Children explore the mysteries of Yom Kippur

With sundown less than eight hours away, Kenneth Van Dyk turned his sixth-graders' attention yesterday to Yom Kippur, the holiest day of the Jewish calendar and a time of fasting and repentance.

"How many of you will be fasting for half a day?" he asked the 10 boys and girls seated before him in a Sunday school classroom at Cherry Hill's Temple Emanuel.

Seven children raised their hands.

"How many for the whole day?" he asked.

Three raised their hands.

"It's not an easy thing to do, is it?" asked Van Dyk, and the 10 young heads shook "no."

Known as the Day of Atonement, which began last night and continues today, Yom Kippur concludes the 10 "Days of Awe" that started with Rosh Hashanah. It is the day when Jews pledge to make themselves and the world a better place and, according to tradition, when God decides who will live and die in the year ahead.

Yom Kippur is so solemn that even many otherwise nonobservant Jews will spend today at High Holiday services, fasting and praying.

For 11-year-olds, this most awesome of the "Days of Awe" remains something of a mystery. But with their bar and bat mitzvahs little more than a year away, it was time now to wrestle with such adult concepts as duty, justice, and atonement.

"So, what is it we're trying to do on Yom Kippur?" Van Dyk asked.

"To ask God for forgiveness," answered 11-year-old Joshua Salkin.

"Forgiveness for what?" Van Dyk asked.

"For your sins," a girl replied.

That began a discussion of the three kinds of sin: those against God, one another, and one's self.

A few minutes before the class began, Rabbi Debbie Cohen, rabbi for lifelong education at this large Reform congregation, had explained what her Sunday school tries to teach sixth graders about Yom Kippur.

"The Hebrew for 'sin' is cheit, a word from archery that means 'missing the mark,' " Cohen said. "With children this age we try to be as concrete as possible, getting them to share things they could do better, but also to think more deeply than before."

In the classroom, Van Dyk, a longtime Monroe Township middle-school teacher, flowed easily from the concrete to the conceptual.

"Before you do anything else you have to forgive yourself," he explained. "And to do that you have to go to the people you've hurt and say you're sorry and, 'Will you accept my apology?' Then you can go to God and say, 'I'm sorry. Will you forgive me for the things I've done?' "

He then asked the children to "name a bad characteristic you want to change."

"Procrastination," said one.

"I blame my sister for a lot of stuff," said another. "A lot."

"My mom tells me to do something, and I don't do it," said a third.

One girl said she sometimes provokes her brother, who "has anger issues."

"So you know what buttons to push?" Van Dyk asked.

"Mm-hmm," she admitted.

"It's not a kind thing to do, is it?" said her teacher.

The girl gazed down at her desk for a moment. "No," she said.

And that, in sixth-grade terms, was the moral of Yom Kippur. Van Dyk said, "It's an opportunity to think, 'I'm not perfect. I make mistakes, but I can do better.' "