Pertinent and Impertinent

Yom Kippur, which comes on Wednesday, is for all Jews the most solemn, the most stirring and the most beautiful day of the year. It is a day that is rich in meaning and tradition, and a day when even the most flighty must feel a certain spiritual thrill in the age and the power of our faith.

It is a good idea once a year to take a sort of inventory of the past and to think a little of the future. We are too prone to take the days as they come, without bothering about the dust that must accumulate in the corners. Once a year, a thorough spiritual house-cleaning is a very satisfying experience.

It is not really pleasant ever to contemplate the past year. For even the most self-satisfied there must be memories that are not entirely comfortable. All of us are constantly guilty of small mean nesses, want of tact, thoughtless unkindness. But it is pleasant to feel that the coming year gives us a chance to remedy sins of omission and commission that made the past year not quite as perfect as it might have been.

Yom Kippur is a day when not only the small family groups congregate. but when the vast Jewish family meets together in the synagogue to pray. The bond that joins us all is mostly strongly felt, I think, on this day.

It has long been a custom in the more conservative synagogues for the women to wear white. The custom is a charming one, and symbolizes not only purity but the complete divorcing of the mind from every material consideration and the complete surrender to the spiritual significance of the day.

Very little can be written about Yom Kippur that is not already known to every Jew. It is merely helpful to remind ourselves that this is a day for serious thought, and advantage should be taken of it not with a view to forgetting the next day, but in order to start a new year with a clearer mind and with better principles than ever before.