Welcome everyone. Let’s start off with a song

Song: Heenay ma tov

Reader: That’s a lot of words in Hebrew. Whatever do they mean? One of the words is "tov" which you’ve heard when people say "mazel tov" – good luck. "Tov" means "good," and we put "ma" in front to mean "how good." The word "nayim" means "pleasant." And "heenay" means "look and see" or "behold!" So the first line reads

Reader: What does this have to do with us? Are we all brothers and sisters?

We don’t all have the same parents, but when we come together like this we are all part of a family. We’re part of the family of Kahal B'raira, and that is part of the family of Jewish people all over the world.

So maybe we are brothers and sisters, at least for a while. What are we celebrating? We’re celebrating the end of Yom Kippur – The Day of Atonement. To atone for something you did means to feel sorry for it, and to try to make it right. Maybe you remember this morning when we all got together and thought about how each and every one of us does things we might feel sorry about. I’ll bet you’re saying to yourself – "We already did that. Do we have to do it again?"

Reader: The answer is no – and yes! We’ve come together to celebrate the end of the eight days where Jews like us all over the world take time to think about how we’ve behaved during the last year. In a few minutes we’ll have a break fast. That’s a meal people eat after fasting. Some adults like to fast on Yom Kippur as a way of remembering how the year has gone and what they want to do differently next year. Why do we make such a big deal about this?
 

Reader: The most important thing that we believe is the importance of thinking about the results of what we do. Before we steal the last piece of cake, we think about whether it was being saved for someone else. Before we get up and leave our toys on the floor we think about what will happen if someone steps on them. Before we make fun of people, or play a trick on them, we think about how they will feel. Before we agree to do someone a favor that we really don’t want to do, we think about how doing that favor will make us feel, and how it will affect our friendship. Or we try to. But we don’t always. So at this time of year, during the eight days after Rosh Hashonah – which is when we celebrate the birthday of the world – we take extra care to remind ourselves that we want to do a little better next year than we did last year.
 
 

Reader: So we come together one more time on Yom Kippur to renew our promise to ourselves that we’ll make next year just a little bit better – and then we celebrate that promise by having a nice meal with our friends. And then we’ll end the special time by saying goodbye. If we say it in Hebrew we’ll say Goodbye by saying Shalom, which means Hello and Goodbye and Peace. Then we’ll say khaverim – a khaver is one friend and a group of friends is khaverim. And then, because we’ll need to check in with each other next Yom Kippur, we say le-heet ra’ot, which means "see you again."

Let’s sing that all together now:

Song: Shalom Khaverim.