As the sun sets on September 20, Jewish communities throughout Israel and around the world will enter Yom Kippur—the Day of Atonement and the holiest day of the Jewish year.
For approximately twenty-five hours, ordinary life gives way to fasting, prayer, and self-examination. In Israel, roads become quiet, businesses close, and the noise of daily life recedes. Families and congregations gather to ask forgiveness, reflect on their failures, and consider how they might live differently in the year ahead.
The silence of Yom Kippur is not empty. It asks a difficult question: Have we been honest with ourselves?
That question applies to individuals, but it can also apply to nations.
For Israel, Yom Kippur carries a second meaning tied to the events of October 6, 1973. On that day, as much of the country fasted and prayed, Egypt and Syria launched a coordinated surprise attack against Israeli forces in the Sinai Peninsula and the Golan Heights.
The sacred silence was broken by sirens and emergency mobilization orders. Synagogues became places where reservists were called by name and told to report to their units. Families watched husbands, sons, fathers and brothers leave without knowing when—or whether—they would return.
The Yom Kippur War was not only a military conflict. It was a national reckoning.
Fifty-three years later, its central lesson remains painfully relevant: a country can be militarily powerful, technologically advanced and supported by capable intelligence services—and still misunderstand the danger before it.
Israel ultimately recovered from its initial setbacks and changed the course of the war. Yet survival did not erase the failures that preceded it or the terrible price paid by its soldiers and their families.
On Yom Kippur 2026, remembrance should therefore mean more than commemorating the past. It should require us to consider what repentance means for a nation responsible for protecting its people's lives.
