An American perspective: Why Yom Kippur still brings Jews together, even without belief - opinion

SEPTEMBER 19, 2026 23:43In rabbinic usage, Yom Kippur is sometimes simply called Hayom – the Day. It’s a way of setting it apart from every other day – even Shabbat, which is itself set apart from every day except Yom Kippur. But what is the purpose of ranking time this way? Isn’t all time, in fact, the same, and isn’t it only we humans, with our imagination, who invent these distinctions?And yet, we make these distinctions all the time. And we make them because they are important. We believe in the distinctions. We know, for example, that time spent with our children and grandchildren has a higher value than time scrolling through social media with our minds seized by, say, images of famous people, expensive cars, or arguments that grow violent.We know that some times are categorically superior to others: a brit milah, a baby naming, a loved one’s wedding, a birth, or the ceremony at the conclusion of life.It’s in these instances that we see how time can contain life in its fullness, or conversely, in its shallowness. We are made viscerally aware of the value of time, of a moment, of a day. And so it is with Yom Kippur, the Day.Jews praying for forgivneess (selichot), at the Western Wall in the Old City of Jerusalem, October 11, 2024 (credit: ARIE LIEB ABRAMS/FLASH90)The power of Yom Kippur to create belongingWhen I grew up in Minnesota in the 60s and 70s, many and perhaps most Jews I knew went to synagogue just two days a year, on Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur. Some saw this as troubling. You might have heard that “Ed Shapiro, that nebuch, only goes to shul twice a year!” The thing about this imagined Shapiro wasn’t that he only went to synagogue twice a year; it was that he went at all.Think about that with an open mind.After some 3,300 years, almost 2,000 of them in exile, Shapiro, a Jew, a regular person, not a rabbinical scholar or a saint, living an otherwise completely secular life, feels compelled to leave the comfort of his armchair, the luxury of his big-screen TV with its televised golf game, to go to a place where they chanted in an ancient language, one that he did not understand.It’s there he will go to pray to a God Shapiro doesn’t believe in. And yet there’s Ed, sitting when it’s time to sit, standing when it’s time to stand. Sweating and yawning.Schuckling and looking at his watch.This, all this, is the essence of The Day. A purely trans-intellectual takeover of the body and mind by an alien – and yet, somehow, totally familiar – feeling that he, our fictional Ed Shapiro, is a Jew and that Jews not only go to shul on Yom Kippur, but they also fast.Ridiculous as it sounds to the outsider, Ed, a man of hearty appetite, will go without food or water for 25 hours. The truly fascinating thing, and I think the word “miraculous” is not out of place here, is that he does this based on a command from an unseen and un-believed-in Deity. That he doesn’t know why doesn’t make it any less impressive. In a very real sense, it makes it all the more impressive. After all, who really understands any of this?In fact, if someone prevented Shapiro from attending shul – let’s say there was a gathering of people, perhaps not especially difficult to imagine these days, who stood in front of the prayer house and used their bodies to barricade the entrance – Shapiro, not what you’d call a heroic type, would very likely risk his physical well-being to force his way in.A lesson in belonging, not beliefWHEN I WAS about 12 and didn’t want to go to synagogue on Yom Kippur, or really, at any time, my dad once told me a similar thing. “Pete, imagine they wouldn’t let you go inside.” I have to admit, it was a hugely compelling thing to hear, especially given the regularity of swastikas, carved or drawn with permanent marker, found at my school. It wasn’t a lesson in belief. It was a lesson in belonging, and it worked on me exactly the way it must have worked on Shapiro, whoever he was.This unknowable, unbelieved-in God has somehow made His presence and His will known and largely obeyed, after millennia of exilic existence, to Jews.And they, sometimes without a deep knowledge of their traditions, continue to insist on being part of the Jewish people and that their children take part in the tradition. I am one of those Jews too, though my own road there has taken me to a different place than Shapiro’s.No longer a teenager by any stretch of the imagination, I observe Shabbat, kashrut, and the Jews holidays. I put on tefillin every weekday morning. And I agree, hour to hour, to wrestle with the idea of God, with trying to “know” God.In fact, even when I was young, I wrestled and wrestled hard – once going to a seafood restaurant with my cousin on the Day for all-you-can-eat fried shrimp. Why? Looking back, I rebelled because I cared. I wasn’t “parve” about any of it.Just as no one can fully understand God, no one can fully explain Ed Shapiro, and millions liked him. Like me. Like us.This is only one of the beauties, the honor of being part of our glorious, resilient, courageous, brilliant, and faithful peoplehood, a peoplehood some today insist doesn’t exist.We hear from those who seem not to wish us well that we are only “a religion,” that Judaism (how I dislike the false “ism” inherent in that term) is not a nation, not a peoplehood. “I have no qualms with Jews, only Israel,” they say.Ed Shapiro knows different. Ed feels the difference. And it’s in part that difference that makes Yom Kippur, Hayom, the Day.It is the Day when God calls us together, calls His Am Segulah, His treasured nation, together to start another year afresh, to be sealed and inscribed for a good year. To a year of health, joy, children, rejoicing, and true peace. To true shalem, when it will be effortless to see and to feel the wholeness of the world and our place within it.May we be so inscribed.The writer is a Grammy- and Emmy-nominated rock & roll performer, songwriter, film composer, visual artist, and award-winning author. He has been profiled in Time Magazine, Rolling Stone, The Wall Street Journal, Tablet, and NPR. His newest book is Suspended by No String: A Songwriter’s Reflections on Faith, Aliveness, and Wonder (Regalo Press/Simon and Schuster). Follow him at peterhimmelman.substack.comFollow us on Google