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The Torah Learning Library of Yeshivat Chovevei Torah

Archive: October 2022

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Let’s Try to Be a Little Less Focused This Coming Year

by Rabbi Dov Linzer
Posted on October 3, 2022

We are so often told that the way to success is to set our goals and then work to achieve them with single-minded focus. Indeed, for Ramban, the word het, sin—a word that dominates our Yom Kippur prayers—means to miss the target, not to stay straight and fully directed towards what we aim to achieve in our religious lives. …

Why Doesn’t Yom Kippur Come Before Rosh HaShana?

by Rabbi Dov Linzer
Posted on September 25, 2016

The relationship between Rosh Hashana and Yom Kippur is both obvious and complex. Obvious, in that Divine judgment and forgiveness are closely connected – we recognize that there is no one who can justify him or herself to their Creator, and thus a day of judgment requires a day of forgiveness which brings with it the Divine gift of atonement.…

The Yom Kippur Service and The Avoda of Teshuva

by Rabbi Dov Linzer
Posted on April 17, 1998

Parshat Acharay-Mot details the Temple service that the high priest would perform every Yom Kippur. Today, the description of the Temple service forms the center of the communal Yom Kippur Musaf prayer, and the Torah reading on Yom Kippur is taken from the parsha of Acharay-Mot.…