The mystery behind Yom Kippur’s date

A congregant asked me a question after Rosh Hashanah that I should have been able to answer. I could not. “Rabbi, why is Yom Kippur on the tenth day of the month?”

At first, the answer seemed obvious. Yom Kippur occurs on the tenth of Tishrei because the Torah says so. But that only restates the question. The more I thought about it, the stranger the date became.

Biblical festivals frequently coincide with recognizable moments in the lunar month. Yom Teruah, what we call Rosh Hashanah, occurs on the first. Passover and Sukkot arrive at mid-month, around the full moon. Shavuot is different, but there the Torah gives us a mechanism for arriving at the festival: count seven weeks, forty-nine days, and then celebrate. Yom Kippur simply appears on the tenth.

Leviticus is quite precise: “In the seventh month, on the tenth day of the month.” It tells us what the day demands. We are to afflict ourselves, refrain from work, and seek atonement. It never tells us why the tenth. Jewish tradition eventually supplied a magnificent answer.

The rabbis reconstructed the chronology of Moses’ ascents of Mount Sinai after the sin of the Golden Calf. According to Seder Olam Rabbah, Moses descended with the second tablets on the tenth of Tishrei and announced that Israel had once again found favor with God. The broken covenant had been restored. That day, the tradition teaches, became permanently associated with forgiveness and reconciliation. It is difficult to........

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