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(146,218 posts) Sun Sep 23, 2012, 11:48 AM Sep 2012

What Yom Kippur can teach us about spirituality

http://www.examiner.com/article/what-yom-kippur-can-teach-us-about-spirituality

SEPTEMBER 22, 2012
BY: MAX WEIMAN

Yom Kippur, the Biblical “Day of Atonement” is on Wednesday, September 26th this year. Jews all over the world will fast from sundown Tuesday night until Wednesday night, and spend hours in communal prayer. The details of this holiday have much to teach us all about spiritual growth.
While in the past two hundred years there have developed a variety of affiliations in Judaism, the observance of Yom Kippur is near universal. And the irony is that this holiday is the least physically pleasurable day on the Torah’s calendar. What unites the Jews all over the world for the past 3300 years? Is it matzo or gefilte fish? No, it’s the spirit.

On this day the prescription is for an intense spiritual experience through negation of the body. No food or drink. No leather shoes. No bathing. No marital relations. No work. When you deny the body its daily dose of physical pleasure and direct the heart in prayer, the result is a special exploration of the soul. As one sage put it, “On Yom Kippur, who needs to eat?” By the end of the day, the transcendent experience is so strong; you don’t even want the physical any longer.
Physical disconnect leads to concentrated spirituality.

What can we learn from this?

The physical world is always at odds with the spiritual. Whenever we give in to physical desires, we make it harder to tap into the spiritual. Physical and spiritual are polar opposites. We want to be holy, but we also want to party. We can’t do both.

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