I think that everyone already knows that Yom Kippur is the Day of Atonement. But let’s speak a little bit about what atonement is, and how we got to this special day.
First of all, Yom Kippur in the Bible. It is important to know that it looks very different from how Jews practice it today.
The most important biblical source is in Leviticus 16. It’s too long to read, but basically it goes like this – Aaron carefully prepares himself to enter the Holy of Holies. He seeks atonement for the transgressions of himself and his family through the offering of a bull as a sacrifice, and atonement for the whole people through the offering of a goat as sacrifice. The blood is sprinkled in certain places in the sanctuary, including on the holy altar. The high priest then takes a live goat, lays both his hands on its head, and confesses the sins of the Israelites onto it. The goat then carries the sins out into the wilderness and set free.
That’s pretty powerful stuff – the image of our sins disappearing into the wild, vanishing from view and becoming forgotten.
But now we Jews have no Temple, no high priest, no animal sacrifices, no scapegoat. So how do Jews make atonement for our sins today? What happens now? Where’s the scapegoat in the synagogue?
Obviously the day of atonement hasn’t disappeared – we still observe it today. I’ll tell you one thing though: we do a lot of special things on Yom Kippur, but there are no goats and blood involved.
It was clear with the destruction of the Second Temple that Judaism was going to have to interpret and innovate if it was going to survive such a massive crisis. The sages determined that in this kind of dire situation, the people could complete our sacrificial obligations by reading them. They relied on the critique of the sacrificial system that we see in the prophets and psalms to determine that the utterance of a person’s lips in prayer stands in for the sacrifice and effects the same result.
But these ancient rituals are not forgotten or erased. They live on very clearly and obviously in our Yom Kippur prayers.
Yom Kippur has five distinct prayer services that day (unlike weekdays which have 3 and shabbat and festivals which have 4). And because we don’t need to take breaks to eat during the day, the day is one devoted to prayer.
The morning Torah reading for Yom Kippur is Leviticus 16, the original atonement practice. And one of the “additional” prayer services of the day is dedicated to recounting and remembering (making present) in our prayers the actions of the High Priest on this awesome day. The confession that was made by the High Priest onto the head of the scapegoat is maintained, but with a public confession of the whole congregation, together, ten times during the course of the day.
There is something very important and wonderful to remember here – atonement isn’t magic. It’s not that if we do certain things in a particular way, we are forgiven. We receive God’s mercy and forgiveness because of who He is, not because of what we do. Our job is to do the hard work of contrition, of repentance, of repairing the relationship. Prayer is an excellent vehicle for that hard work, while remembering that sacrifice was how our people did so in the past.
About the author
Dr. Faydra Shapiro is a specialist in contemporary Jewish-Christian relations and is the Director of the Israel Center for Jewish-Christian Relations. She received the National Jewish Book Award for her firs publication (2006). Her most recent book, together with Gavin d'Costa is Contemporary Catholic Approaches to the People, Land and State of Israel. Dr. Shapiro is also a Senior Fellow at the Philos Project https://philosproject.org and a Research Fellow at the Center for the Study of Religions at Tel Hai College in Israel https://english.telhai.ac.il.