Photo: By menachem weinreb on Unsplash.
All this we do: Ol Rappaport on Yom Kippur
‘I am lifted out of myself and my everyday world.’
This is a hard confession for a Quaker to make, but I love Yom Kippur and its liturgy. By sunset I am exhausted from the fast begun the night before, worn down by the cycle of prayer and confession. I have wept at the courage and sacrifice of those I long to emulate, my ears filled with the raw cry of the shofar and the intoxicating music. It is an ecstatic experience: I am lifted out of myself and my everyday world. I stand with the congregation in worship and sing: ‘Our Creator, Our Sovereign / Be gracious and answer our prayers / For we have little to commend us / Deal kindly and gently with us / And save our people.’ The liturgy is like a polished stone in a riverbed, refined and enriched by millennia of devotion.
