Comment: Yom Kippur is the day of atonement, the day of judgment, the day of forgiveness. It has many names. It is the most important day and even secular Jews in Israel celebrate it. On this day, highways are empty and children ride their bikes peacefully. Everything stops.

People scan the year that they have lived, they check, and think it over. They even say that there is such a rule from above that you have to check it because you are being sealed for the next year.

My Response: Yes. Humble yourself and check all your actions over the past year.

Question: What does it mean to check all your deeds over the past year?

Answer: How good and kind you were to others. Because if you have any problems with others, then no judgment will redeem you. So it is said! You have to ask everyone for forgiveness and check all your actions toward connection with others.

Question: One should perceive it directly like this?

Answer: Yes, directly! That’s how it is written and that’s how I take it.

Comment: Meaning, if I hated someone, or I snapped at someone, I did some nasty things to someone…

My Response: I’m letting go.

Question: “I’m letting go” in the sense that I am in some way apologizing to them?

Answer: There are some people to whom I cannot turn and ask for forgiveness. I do it within myself. Ostensibly, I apologize to them, although I know that I cannot approach them, I cannot approach them in any way, but I apologize.

Question: Is this to say, it is required from above?

Answer: Not just from above. This is a very serious psychological action that helps a person evaluate his attitude to the world, to life, and to people.

Question: Does it give some kind of purification to a person?

Answer: Of course. I know that I have to apologize now and come out of this state in such a way that everyone will forgive me.

Question: And if I really don’t want to forgive? If I know he’s a scoundrel?

Answer: It doesn’t matter.

Question: So even to the one who offended me, I apologize to him as well?

Answer: Yes, even if he is such a scoundrel as you say, you still need to apologize as if you are to blame for all this. And how do you know? Maybe it is so.

Comment: You’re talking in such a way now, as if it’s a world holiday. You don’t add the word “Jews” or “Israel” here, as if it applies to every person.

My Response: In general, everyone should have it. This is indicated for the Jewish people, but I believe that everyone should have a day of atonement.

Not necessarily at the same time. On different days or different times of the year, but every nation and every person should experience it as if he really is before the court and is obliged to ask for forgiveness from everyone!

Question: On this day I am judged for my character?

Answer: Yes!

Question: What should I be like?

Answer: I have to be like the Creator.

I should strive to not do evil to anyone and not to hold evil against anyone and I must be ready to do good at any time of day or night. The most important thing is to come to love the Creator through love for people.

Question: So one way or another, the end point is love for the Creator? From the love of creatures to the love of the Creator? Is this the most important formula?

Answer: Yes.

Question: But if a person does not feel the Creator and does not believe in Him?

Answer: It doesn’t matter at all. All people, from the age of maturity onward, who are considered adults (women at 12 years old and men at 13 years old), are obliged in some way to sanctify themselves. Sanctify is from the word “light” and the word “holiness.”

Comment: There are judgment day prayers. What is more effective: a prayer that is written or a prayer that is in the heart when a person sits, thinks, and prays?

My Response: Undoubtedly, the one that is in the heart. What the sages wrote, they wrote. But the way I think and what I would write, as it is said, “Write on your heart,” is much stronger.

Question: What would you wish now, on this day of judgment, toward this complicated world of ours?

Answer: I would wish the world peace.

Starting with a person in himself, with friends, with relatives, and ending with absolutely everyone, the most remote up to the very last person in the world, so that the whole globe is covered with forgiveness and that we would never let our egoism rule over us again. Then everything will be fine!

Question: So I have to come to the conclusion that egoism dominates us?

Answer: Yes, of course. The entire Yom Kippur consists in the trial of egoism.

Question: So I identify the enemy on this day?

Answer: Undoubtedly.

Question: It’s not the neighbor, it’s me. And then my request is to get out?

Answer: Free me from this evil inclination in me.

Question: And this is called the best spent Yom Kippur?

Answer: Yes. When I sit, think about it all, and decide that I don’t want to use it anymore, and I ask the Creator to free me from it.
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From KabTV’s “News with Michael Laitman” 9/29/22

Related Material:
Yom Kippur: A Request for Correction
Yom Kippur—Recognition of Egoism
The Calendar and Spiritual Yom Kippur

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