Yom Kippur Insights

On Yom Kippur we embrace. Our harmony is no longer a harmony of "should", but a harmony of "is". All is forgiven. At onement

Why waste the holiest day of the year dwelling on everything you messed up?

I find Yom Kippur depressing. Why spend a day focusing on our sins and failures? Do we need to be reminded how far we are from being perfect?

We are physical beings, and the laws of physics (at least as they stand now) dictate that time runs in one direction only. Yet for some reason, we just won't let go. We continue to feel responsible for what was, continue to regard our past as something that still "belongs" to us and which we can somehow "fix"

What motivates these people to come to synagogue on Yom Kippur? If they believe in G‑d and seek atonement, if their Judaism is meaningful to them, where are they the rest of the year?

Once I've made a mistake, can it ever be retroactively un-done?

I understand that fasting on Yom Kippur is supposed to make me focus on my soul rather than my body. But by around lunch time I am so hungry that for the rest of the day all I can think about is food. Doesn't this defeat the purpose?

At a certain point we have lived long enough to see that every choice we made was made in ignorance.

Imagine you could go back in time... What would you do differently, now that you have the benefit of 20/20 hindsight and the added maturity and wisdom which comes with age and experience?

Everything we do takes time, but the greater the quality of our endeavor, the less the quantity of time it consumes. Yom Kippur, which brings us in touch with our deepest, most essential self, occupies less than 0.3 percent of the year.

How can we possibly imagine that in the conglomerate of cells, organs and limbs we call our "body", extending across the hills and valleys of the terrain we call "time", there resides a single and singular "I"?

When Neilah, the final prayer of the long day starts we may find ourselves out of gas. Drained, back hurting, the guy next to me has bad breath and I have nothing left to give...

You are Jonah. The real you, for “Jonah”—in Kabbalistic parlance—is another name for the soul. Hence, the story of Jonah is the story of a soul’s journey here on earth.

A person must be given the ability to have a new start, because it is virtually impossible to put together the broken pieces of what was hitherto a mismanaged financial ledger while burdened by unbearable debt. The same is true in a spiritual sense...

The Yom Kippur Torah reading begins with the words: "The L-rd spoke to Moses after the death of Aaron's two sons, when they drew near before the L-rd, and they died." What bearing does this prefatory verse have on our personal Yom Kippur service?

My soul is like a hard drive, slow and sluggish from accumulated data. Once a year I run the Yom Kippur program, and cull the extraneous files...

The stress of the morning reached its crescendo, and I proceeded to lay down my royal flush of emotional cards in my epic battle to win the "blame game" with my husband...

From my perspective as a family therapist, the greatest treasure in our Torah-inheritance is the instruction to free ourselves of anger and resentment...

Every Jewish person is a potential temple for G‑d, and every individual is the serving high priest in his or her personal temple. The goal of the Yom Kippur prayer service is to access the Holy of Holies of this temple...

What happened in the past is behind us in the rearview mirror. The future looms ahead, just beyond the horizon. Is there any way to circumvent this seeming unavoidable truth?

A Yom Kippur machzor (prayerbook) is a one-day tool; unlike the standard siddur or Rosh Hashanah machzor, there is no second day use for this prayer book.

I think that if I focus on this past year I will only feel guilty and depressed. Can't I just forget about the past and move on?

Doesn't it seem strange that the High Priest wouldn't dress in his finest gold garments for his meeting with the Almighty in the Holy of Holies?

The comfort and security that life today affords has somehow convinced us that suffering is abnormal, and that we must do everything in our power to avoid it or negate it, run away from it or erase it. The catch is that life is still full of suffering...

As hard as forgiveness can be between acquaintances, it's still child's play compared to the guts and humility it takes to drive the two-way street between ourselves and those closest to us.

We were just confirmed "sinless" moments prior. So, why do we now recite the blessing of Selach lanu, wherein we ask G‑d to "forgive us for we have sinned""?