Jewish Residents Prepare to Observe Yom Kippur

At sunset tonight, Sanford and Fern Kahn of Ventura will begin a 24-hour ritual of introspection and prayer.

The Kahns, like thousands of Jews in Ventura County, will observe Yom Kippur, the traditional Day of Atonement that begins at sundown. Worshipers abstain from food, drink and labor while reflecting on their deeds over the past year.

“You try and really intensely communicate with God and reflect on all the things that happened this past year that you hope to ask forgiveness,” said Sanford Kahn, a retired business executive.

“You also pray that God will spare you, and let you live another year,” he added.

The High Holy Days, which began Sept. 16 with Rosh Hashanah and culminate Saturday with Yom Kippur, mark the busiest and most solemn hours for Ventura County’s Jewish community.

“This is a time of reconciliation, to be at one with yourself,” said Rabbi Shimon Paskow of the Temple Etz Chaim in Thousand Oaks, where 2,000 people are expected at tonight’s service.

“We look inward to see ourselves, we look outward to see our neighbors and we look upward to see God, the creator of us all,” he said.

For Rabbi Michele Paskow-Cohen, Paskow’s 30-year-old daughter who oversees a congregation of her own in Simi Valley, the holiday holds more than one meaning.

“There’s always a play on the word atonement ,” said Paskow-Cohen, who will deliver sermons to hundreds of people at Congregation B’Nai Emet tonight and Saturday. “They say ‘at-one-ment.’

“It’s a time for introspection, for personal inventory and for setting new goals,” she added. “It’s a time to kind of check in with ourselves and our community and maybe look at things we’ve done wrong and try and right them.”

Several times, the Jewish High Holy Days have coincided with monumental events that would change history.

Just last week, on Rosh Hashanah Eve, Israeli Prime Minister Yitzak Rabin and Palestine Liberation Organization chairman Yasser Arafat pledged peace and shook hands in Washington, D.C.

The event’s image and timing did not go unnoticed by Rabbi Michael Berk of the Temple Beth Torah, the Ventura synagogue that is the county’s largest.

“Many of us rabbis simply chucked our sermons on Rosh Hashanah, and scrambled for new ones because of the stunning image that took place on the White House lawn,” Berk said. “People needed to hear about that (peace accord).”

Nor was the Rabin-Arafat portrait of peace lost on Paskow, who noted that 20 years ago this week Israel was attacked by Syrian and Egyptian forces in what became known as the Yom Kippur War.

“It could be coincidental, but things are often very symbolic,” Paskow said. “Twenty years later, at least there’s hope for peace.”

Berk said his sermons sometimes mix religious messages with shifting political winds.

On Saturday, he said, he will urge his congregation to vote against Proposition 174, the controversial voucher initiative that would use tax dollars to subsidize private school tuition.

“Jews benefited greatly here in the United States from public education and we need to state that,” he said.

But Berk’s Yom Kippur sermon will not be without instruction and guidance. Another portion of his sermon involves the theme of abandonment.

“We’re supposed to imitate God, and one of the ways we can do that is by not abandoning other people in their time of need,” he said. “One of the messages of the holidays is that even though we may sin and walk away from God, God never abandons us.

“All we have to do is turn back toward him,” Berk said.