Yom Kippur, considered the holiest day on the Jewish calendar, began at sunset Tuesday and ends at nightfall Wednesday.
The Chabad Jewish Center of Clark County held a Kol Nidrei service Tuesday and will host multiple services throughout the day Wednesday. There are five prayers during the day-long period, said Rabbi Shmulik Greenberg. Yom Kippur is a day of forgiveness, atonement and renewal.
Jews reflect on how they can be better people and make the world a better place. God gives us this opportunity and expects us to do our part, Shmulik said.
Jews aim “to be less physical, more spiritual like angels,” he said. “We try to be like that on this special day.”
Unlike other Jewish holidays, which are more oriented around family, feasting and embracing all the gifts we have, Yom Kippur is spent in prayer as we recommit to being our best selves, said Tzivie Greenberg, the program director at the Jewish Center and Shmulik’s wife.
“It’s traditional to focus on our interpersonal relationships and our relationships with God,” she said. “Yom Kippur is that one day we try to abstain from physical pleasures, so that we can focus on our soul.”
Jews, except for children, traditionally fast during Yom Kippur. Every Shabbat, or Sabbath, Jews take a break from technology, so Yom Kippur is not any different in that sense.
“It’s solemn because it’s spent in prayer and self-reflection, but it’s not a sad day,” Tzivie said. That’s because there’s joy to bettering oneself, she said.
Those who know someone observing Yom Kippur can wish them “Happy Yom Kippur.” But, the more traditional greeting is “May you be sealed for a happy and sweet New Year.”
The greeting means that God will seal — or make the decision to grant, in a sense — a good year. And, the use of the word “sweet” is important because it refers to happenings in life that are naturally sweet and others that start bitter but become sweet. Shmulik uses the metaphor of peaches being naturally sweet, while onions are naturally bitter until they’re cooked. Or, maybe, paying taxes is bitter at first, but you get a tax return later, he said.
“The bitter will turn into sweet,” he said.
Yom Kippur ends with a blast from a shofar — a severed horn, typically from a ram, goat or kudu, with a hole drilled at the end. The sound is meant to mark the victory of achieving forgiveness.
