Yom Kippur (n.) turns the break-fast bagel into the most anticipated baked good of the entire year.

Yom Kippur (n.) sends people to apologize to each other first, because the day cannot settle debts between neighbors.

Yom Kippur (n.) dresses many worshippers in white and leaves leather shoes at home for the day.

Yom Kippur (n.) keeps a congregation fasting from sundown to nightfall, about twenty-five hours without food or water.

Atonement (n.) is to raise a sin from a vice to a virtue.

Atonement (n.) is embolism of the will.

Atonement (n.) is an immunity-bath in preparation for transgressions to come.

Atonement (n.) is a borax that kills the vermin of remorse, but that can not be relied upon to kibosh their breeding-place.

Fasting (n.) is not virtuous — it wastes the body, and is only fanatical and monkish.

Fasting (n.) is better than prayer.

Fasting (n.) is also a matter of attitude -- Fasting When ye fast, be not, as the hypocrites, of a sad countenance.

Fasting (n.) is a medicine.

Kol Nidre (n.) works like clearing a desk before starting work that actually matters.

Kol Nidre (n.) fills a sanctuary with people who managed, for once, to arrive early.

Kol Nidre (n.) begins a day of atonement by admitting that vows are easier made than kept.

Kol Nidre (n.) releases the promises a person made to themselves and could not keep.