Andrew Jaffe: Leaves on the Line

Saturday was Yom Kippur, the Jewish Day of Atonement. Jews are meant to fast (among other prohibitions), and spend the day in Temple, communally asking forgiveness for our sins.

I’m a secular, atheist Jew. So why do I feel guilty for all of my meals yesterday? It’s not Pascal’s Wager; it’s not a lurking agnosticism. It is, I suppose, the weight of a few millenia of culture, some of it useless, irrational baggage but much of it a beautiful tradition of ritual and morality, connecting me to other Jews, and to “all the strangers who live in our midst”, as the prayers of forgiveness have it.