And if We are Given the Azure Again

Looking at Yom Kippur as an opportunity for letting go and for construction

An invitation to come to Yom Kippur from observation of what was has happened from last Yom Kippur until this Yom Kippur, and from this Yom Kippur to the next Yom Kippur. A proposal to process the movement between knowing and not knowing in the past year, and from Purim to Yom Kippur. 

The lesson starts with the central question: Will we know to be aware of what is around us, and what can we decide at each moment we awaken? Added to this are suggestions of taking full responsibility for directing our personal life, and of compassion for what is not complete.

Deliberately, study is not necessarily based on the religious practices of Yom Kippur, but seeks to take the day of personal soul-searching as a day of acceptance for the future, and for sharpening our inner listening to the pulse of our body, the potential for good and bad with which we have to choose how to proceed. The lesson suggests lovingly taking on the changing times of the coronavirus age, and identifying the freedom that is actually given to each and every one with the changes in community and private habits and other fixations. 

Rabbanit Sarah Segal-Katz, a teacher of halakha, also teaches in various study settings at Beit Avi Chai. In addition, she is a lecturer and instructor on the meeting between halakha and sexuality, and the founder of the online magazine “Gluya”.