Purity is a key theme throughout Scripture. The festival of Yom Kippur calls the people of Israel to recommit themselves to purity on an annual basis.
Yom Kippur, the annual Day of Atonement, with its rich historical, liturgical, and theological traditions, has roots deep in the history of ancient Israel that continue to reach into worship life today. It embraces ideas of the profane and the sacred, of confession and forgiveness, of the expulsion of evil and the search for sanctity, of truth in worship and worship in truth.
Throughout history, the Day of Atonement has been held in proximity to Rosh Ha-Shanah, the New Year, when beginnings are made afresh after reflection upon the good and the rejection of what is not good. The biblical roots begin with Leviticus 16, which carefully prescribes the details of proper observance, by both the people and their leaders. Such prescriptions are historically to be seen as codified after a long period of practice, and some scholars will posit the origin of at least some of the traditions as already alive during the period of the First Temple.
But from Leviticus 16 we can see the two main concerns of this holy day. The first is the purification of the Temple itself, the second the purification of the people. Meticulous ritual always indicates the attention to detail that accompanies the dignity of worship, and Leviticus outlines the necessities of this festival observance. It is a solemn day, in which things not easily thought of, often not easily admitted, are openly confessed and offered for the purpose of cleansing and absolution.
The purification of the worship space (Leviticus 16) is connected to an act of frivolous encroachment on the part of Aaron’s sons (Leviticus 10). In the presence of God people are to distinguish between the sacred and the profane (Leviticus 10:10). Do we know how to approach God? That is what the worship space and its ritual are about: to help us learn dignity and reverence before the Holy. The Temple is there to help us acknowledge that we are not God and that in God’s presence we are not the main object of our attention, as we usually demand elsewhere.
So Aaron is told that certain conditions are to be observed before he can enter the holy place again (Leviticus 16:2-6). A day of acknowledgment that the courts of God are indeed holy, i.e. set apart for God’s use, not for our own frivolous pursuits. The Temple is to be cleansed of all our misuses of it, of all the errors done within it either purposely or inadvertently, consciously or unconsciously. It is also a day of banishment from our lives of our own lingering misdeeds, of their expulsion away from us, never to return.
In the ancient practice of sacrifice, the Temple was the venue for the enactment of these observances. The blood of sacrificial animals was sprinkled to purge the Temple of the impurities accumulated there over the past year. One of the sacrificial animals is kept alive, but becomes the repository, through verbal confession and the laying on of hands by the priests, of the sins of the people. This animal, usually a live goat, is then sent out into the wilderness, the power of evil removed to a desolate place of abandonment, a scapegoat never to return.
In order to connect to these ritual actions, the people are asked to affirm their conscious participation by means of fasting and refraining from work on this Day of Atonement. It is a practice by which people can exercise distance from temporal things, a spiritual discipline by which we can exhibit our lack of dependence on, even addiction to, material consumption. Fasting and rest from work indicate our understanding of food and work skills as not ours by right or achievement, but gifts of God. Fasting and rest indicate our acknowledgment that reverence and the dignity of worship are due our God, that all the earth is God’s space, inhabited by us only for a term.
Written by Richard L. Jeske. The Rev. Dr. Richard L. Jeske is Director of Ecumenical and Interfaith Relations at the American Bible Society.