What Is Atonement?
What Is Atonement?
Yom Kippur
This chapter critiques the traditional reading of Yom Kippur during the annual Day of Atonement—a time of Divine forgiveness, purification, and reconciliation. This way of reading does not include passages in Torah that might have been deemed relevant to the themes of Yom Kippur such as the Ten Commandments, or the declaration of God's mercy and forgiveness that the rabbinic tradition teaches. Instead, the traditional reading focuses on texts that describe the High Priest's temple ritual for Yom Kippur, and on texts that forbids sexual relations, which was used by Christians and Jews as a scriptural warrant to condemn homosexuality. Hence, a new way of reading must be establishing to celebrate forgiveness, reconciliation and purification—all of which are the aim of the Day of Atonement.
Keywords: Yom Kippur, Day of Atonement, Ten Commandments, homosexuality, High Priest
NYU Press Scholarship Online requires a subscription or purchase to access the full text of books within the service. Public users can however freely search the site and view the abstracts and keywords for each book and chapter.
Please, subscribe or login to access full text content.
If you think you should have access to this title, please contact your librarian.
To troubleshoot, please check our FAQs, and if you can't find the answer there, please contact us.
