It is but a short time before the holiest day in the Jewish calendar, Yom Kippur where we confess our sins to the Eternal One and try to make right the wrongs that we’ve done to others. There isn’t a person on the planet who is perfect, we’ve all done things that we wished we hadn’t over the last year and things that we’ve done wrong that we wish to put right.
As is usual for this blog I’m going to put up what I believe is one of the best secular Jewish commentaries on Yom Kippur and the High Holy Days of recent years. It’s Rebel News’s Ezra Levant making his comment about Jewish communal complacency in the face of threats. Although I still believe that complacency is a problem because of the events of the past year many Jews have become far less complacent about the existence of enemies than they once were. Maybe one of the confessions that we should as a community make this year is to acknowledge that in the past we have been all too complacent and taken safety, security and the expectations that the states that we live in will protect us, for granted.
It is a completely different world from the last Yom Kippur , which because of the nature of the Hebrew calender came before the October 7th Pogrom, and this one. It’s a world where our enemies are more emboldened than ever but equally it is one where the Jewish community is very much more united than they were this time last year.
I wish all those who mark Yom Kippur well over the fast and may you be sealed in the Book of Life. Normal service should be resumed on Sunday.
