Yom Kippur: Purifying the Tabernacle and Ourselves

Ask a Jew about the meaning of Yom Kippur (The Day of Atonement), and you are likely to hear that it is a day of repentance and forgiveness, a day when sins between us and God are atoned for. But it is not that simple: some interpreters suggest that we have to repent for what we have done to others before we can come before God at all. We cannot sidestep the people we have hurt on our path to God; on the contrary, God insistently directs us towards those very people. (5774)