When Was Your Yom Kippur?
Author: Daryl Wingerd

Yom Kippur is Hebrew for "The Day of Atonement." The modern observance of this day by Jews around the world is based on the annual ceremony prescribed by God for Old Testament Jews in Leviticus 16. On this day the Jewish high priest would sacrifice a bull, two rams, and a male goat as atonement for his sins and the sins of the people. The high priest would take some of the blood of the bull and the goat inside the holy of holies where he would sprinkle it on the mercy seat—the place on top of the ark of the covenant between the two golden cherubim. A second goat was then led away into the wilderness, symbolically carrying away the sins of the Jewish people.