Food For Thought While Fasting

by By Mark Pearlman of JInsider

To keep your mind off those waiting lox and bagels during Yom Kippur, this week’s column serves up some deeply filling insights from our Yom Kippur collection. These interview highlights can all be viewed at www.jinsider.com.

Fly Like an Angel

More than any other holiday, Yom Kippur talks to the soul of the Jew. The rabbis teach that the holiness of the day has the ability to transform us, somewhat, into angels for the day. The more seriously a person observes the day, the more he or she will be able to take advantage of its opportunities.
The rabbis teach us that on this day we can become like angels, inasmuch as we can rise above everyday mundane concerns, and gain a

new and fresh perspective on life, a more Godly perspective that can only enhance the quality of our lives. This makes us a better spouse, a better parent, a better human being all round, which makes us feel better about ourselves.

— Rabbi Pinchas Winston of Israel, world-class lecturer and prolific author of more than 25 books. www.thritysix.org

The Humbling Shofar

“The most intense part of the high holidays for me is the blowing of the shofar. There is the solid, long blast, then three blasts, nine short ones and then again a long blast. To me, they represent the narrative of the self. We start the holiday feeling complete, and slowly we start breaking ourselves down, into three parts and then into nine parts until we feel shattered and that’s what the cry of the shofar is suppose to do. It humbles us and breaks us to a certain extent. The message of the shofar is to pick up the pieces and bring ourselves back together, and that is why we end with one solid, long blast.
— Rabbi Yehuda Sarna, University Chaplain and Rabbi of the Bronfman Center for Jewish Life at New York University

Yom Kippur Gift

Hope is the biggest gift we have. Renewal after loss is a very big gift and that’s the Yom Kippur gift. It’s essentially telling us that there is always hope, nothing is impossible. If Yom Kippur were seen in that context, it would be a very powerful day because it’s a day where broken relationships can be fixed, where losses and disappointments can be renewed. It doesn’t mean you’ll always get what you want, but it means that you can renew your life. I think for people who have gone through loss or any type of mistakes, that it’s a very hopeful and powerful message.
— Rabbi Simon Jacobson of MLC@6th and author of the invaluable “60 Days: A Spiritual Guide to the High Holiday” (www.nyhighholidays.com)

Avodah Service & Experiencing God

At its essence [Yom Kippur] is a visceral experience of God. In some ways, the forgiveness for the holiday is all about a prelude to experiencing God. On Yom Kippur we do the “Avodah” service in which we bow down at the mention of God’s unmentionable name and that, in some ways, is the essence, for me, of Yom Kippur. Because once a year we are allowed the experience to be so close to God that we have to fall on our faces, and that’s not something that we can live with in our daily lives. But it is of paramount importance to experience once a year, to recognize that God plays a very powerful role in all of our lives.

— Rabbi Eli Kaunfer, Founder of Hadar, an independent, egalitarian community committed to spirited traditional prayer, study and social action. www.mechonhadar.org

My Yom Kippur

I’m moved to the roots of my being on Yom Kippur. This is partly because of the synagogue that I go to where the singing is very beautiful and very soulful. That, to me, makes it the most exalted day. Traditionally it’s regarded not as a day of doom and gloom. It’s not a day of mourning. It’s a day when we dress in white, and it’s a festival, and there is a sense of great joy and confidence on that day. Rosh Hashanah, if anything, is the day of judgment - and that has more complex associations. But Yom Kippur, in a certain sense, in its purity and in its joy, is something that I always emerge from feeling very fortunate, feeling very blessed.

— Avivah Zornberg, best-selling author, professor & world-renowned lecturer, who recently published The Murmuring Deep Reflections on the Biblical Unconscious.

Yom Kippur & Tishrei

Rosh Hashanah’s idea of judgment, on the deepest level, means to self-judge, to ask yourself who you are. What’s my purpose? Yom Kippur is a time that you come in and encounter yourself, who am I as a person? What’s my identity? The whole process of the month of Tishrei is to self-generate, to ask yourself a series of questions: “Who am I and how could I connect myself to something that is much larger and higher than me?”

Rabbi DovBer Pinson is a prolific author, spiritual mentor and kabbalist. He offers unique holiday experience at his IYYUN Center (www. iyyun.com

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