Mystical systems
Yom Kippur
Direct answer
Yom Kippur: Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement, is the holiest day of the Jewish year: about twenty-five hours of fasting, prayer and repentance on the tenth of Tishrei.
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At a glance
- Also called
- day of atonement
- Found in
- Mystical Systems
- Related
- Atonement, Repentance, Sabbath, Lent
Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement, is the holiest day of the Jewish year: about twenty-five hours of fasting, prayer and repentance on the tenth of Tishrei.
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What is Yom Kippur?
Yom Kippur closes the ten days of repentance that begin with the Jewish new year. From before sunset until after nightfall the next day, observant Jews take no food or drink. Rabbinic law adds four further restraints: no washing, no anointing, no leather shoes and no marital relations. Most of the day is spent in the synagogue.
The day's services open with Kol Nidre in the evening and close with Ne'ilah, the closing of the gates, and a blast of the ram's horn. Jewish law sets the saving of life above the fast: anyone whose life the fast might endanger, such as the gravely ill or a woman who has just given birth, is required to eat, and young children do not fast.
On the tree of the hidden arts: Fasting and discipline.
What sets Yom Kippur apart
Yom Kippur is a fast kept in company and mostly indoors. Its confessions are said in the plural, we have sinned, so that no one is singled out, and the tradition teaches that the day atones for wrongs against God but not for wrongs against another person until that person has been appeased. The restraints are read as a rehearsal of death and of the life of angels: white clothes, no food, no leather, a day lifted out of ordinary living.
- Date: the tenth of Tishrei, ten days after the new year
- Length: about twenty-five hours, from before sunset to after nightfall
- Scripture: Leviticus 16 and Leviticus 23:27 to 32
- Five restraints: food and drink, washing, anointing, leather shoes, marital relations
- Opening and close: Kol Nidre in the evening; Ne'ilah and the ram's horn at the end
- Overriding rule: pikuach nefesh: the saving of life comes before the fast
Often mistaken for something else: Rosh Hashanah, ten days earlier, is the new year and a day of judgement kept with festive meals; Yom Kippur is the day the judgement is sealed and is kept by fasting.
The story behind Yom Kippur
Leviticus commands that on the tenth day of the seventh month the people afflict themselves and do no work, and describes the rite in which the high priest entered the inner sanctuary once a year and a goat was sent into the wilderness bearing the people's sins. After the Temple was destroyed in the year 70, prayer, fasting and repentance took the place of the sacrifice. The five restraints are set out in the Mishnah.
Why Yom Kippur matters
Yom Kippur is the clearest case of a fast that is wholly about repentance, and of a law that puts life before the discipline.
How to read Yom Kippur
Jews keep it as the most solemn day of the year; the phrase day of atonement is also used figuratively for any reckoning.
Yom Kippur in practice: an example
A Jewish family that eats together before sunset, walks to the synagogue in cloth shoes and breaks the fast the next night is keeping Yom Kippur.
Where readings of Yom Kippur go wrong
Yom Kippur is a religious observance kept under Jewish law, whose first rule here is that danger to life or health overrides the fast.
Sources and editorial method
This entry summarizes the tradition in the Almanac's own words; where no source is listed, it is an editorial summary rather than a primary text, and symbolic readings are named as the tradition's, not as fact.
- Source
- The Great Almanac Dictionary
- Category
- Mystical Systems
- Aliases
- day of atonement, yom kippur meaning, yom kippur fast, what is yom kippur, yom kippur rules
- Last updated
- 2026-09-26
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Common questions
What is Yom Kippur?
It is the Jewish Day of Atonement, on the tenth of the month of Tishrei: about twenty-five hours of fasting, prayer and repentance, and the holiest day of the Jewish year.
Who does not fast on Yom Kippur?
Young children, and anyone for whom fasting might endanger life. Jewish law requires such a person to eat, on the principle that saving life comes first.
