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This week, I tell a friend I’d love to chat but actually I have to run Yom Kippur services are starting soon and I’ve got to repent for my sins before the gates are closed. She laughs. “Well, you’re gay, so you’ve definitely got a lot of repenting to do.”

Each year, the voice that speaks to my soul about the contrast between the inward focus of Yom Kippur and the outward thrust of Sukkot grows louder and louder.

Inspired by Yom Kippur services in 5778, this poem reflects one writer's view of the most holy day in the Jewish year.

The Lord, the Lord is gracious and compassionate, patient, and abounding in kindness and faithfulness, assuring love for a thousand generations, forgiving iniquity, transgression and sin, and granting pardon. -Exodus 34:6-7

Turn the Torah scroll.
Turn back to Genesis
for the Rosh Hashana reading.

As the Torah scroll is rolled,
one person is on one side
pulling forward -
back to the beginning.
One person is on the other side
releasing the past.

Shabbat Shuvah is the Sabbath between Rosh HaShanah and Yom Kippur. The name is derived from the opening word of the haftarah reading that urges us: Shuvah Yisrael ad Adonai Elohecha, “Return, O Israel, to the Eternal your God.”

If, as the Talmud tells us, the blasts of the shofar are meant to remind us of crying, (Babylonian Talmud, Rosh Hashanah 33A – specifically of Sisera’s mother – but that is another subject!), then I would offer the following.

Like so many of the things we've done in the last few months, the annual Yom Kippur afternoon jaunt of my father and me to Barnes and Noble following the morning service at temple was more

Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement, is a concept I came to understand in my early adult years. But this was my understanding during my childhood: