9 Tishrei 5786
Erev Yom Hakippurim
(Excerpted from The Book of Our Heritage by Rabbi Eliyahu Kitov)
It's a mitzvah to eat and drink heartily on Erev Yom Kippur. ...all who eat and drink on the 9th, and fast on the 10th, are considered by Scripture as if they had fasted on both the 9th and the 10th.The reason why eating on the ninth is considered so great a deed that it is equivalent to having fasted, is that by doing so, we show our joy that the time for our atonement has arrived; ...since we cannot partake of a festive meal on Yom Kippur, we do so on Erev Yom Kippur instead; ...[it] provides us with the physical strength needed on Yom Kippur to focus ourselves on prayer, supplication and reflection that will lead us to teshuvah.
Rav Yehudah Richter says that if on Erev Yom Kippur we eat well (what is good for us and in proper amounts) and with proper intention and say all the brachot correctly and with intent, we can thereby make a tikun for all the sins we made with regard to eating for the entire past year.
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This is my favorite piyyut of the Yom Kippur service. I love the words...
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R. Nir Ben Artzi on erev Yom Kippur 5781: "On this Day of Atonement, every single Jew must ask the Creator of the world for our righteous Messiah. A Jew who is connected to Judaism and tradition will seek our righteous Messiah now in mercy! HaKadosh-Baruch-Hu believes in His children, the people of Israel, in their prayers on this special Yom Kippur, that they will ask for the Messianic King at the closing time! Let them ask for the Messianic King at the time of Neilah! That's the main thing!"
May our fast be easy and our atonement be complete.
G'mar chatimah tovah! Chag sameach!
BH
ReplyDeleteAmen
Amidst all hte darkness of the world, including the darkness that clouds the judgment of so many of us, who despite being the beloved only child of the King, think that we are a turkey under a table scratching around for crumbs, and desperately clutching at all the wrong strawmen (Rabbi Nachman story, Under the Table and How to Get Up), there is a huge light arising in Am Yisrael: the light of tshuva sweeping across the Israeli youth. Three quarters of Jewish minors in Israel are already learning in religious frameworks, and on top of that, the so-called secular youth, who typically live in Tel Aviv and attend the flagship institutions of the Left are returning to Yahadut in droves, tsitsit, tefillin, skirts, slichot, hafrashat challa, connecting to pnimiut....
ReplyDeleteIn the last five years, which for them is about half their life from age five, they've spent most of their time either being sequestered at home during covid, or living with the various manifestations of the war, a childhood without stability or the old certainties, and faced with an uncertain ai future too, all the klipot of the old world washed away, but too a childhood with tik tok baalei tshuva artists and former models spreading yahadut and emuna.
Be'D I truly believe that this light, and the light of every Jew making an effort, even the slightest, to keep Torah and mizvot in these challenging times is the light of the geula. Be'D very soon the darkness will lift and this light will be revealed.
Be'D geula shleima berachamim bekarov memash, from a place of Hashem's love for Yisrael, ahava sh' hee lo tluya bedavar. Gmar chatima tova and shana tova for all of Am Yisrael.
Hitoreri
Beautiful! Thank you! G'mar tov!!
DeleteThats a lovely and hopeful message. Amen V' Amen.
DeleteCSF