In Israel, everything stops for a day during Yom Kippur. The airport shuts down, public transportation ceases to function, and devout Jews observe a 25-hour fast. On this day, everyone comes together to pray and seek forgiveness from God. Tonight is the start of Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement, the most solemn day of the year. Dr. Faydra Shapiro, a specialist in contemporary Jewish-Christian relations from the Israel Center for Jewish-Christian Relations in the Galilee, speaks for the Heschel Center of the Catholic University of Lublin about this holiday’s spiritual and biblical significance. 

The prophet Isaiah emphasizes God's mercy for repentant sinners. According to the Babylonian Talmud, people who repentant, who abandoned sinful life and drew closer to God are in a more important position than the greatest of the righteous. In telling the paradoxical parable of the workers in the vineyard, Jesus drew on the Old Testament and Jewish tradition, says Shlomo Libertowski, a Torah lecturer at Beth Shemesh, in a commentary on the September 24 Gospel for the Catholic University of Lublin's Heschel Center.

The key to understanding Jesus' answer to Peter's question about the limit of forgiveness is the parable of the merciful king and the unmerciful debtor. Jesus reveals a whole new dimension to the approach to the law, the reality that by experiencing God's boundless mercy and imitating it toward our brothers and sisters, we become like Him," writes Fr. Benedetto Di Bitonto, Ph. D., of the Saint James Vicariate for Hebrew speaking Catholics in Israel, in a commentary for the Catholic University of Lublin's Heschel Center for Sunday, September 17.

It sometimes happens that the offending brother or sister shows no remorse, takes no responsibility for the harm done, and makes no effort to repair the damage. Then forgiveness may not be healing but dangerous both for the individual who has been abused and for the community. This is how Jesus’ indications on forgiveness and care for theconversion of a brother or sister is commented on by Dr. Amy-Jill Levine, professor of the New Testament and Jewish Sciences, the first Jewish woman to lecture on the New Testament at the Pontifical Biblical Institute in Rome, in her commentary for the Catholic University of Lublin Heschel Center for the Sunday, September 10.

The story of the Ulma family, martyrs who helped Jews during World War II, is an example of the heroic bravery of an ordinary family - people who "defended life at the cost of life." On September 10, an unprecedented beatification for the universal Church will take place in Markowa - the beatification of an entire family of martyrs - a married couple and seven children, including one still in the womb of their pregnant mother.

The Evangelists repeatedly mention the fear of the first of the apostles - St. Peter. It was St. Peter walking on the water who was afraid of the wind and began to sink. St. Peter feared persecution; after all, St. Peter also denied Jesus three times. Biblical scholar Fr. Prof. Mariusz Rosik states in his Sunday, September 3 commentary that Piotr's ability to overcome fear and give his life for faith was due to love. "The threefold betrayal contrasts with the threefold confession of love," the biblical scholar writes for the Heschel Center of the Catholic University of Lublin.

Ties between God and His people are the focus of the ongoing Jewish month of Elul. It is a time of renewing relationships with God and His special presence. To establish a bond with heaven, however, one must first mend ties with one’s neighbors, writes Rabbi Oded Peles, a Jewish cantor, and Israeli educator who looks at the words of the Gospel of Sunday, August 27, from the perspective of Jewish faith and tradition, in a commentary for Heschel Center of the Catholic University of Lublin. 

The Canaanite woman in the Gospels is an example of a mother's love, extraordinary humility, and Jesus even gives her as an example of faith, writes in a commentary for Sunday, August 20 for the Heschel Center of the Catholic University of Lublin Fr. Paul Rytel-Andrianik, a biblical scholar, Editor-in-Chief of the Polish Section of the Vatican Radio and Vatican News.

The story of the calming of the storm belongs to the initial core of tradition, so before it was written down in Greek, it had been transmitted orally in Hebrew or Aramaic to Jewish listeners in Israel. What the story of Jesus calming the waters of the Sea of Galilee meant to the first listeners, and how they might have interpreted it, writes Professor Serge Ruzer, lecturer in the Department of Comparative Religious Studies at Hebrew University in Jerusalem, in a commentary for Sunday, August 13 for the Heschel Center of the Catholic University of Lublin.