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The High Holidays
From the meal before it starts to the Shofar that ends it — including, first and at length, who should not be fasting at all.
Next year
Erev Yom Kippur
Sunday, October 10, 2027
Two festive meals during the day. The fast begins before sunset.
The fast runs from before sunset on the eve until nightfall the next day — a little over twenty-five hours. The exact minutes for San Jose are on the times page, and they matter at both ends: starting late is a problem, and so is ending early.
Yom Kippur is the tenth of Tishrei, and it is the one day of the Jewish year that is entirely about one thing. The Torah calls it a Sabbath of complete rest and a day of affliction. What it does is offer a clean line: whatever went wrong between you and God in the past year is closed off, provided you actually mean it.
It does not close anything between you and another person. The Mishnah is explicit about this and it is the single most useful thing to know about the day: for wrongs done to another human being, Yom Kippur does nothing at all until you have gone to that person and made it right. Which is why the days before it are spent making slightly awkward phone calls.
The fast is total: no food and no water, from before sunset until nightfall the following night. Along with eating and drinking, four other things are set aside — washing for pleasure, applying lotions or oils, wearing leather shoes, and marital relations.
If fasting would endanger your health, you are required to eat. This is not a leniency extended to the weak. It is the halacha, and it outranks the fast, because Jewish law treats preserving a life as more important than almost every other obligation in it. A person who eats on Yom Kippur because a doctor and a rav told them to has kept the day correctly.
Ask before the fast, not at three in the afternoon when you are already unwell and cannot think straight. Ask Rabbi Mendel or call the office; this is one of the most common questions of the year and nobody is going to be surprised by it.
Categories where the answer is often something other than a simple fast:
If you are simply dreading it — the headache, the caffeine withdrawal, the length of it — that is different, and it is normal. Taper your coffee over the preceding few days, drink well on the eve, and eat something with slow-release carbohydrate at the last meal. Most people find the second half easier than the first.
Erev Yom Kippur is not a solemn day. There is a positive obligation to eat well on it — the tradition treats eating on the ninth of Tishrei as itself part of keeping the tenth. Two proper meals are eaten. Other things people do that day:
Tick each one as you do it. Ticks stay on this device only.
The last meal — the seudah hamafseket — finishes with time to spare before sunset. Candles are lit, and the fast begins.
The evening service begins with Kol Nidrei, said just before sunset while the day has not technically started — because the legal formula it contains cannot be recited on the festival itself. Two Torah scrolls are taken out and held, the passage is chanted three times, and the melody is one of the few pieces of Jewish music that most Jews who never go to Shul still recognize.
What it actually says is narrower than people assume: it annuls certain categories of personal vow made between a person and God. It has no effect on promises made to other people, on contracts, or on debts, and the tradition is careful to say so. It is placed at the start of the night because the community wants to begin the day with nothing outstanding.
This is the one night of the year a tallit is worn at an evening service. Many men wear a white kittel — a simple white robe. White is worn generally: the day’s imagery is of being clean, and, unavoidably, of a shroud.
The confession — Ashamnu and Al Chet, alphabetical lists of failures — is said ten times across the day, always in the plural. Not “I have” but “we have”. Nobody is being asked to have personally committed everything on the list; the community owns the list together.
Yizkor is short — a few lines asking that the soul of a parent or close relative be bound up in life, with a pledge of charity attached. It is said four times a year, and Yom Kippur is the one people come for. If you have lost a parent, you may find this is the part of the day that means the most, and that is a completely ordinary thing to arrange your day around.
In most Ashkenazi communities, Chabad included, people whose parents are both alive step out of the room while it is said. If that is you, follow the crowd out; it is not a snub.
More on Yizkor, including how to have a name read here, is on the Yizkor page.
Neilah is the fifth service, and it exists on no other day of the year. The name means “locking” — the gates of the Temple courtyard closing at dusk, and by extension the closing of the day’s opportunity. The ark stays open throughout and the congregation stands, which after twenty-four hours without water is felt.
It ends the same way everywhere: the Shema once, Baruch shem kevod malchuto three times, Hashem Hu HaElokim seven times, and then one long blast of the Shofar. Then the evening service, then Havdalah, and then everybody eats.
The custom is to begin building the Sukkah that same night, or at least to bang in a nail — from one mitzvah straight into the next. Five days later it is Sukkot, which is the most cheerful holiday of the year, and the abruptness of that transition is deliberate.
And if you drove because the alternative was not coming: come. That conversation, if you want to have it, can happen in November.
There is no ticket, no seat charge and no membership. Services, times and this year’s arrangements are on the Yom Kippur page and the High Holidays overview; candle lighting and the exact start and end of the fast are on the times page. If it is your first time, tell us when you arrive and somebody will sit with you.
This year’s dates and services. No ticket, no membership.
The memorial prayer, said four times a year, and how to submit a name.
The Shofar, apples and honey, and what to expect at a first service.
What comes five days later, and why it is the opposite in mood.
Anything on this page that is a question about your situation — a fast you have been told not to keep, a kitchen you are not sure how to handle, a custom your family does differently — is a question for a person, not a page. Ask Rabbi Mendel, or call the office. Nobody will think less of you for asking; the questions on this list are asked every single year.