If you would like the background material for our Podcast on Yom Kippur, it is now available as a PDF here  at http://www.circumcisedheart.info

Here’s a great quote to close off Yom Kippur and look forward to another great year.

”The bottom line (for Yom Kippur)?

The spiritual rewards reaped from a spiritual perspective far outweigh the benefits seductively paraded before us in the advertisements that daily bombard us with their false and alluring promises.

That is why we so desperately need Yom Kippur to help us rearrange our priorities. It is a day when we demonstrate that we can master our physical needs. We choose prayer over food. We choose communion with God over making more money. We do not wear our jewelry and our adornments so that no one need envy the possessions of others. We concentrate not on the things we covet that don’t belong to us but on the blessings God has already granted to us that could give us so much joy if we only fully appreciated them.

And that’s why Yom Kippur, with all of its deprivations, helps to teach us the real meaning of happiness and contentment.”  –        from http://www.aish.com/h/hh/yom-kippur/theme/102325494.html

I pray that you experienced a Yom Kippur where you were able to in some ways ‘afflict your soul’ and gain a greater spiritual perspective. I hope and pray that your ‘spiritual heart’ was given priority over your ‘fleshly heart’ (Yetzer HaTov vs Yetser HaRa), so that you could more fully experience the holiness of this day.

I reflected with both deep thanks and some sense of sadness that last year in 2011 I had spent Yom Kippur at the Kotel, the Western Wall in Jerusalem. What an awesome day of prayer it had been! Today, a year later I was back in Brisbane and missing standing on the Temple Mount. If you have not experienced that blessing of being in Israel and Jersusalem, especially at one of the ‘appointed times’; for one of the Feasts of Adonai, I pray that it may be fulfilled for you ‘next year in Jerusalem’!

Shalom! Paul