More in ‘High Holidays’

Ritual and Observance:
God and Uman: Joining the Breslovers—and my cousin—for Rosh Hashanah in Ukraine, by Marc Caplan
Shoes You Can Use: What to wear on Yom Kippur, when leather is banned, by Allison Hoffman
The Festive Meal: When Yom Kippur was a time to eat, drink, and be merry, by Eddy Portnoy
Pardon Me: My childhood bullying, and ...

The Day of Atonement is a few days away, and tradition requires us to ask each other’s forgiveness for sins, slights, and other snafus we may have committed during the past year. If you’re in need for a bit of inspiration with all this sorry business, here are some musical examples of Jews apologizing in ...

If you’ve fallen out of the fold of synagogue membership, or if the economy’s got you down on high ticket prices for Yom Kippur, you’ve still got time to peruse your atonement options. The website No Membership Requiredoffers a list of last-minute, no-tickets-required services in cities across the country.
So now you’ve got no good excuse ...

Some coffee-addicted Orthodox Jews have a particular Yom Kippur ritual: they take caffeine suppositories on the Day of Atonement, a gambit that allows them to refrain from consuming any nourishment while also avoiding caffeine-withdrawal headaches. It’s a way—ignoring, for a moment, the delivery mechanism—of helping ensure the traditional Yom Kippur greeting, of having an easy ...

Fasting, repentance, getting inscribed in the book of life: these are all important aspects of Yom Kippur. But for me, it’s all about the music.
I stopped doing most of the things that Jews are supposed to do—going to synagogue, studying the Torah, not preparing shellfish dishes for Friday night dinner (I’d suggest the moules marinière, ...

Just a few days left till Yom Kippur, and the parade of apologies continues. Today’s sorry comes from a wise guy who doesn’t like going to synagogue, and who feels bad about the whiny jokes that upset his more-observant wife. You can listen to it here.
Is there something you’re truly sorry for? There’s still time ...

When I heard that A. had changed his name, I wasn’t a bit surprised. With its faint whiff of geriatric mitteleuropa, it had marked him as the child of survivors: the green shoot risen from the ashes of the camps. We were all Jewish, the majority of us children of immigrants, but the differences that ...

WHAT’S IT ALL ABOUT?
Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement, is the most awesome of all Jewish holidays. We mean that literally: the very last of the Days of Awe, the 10-day period beginning with Rosh Hashanah, Yom Kippur marks the sealing of the Book of Life, and with it our fates for the coming ...

In the spirit of Delia Ephron’s classic How to Eat Like A Child, illustrated by Edward Koren (Harper, 2001), we offer a guide for our elementary-school-aged friends on how to celebrate the holiday.
Gently kick the back of the pew in front of you. Kick rhythmically to the cantor’s chanting, until your mother suddenly clamps her ...

The question of how the actions of a handful of corrupt Jews reflect on the community at large is a tricky one—naturally, most of us don’t want to take personal responsibility for Bernie Madoff and his ilk, but there’s no denying the fact that sometimes the rest of the world, and even some of us, ...