Yom Kippur is a Jewish Festival.

Yom Kippur is the most solemn day in the Jewish calendar. It means Day of Atonement and Jewish people fast for 25 hours. It is a time when Jews can make up for the wrongs of the past year and make a firm commitment to not do the same bad thing or things again. In order to apologise to God one must pray, feel remorse, and donate to charity.

The most important part of Yom Kippur is the time spent in the synagogue. Even Jews who are not particularly religious will want to attend synagogue on Yom Kippur, the only day of the year with five services. In the Yom Kippur section of the Torah the word ‘soul’ appears five times.

The Jewish believe that on Yom Kippur God seals the verdict of each person’s fate for the upcoming year.

Yom Kippur is strictly a day of rest. So strictly, in fact, that the transportation minister of Tel Aviv has threatened to withdraw funding from the city’s public bikes if they are not closed down for Yom Kippur.

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 the Gregorian calendar the earliest date on which Yom Kippur can fall is September 14, which happened in 1899 and will happen again in 2013. This year Yom Kippur takes place on September 25th and 26th.

Find out more about Yom Kippur.

Also in September:

UN International Literacy Day – 8th

International Day of Democracy – 15th

International Ozone Day – 16th

International Day of Peace – 21st

UN International Day of Languages – 26th

World Tourism Day – 27th

Rosh Hashana: Jewish New Year – 28th

Tags: Yom Kippur

This entry was posted on Wednesday, September 26th, 2012 at 9:00 am and is filed under General, other interesting stuff, social practices, The Middle East/Arab World . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.