Yom Kippur, and the name the Torah writes in the plural

A singular the written text never uses, two goats and a lot, a fast commanded without the word for fasting, and the accuser's 364, checked as honestly as it can be.

Ten days after the day of teruah, on the tenth of the seventh month, comes the day everyone calls Yom Kippur. The greetings wish an easy fast. The machzor calls it the holiest day of the year. Neither is wrong, and yet the name itself, said that way, is not quite what the Torah writes. Kippur is a singular. The written text names this day only in the plural: a day of atonements. Nobody says it that way, nothing turns on saying it that way, and still a site whose whole business is checking words against an index owes the reader what the letters actually are. Counting them turns out to be worth the trouble.

A name in the plural

A day of atonements, יום הכפרים, with the definite article in the middle of it, and the word that carries the day comes to כפרים=350. The very next verse says the name again and drops the article.

Those two verses and one more are the name’s whole career in the twenty-four books. It stands three times: twice here in the appointed seasons of Vayikra, and once in the chapter of the Jubilee, where it takes a prefixed bet and dates a horn.

The Jubilee’s shofar goes out on the day of the atonements, through all the land, on the tenth of the seventh month. That is the thread the article about Rosh Hashanah pulled from the other end, when Yechezkel dated a vision to the head of the year and meant the tenth of the month. The sibling day owns the teruah. This one owns the atonements, and the Torah hands them to it in the plural every time. The spelling הכפרים stands 7 times in the books, and the five stands beyond these are atonements too: the bull of the installation in Shemot, the incense altar’s once a year, the silver of the census, the ram of the wronged man in Bemidbar, and this day’s own goat of the mussaf.

The singular, which the books keep for winter

What of the singular everyone actually says? Bare, without its article, the spelling כפרים stands 4 times, and only one of the four is this day. The others are young lions in Yirmiyahu and Yechezkel and a cluster of henna in Shir HaShirim, the same consonants carrying three different words, which is why the sentences on this page keep saying the word spelling. And the singular the mouth says is not in the books at all. Its four consonants, כפור, are, exactly 1 time, pointed as a different word.

Kfor, not kippur: frost, scattered like ashes, in a psalm about winter. The spelling comes to כפור=306 for whoever wants it, and it is not an atonement and not even the same word. So the honest shape of the name is this: the day everyone calls by a singular is named by the written text only in a plural, and the singular itself never appears, unless a word for weather that happens to wear its letters is allowed to count. Yom Kippur as the mouth says it is rabbinic Hebrew, exactly like Tishrei, and there is nothing wrong with that. An index is just the place where you find it out.

Seven days, two goats, one lot

The chapter that gives the day its work is the sixteenth of Vayikra, and for once nearly everything around a festival is on this site’s own shelf. Mishnah Yoma walks the avodah for seven of its eight chapters, and we hold the tractate whole; so with the Rambam’s laws of the day’s service and of its rest. The Gemara on that tractate is not in our library, and no daf of it is cited anywhere on this page. The tractate opens seven days early: seven days before Yom Kippur the kohen gadol is moved from his house to a chamber in the Temple, and another priest is readied beside him in case anything should disqualify him. A day this singular is not allowed to depend on one man’s ordinary week.

Two goats, and a lot between them. The one verse writes the word three times over: a pair of lots, one lot for the Name and one lot for Azazel. גורל comes to גורל=239, and as a bare spelling it stands fourteen times in the books. The goats themselves are written strangely here, השעירם, a defective spelling that stands exactly twice in the twenty-four books, both times in this chapter, as if even the pair’s plural belonged to this day alone.

As for עזאזל, worth עזאזל=115: the name stands four times in the books, all four in this chapter, and never once bare. Every stand carries a prefixed lamed, to Azazel, as though the word existed only as a destination. What Azazel is, a place, a cliff, a name, is a question argued in the Gemara of tractate Yoma, which is not ours, so it is named here and left where we found it. The Rambam describes the lots themselves: of any material, but never one large and one small, never one silver and one gold, both alike; they were of wood, and in the Second Temple they were made of gold. The instrument’s whole point is that the choosing is taken out of every hand.

The Name, said aloud, and counted

The confession the kohen gadol says over the goat that is sent away is preserved in the Mishnah word for word, and at its centre he quotes the chapter’s own promise.

You shall be made clean. In the Mishnah’s account, when the kohen gadol reached the Name inside that verse and said it as it is written, the priests and the people standing in the courtyard would kneel, bow, and fall on their faces. This page’s own Hebrew never sets that Name; an essay gets printed and shared, and the house rule holds hardest exactly here. The counting can be done without it, and the Rambam does it: three confessions in the day, the Name said three times in each, and once more over the lot. Ten times in the day, in the explicit form heard nowhere else, and he records what became of even that: when looseness spread, the kohen gadol learned to say it low, swallowed into the melody, until the priests beside him could not make it out. Ten is a count, not a gematria, the same distinction the Chanukah lights taught, and it may be the most guarded count in the calendar.

Once in the year. The chapter closes by making its own rarity a law, and the phrase אחת בשנה stands three times in the twenty-four books. The other two stands are a single verse of Shemot, which says it twice about the golden altar: once in the year Aharon shall make atonement on its horns, from the blood of the sin offering of the atonements. Every once-in-the-year the books contain, in other words, belongs to this day. Scripture does not spend the phrase on anything else.

Afflict, not fast

You shall afflict your souls. That is the whole of what the Torah asks of a private person on this day, and the three-word phrase stands four times in the books, three times in Vayikra and once here in Bemidbar, every one of them about this day. What the affliction is, the verses never say. The Rambam says the tradition does: a positive command of the day is to rest from eating and drinking, and from the tradition they learned what an affliction of the nefesh is. It is the fast. The other four, washing, anointing, the sandal and the marital bed, are learned from the same tradition, and the day’s doubled title is read as carrying them: shabbat for the food, shabbaton for these. Only eating and drinking carry the chapter’s own penalty; the rest are enforced with the lesser stripes. And נפש, the word the affliction lands on, comes to נפש=430.

The Mishnah lists the day’s prohibitions in one line: Yom Kippur is forbidden in eating, in drinking, in washing, in anointing, in the sandal, and in the use of the bed. Count that list and you get six items. The five afflictions everyone quotes are the Gemara’s arithmetic on this mishnah, with eating and drinking taken as one; the daf that does the counting is not in this site’s library, so the familiar five is named here and given no address. Even the day’s self-denial comes with a footnote about which numbers are counted and which are read.

The word the Torah never spends

Notice the word that has not appeared. צום, the fast, comes to צום=136, and as a bare spelling it stands 17 times in the twenty-four books. Exactly one of those stands is in the Torah, and it is not a fast: at the end of Bereshit, Yaakov’s sons, as the verse calls them there, do as their father commanded them, and the word for commanded-them is spelled with the same four consonants, pointed as another word entirely. The spelling plays that trick twice more, in Yeshayahu and in Yirmiyahu. The Torah asks for this day with the affliction phrase and never with the fasting word. Where the fast-word does live is the prophets, and by custom two of its stands are read aloud on this very day.

Is not this the fast I choose: to loose the fetters of wickedness. The chapter enters the day as the morning’s haftarah, and the assignment of readings is recorded on a daf of tractate Megillah this site does not hold, so the custom is named without a page, exactly as the Rosh Hashanah article had to do for its own readings. The prophet’s argument is that the fast is an instrument and not the point, which is a thing worth hearing from inside a fast.

One more counted title before the afternoon. שבת שבתון, the doubled rest, stands six times in the twenty-four books: three times for the weekly Shabbat, once for the land’s seventh year, and twice for this day. Of all the appointed seasons, only Yom Kippur wears the Shabbat’s own doubled name, and the halachah, as we saw, heard the doubling precisely.

The book read in the afternoon

As the day tires, the reading turns to a runaway prophet. By the custom recorded on the same uncited daf, the haftarah of minchah is the book of Yonah, and the book is ours to open.

The men of Nineveh believed, and called a fast. There is the word the Torah never spent, in the mouth of a gentile city, and it is answered. Five verses later the book says exactly what was answered, and a mishnah stands by to make sure nobody misreads it.

God saw their deeds, that they turned. When the Mishnah in Taanit stages a public fast, the eldest of the assembly is given this verse as his text, and his point is its precision: it is not said of the men of Nineveh that God saw their sackcloth and their fasting, but that God saw their deeds, that they turned from their evil way. The afternoon of the fast reads a book in which the fast is real and is not what saves. What saves is the turning, the verb the Tanakh has constantly, whose noun, as the article about Elul shows, Scripture never writes at all.

The day itself

What the day accomplishes is stated in law with a plainness the machzor’s poetry can hide. In this time, the Rambam writes, when there is no Temple and no altar of atonement, there is nothing but teshuvah; and the essence of the day of the Kippurim itself atones for those who return, as it is said, for on this day it shall atone for you. The verse he quotes is the verse inside the kohen gadol’s confession above. The Temple went; the verse stayed. Elsewhere he calls Yom Kippur the time of teshuvah for all, for the individual and for the many, and binds everyone to return and confess on it. The person in between, whose scales the Rosh Hashanah article left hanging, is decided by what he does before this day ends. This is where the suspension runs out.

The tractate’s last mishnah draws the two boundaries the day will not cross. One who says, I will sin and repent, I will sin and repent, is given no help toward repenting; one who says, I will sin and Yom Kippur will atone, for him Yom Kippur does not atone. And what stands between a person and God, the day atones for; what stands between a person and his fellow, it does not, until the fellow has been appeased. Then the tractate ends on Rabbi Akiva, happy are you, Israel: before Whom are you made clean, and Who makes you clean? Your Father in heaven. As a mikveh purifies the unclean, so the Holy One purifies Israel. That is the last word of Yoma, and the day goes out on it.

364, checked honestly

The day has one famous gematria, and it belongs to the same uncited tractate. The Gemara reads the accuser’s name, השטן=364, as the days of a solar year less one: the accuser has his three hundred and sixty-four days, and this day is not among them. The daf is not in this site’s library, so the reading is named without an address. The arithmetic is ours to check, and it checks: heh is five, shin three hundred, tet nine, nun fifty, and a year of three hundred and sixty-five days less one lands on the sum exactly.

The index adds its usual quiet fact underneath. The name with its article stands 16 times in the twenty-four books, and in only two scenes: the opening of Iyov, and one vision in Zecharyah, where the accuser stands up at the right hand of Yehoshua the kohen gadol to accuse him, and is rebuked. The one time Scripture’s accuser leaves Iyov’s frame, he is prosecuting a high priest, and he loses. Nothing in that is a gematria. It is what a concordance shows when you ask where a word actually lives, and what the equality itself may prove is a question for the article on what gematria can and cannot carry.

The day, as the sources this site holds give it: a name written only in the plural, seven days of separation, two goats alike and a lot between them, a Name said ten times and a courtyard on its faces at the sound, a fast commanded without the word for fasting, a city that turned and was seen turning, and a last mishnah in which the day itself is a mikveh. The numbers on this page are small furniture beside all that. They are keys into an index, and the doors above are open.