Yom Kippur Stories

"How I do kaparot?" repeated Rabbi Elimelech. "I do what everyone else does. I hold the rooster in one hand, the prayer book in the other, and recite: This is my exchange, this is in my stead, this is my atonement..."

"The Rebbe must know something we do not," whispered disciples of Rabbi Levi Yitzchak of Berditchev. "Perhaps he sees a terrible calamity decreed for the coming year, G-d forbid"

"By the sanction of the Almighty," Rabbi Leib intoned, "and by the sanction of the congregation... we declare it permissible to pray with the sinners..."

The scandalized crowd was about to eject the man from the synagogue, when the Rebbe turned from the wall and said: "Let him be. For us, Yom Kippur is just beginning, but for him, it's already Simchat Torah He's there already"

The Jews of the settlement began to feel desperate, and busy as they were, they scattered towards all the main roads, hoping against hope that even at this late hour a miracle would happen and they would find a tenth Jew...

There was a woman who had given birth there who had been left alone when everyone went to the synagogue...

Do you know where Kano is? Look it up on the map of Nigeria in West Africa

The boy knew the sounds made by all the different farm animals, and he especially esteemed the rooster's crowing. When he heard the weeping and the outcries, his heart was also shattered and he cried out loudly, "Cock-a-doodle-do! G-d, have mercy!"

As soon as the holy day was over, the man rode into Mezhibuzh, despondent and heartbroken. But the Baal Shem greeted him full of joy

I tried to hide from these hoodlums, and since it was Shabbat night, I closed my eyes and immersed myself in the Shabbat prayers. After several minutes a mustached Uzbek with a powerful physique and a scarred face approached me...

The few who survived were so emotionally and psychologically destroyed that they were never able to live normal lives. They lived together in little villages, apart from the rest of the world

Many dukes and princes wooed the princess, but she turned them down one after another. The king became impatient and swore that the next young man that would come to the gates of the palace would be her husband...

Slowly the shelter came to life. My mother got up and prepared breakfast--a few crackers with some jam we still had left, but neither my two sisters nor my mother touched the food...

Could we possibly forgo the sounding of the shofar, which symbolizes the redemption of Israel? For me, it was unthinkable...

In 1951, my father, Rabbi Moshe Greenberg, was 20 years old and a prisoner in a Soviet labor camp in Siberia. That Yom Kippur, he faithfully prayed all the day's prayers. All, that is, except for Kol Nidrei

It's an old voice, but powerful and steady. It is my Zaidy saying the mourner's Kaddish for his father, whose yahrtzeit is Yom Kippur

"Jay," my friend wrote in his e-mail, "I don’t think you should go to shul and ask G-d for forgiveness. This Yom Kippur you should stay home, and G-d should beg you to forgive Him for what He's done to you"