Yom Kippur

3 Pages 804 Words

On Yom Kippur, the holiest day of the Jewish year, Jewish people fast and say prayers of atonement. As explained the essay, “Yom Kippur: The Day Without Forgiveness” written by Elie Weisel in 1968, this holiday seemed to cause more anguish and confusion to the people of the Jewish religion than anything else. In concentration camps during the holocaust, many people seemed to abandon their faith and began to hate the God and teachings that they had once believed in so adherently. Like many people thought the world, they seemed to turn their backs when they seemed to need their faith the most.
If one came across a situation so bad that he would feel he had to give up on his beliefs, why should one bother belonging to a religion in the first place? In this work, by Weisel, we see a middle aged man, in the beginning, refusing to fast for the holiday and accusing his believed God to be a stranger. Through tradition and learned fundamentals of a religion, people, in a way, submit themselves to a higher being, to someone or thing that they believe will help them to live the way they should. If a person has enough faith in them to spend their whole lives praying and obeying a certain divinity, they should have no reason to abandon what they’ve known all their lives. Most religions seem to exist based on the need of a superior controller, a need of something to look to when they need help that they can’t seek anyone else for. Reliance on a distinguished existence seems to give people hope and assistance. I don’t see how one can be mad at their “God” for having someth!
ing bad happen. If all people of every religion followed this lead, it would seem absurd having any kind of religion.
In this essay, an older man, Pinhas, said to be about forty years old, talks to a fifteen-year-old boy, declaring that he is not going to fast for Yom Kippur in rebelliousness towards God and his teachings in the Jewish religion. If a per...