21 Facts About Yom Kippur

Alongside the related holiday of Rosh HaShanah, Yom Kippur is one of the two components of the "High Holy Days" of Judaism.

The common English translation of Yom Kippur is Day of Atonement; however, this translation lacks precision.

Yom Kippur is a Jewish day to atone for misdeeds and become cleansed and purified from them.

Yom Kippur is "the tenth day of [the] seventh month" and is known as the "Sabbath of Sabbaths".

Yom Kippur completes the annual period known in Judaism as the High Holy Days or Yamim Nora'im that commences with Rosh Hashanah.

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The ten days from Rosh Hashanah to Yom Kippur correspond to the last ten days of the 40-day period Moses was on Mount Sinai receiving the second set of tablets.

The evening and day of Yom Kippur are set aside for public and private petitions and confessions of guilt .

Leviticus 23:27 decrees that Yom Kippur is a strict day of rest.

Virtually all Jewish holidays involve meals, but since Yom Kippur involves fasting, Jewish law requires one to eat a large and festive meal on the afternoon before Yom Kippur, after the Mincha prayer.

Many married Ashkenazi Orthodox men wear a kittel, a white robe-like garment for evening prayers on Yom Kippur, used in Eastern European communities by men on their wedding day.

All of the prayer services of Yom Kippur include litanies and petitions of forgiveness called piyyutim and selichot.

Yom Kippur comes to an end with a recitation of Shema Yisrael and the blowing of the shofar, which marks the conclusion of the fast.

Accordingly, Yom Kippur is unique for the confessional, or Vidui, that is part of the prayer services.

Yom Kippur confessional consists of two parts: a short confession beginning with the word Ashamnu, which is a series of words describing sin arranged according to the aleph-bet, and a long confession, beginning with the words Al Cheyt, which is a set of 22 double acrostics, arranged according to the aleph-bet, enumerating a range of sins.

In Orthodox Judaism, accordingly, studying the Temple ritual on Yom Kippur represents a positive rabbinically ordained obligation which Jews seeking atonement are required to fulfill.

Yom Kippur falls each year on the 10th day of the Jewish month of Tishrei, which is 9 days after the first day of Rosh Hashanah.

In terms of the Gregorian calendar, the earliest date on which Yom Kippur can fall is September 14, as happened most recently in 1899 and 2013.

The latest Yom Kippur can occur relative to the Gregorian dates is on October 14, as happened in 1967 and will happen again in 2043.

Traditionally, Yom Kippur is considered the date on which Moses received the second set of Ten Commandments.

That year Yom Kippur fell on a Saturday, and he fasted until an hour before his football game against Iowa started that night.

Since 2016 the United Nations has officially recognized Yom Kippur, stating that from then on no official meetings would take place on the day.