Prayer for Yom Kippur

Birth is a beginning and Death a destination;

From childhood to maturity and youth to age,

From innocence to awareness and ignorance to knowing.

From foolishness to discretion and then, perhaps to wisdom,

From weakness to strength or strength to weakness and back again.

From health to sickness and back, we pray, to health again,

From offense to forgiveness, from loneliness to love,

From joy to gratitude, from pain to compassion.

From grief to understanding, from fear to faith,

From defeat to defeat.

Until looking backward or ahead, we see that

Victory lies not at some high place along the way,

But in having made the Journey, stage by stage.

So we do not lose heart.

Though our outer nature is wasting away,

our inner nature is being renewed every day.

For this slight momentary affliction

is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory.

2 Corinthians 4:16-17

http://www.jewfaq.org/holidayg.htm

How do you pronounce the name of this holiday? "Yom" rhymes with "home" and "Kippur" sounds like "key poor" with emphasis on the "poor." A lot of Americans (even American Jews) pronounce "Kippur" like the smoked fish dish, kipper, but this really isn't correct.