrifices of atonement.[27]

While the encounter with God and the atonement may appear to be unrelated, in fact they are mutually dependent. On one hand, the priest is only worthy to approach God when in a state of purity, with the sins of the people being forgiven. On the other hand, only by approaching God with an intimate, personal request can God be persuaded to abandon justice for mercy, permitting the purification to take place.[28][29]

A midrash compares the Yom Kippur prayers to a verse from the Song of Songs, describing a woman who rises from bed at night to begin a romantic encounter with her lover. With each Yom Kippur prayer, it is implied, Jews approach closer to God:

Using a similar metaphor, the Mishnah describes Yom Kippur as a wedding date, as on this date Moses returned having reestablished the covenant between God and Israel.[34] Along with Tu B'Av, Yom Kippur was historically considered one of the two happiest days of the Jewish year, for on this day Jews receive forgiveness for their sins, and on this date the covenant with God was reestablished.[35]

There are two forms of impurity in Judaism (see Tumah and taharah): ritual impurity (e.g. when one touches a corpse) and moral impurity (when one commits a serious sin).[37][38] While the Yom Kippur Temple service did purify the Temple if it had become ritually impure,[39] the emphasis of the day is on the Jewish people's purification from moral impurity.[36]

Leviticus 16:30 mentions purification twice. According to Netziv, the first mention is a promise that God will purify Israel on this day, while the second is a command, calling on Israel to purify themselves through repentance.[40] Thus, on this day Jews do their utmost to repent. But if, by the end of the day, they have reached the limits of their ability and are still morally flawed, God extends them forgiveness and purification anyway.[41]

Jeremiah 17:13 states that "Israel's hope (mikveh) is in God". According to Rabbi Akiva, this verse alludes to a ritual purification bath (also pronounced mikveh), and thus on Yom Kippur God metaphorically becomes a mikveh in which Israel immerses and purifies itself.[42] This idea is symbolized by immersion in an actual mikveh. In the Yom Kippur Temple service, the High Priest would immerse upon putting on and taking off his white Yom Kippur garments;[43] the rabbis counted no fewer than five immersions over the course of the day's service.[44] Among modern-day Jews, too, there is a custom of immersion before Yom Kippur (though not on Yom Kippur itself, as bathing is forbidden in normal circumstances).[45]

When the scapegoat was selected on Yom Kippur to symbolically carry the people's sins to the desert, a crimson cord was tied around its horns.[46] While the practical purpose of this cord was to distinguish the scapegoat from the goat which was to be slaughtered, it also symbolized the sin which the scapegoat was carrying away.[47] Isaiah 1:18 promises that if the Jewish people repents, "if [their] sins are like crimson, they shall become white as snow." According to tradition, in some years the scapegoat's cord would miraculously turn white to indicate that the people's sins were forgiven and purification achieved in that year.[48]

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