Yom Kippur Nusakh

It used to be that if you were to enter a synagogue, you would know exactly what day it was and what time of day. The Nusakh, the foundational melody of the prayer service, is the Jewish timekeeper. But unlike a clock, it contains intense emotions; some times are announced in banality, some in triumph, some in peace, and some in desperation.

The Yom Kippur service in particular has the most amount of chimes. From service to service, the Nusakh changes, but it does not present itself as cyclical; Shabbat begins peacefully, in the middle is exultory, and ends dolefully. Yom Kippur only goes in one direction, from perfect peace to complete desperation. It paces itself, one service to the next until there is no choice but to be swept in the whirling vortex of spirit, ended only by the final Nusakh, the final note, the unshaken blow of the Tekiah Gedolah.

Yom Kippur is not a cycle. By music and by spirit it is ascension, or death, or desperation. It's end is a complete end. The other side is the World to Come, symbolized by the Sukkah that we build, which stands, as far as the Talmud describes it, in the Future.

The prayer service of Hoshanah Rabbah, the sixth day of Sukkot, is the apex of Sukkot; it is the last day of the world bringing sacrifices for rain at the Temple. If you were to be at services (which I will lead at TBI this year), you might not have any idea what time of day or year it is if you walked in. As a unique feature of the service, the Nusakh changes rapidly between sections. It is as though time, all time, collapses on itself, at the height of our unity with the world.

Watch the video above as I walk through the Nusakh of each Yom Kippur section.