Yom Kippur

Around the world and around the region, Jews will memorialize the Shoah, or Holocaust, today with prayers, music, lectures, wreath-laying, student essay contests, and similar observances. But no matter how beautiful or moving, no ritual or prayer or liturgy can convey the Holocaust's staggering incomprehensibility, says Rabbi Ira F. Stone of Temple Beth Zion-Beth Israel in Center City. "Our prayers every day speak of trust in God's goodness. And yet those words seem immensely hollow in the shadow of the Shoah," he said in an interview yesterday at his Center City office.

They have done home-safety inspections, arranged transportation, dispatched home health-care aides, delivered meals and set up emergency-response systems. This week, executive director Sarah Lentz Spellman and the rest of the staff at Cadbury at Home, a division of the Cadbury retirement center in Cherry Hill that provides services for senior citizens who wish to stay in their homes, learned something new: Judaism and food go together. "You can't talk about Judaism without food," Selma Kupersmith, a Jewish client of Cadbury at Home, told the employees.

There's a bittersweet, almost mystical quality to Neil Stein's resurrection of Fishmarket, the narrow rowhouse restaurant he reopened last week, one door down from its original site at the corner of 18th and Sansom streets. It's almost as if Moe Stein had a hand in turning fortune's wheel so it would click at just this moment in his son's life, stopping again at this address in this unpretentious neighborhood of small shops and hail-and-hearty how-dos, so that Neil Stein could once again do what he did so well.

Pepper Middle School in Southwest Philadelphia will be closed at least until Monday because of extensive flood damage, officials said yesterday. Plans are under way to find an alternative site for the school's 1,200 students in case it takes much longer to complete repairs. In the meantime, teachers have put together learning packets that parents can pick up at the Bartram Cluster Office and at local churches and libraries. The cluster office, at 67th Street and Elmwood Avenue, can be reached at 215-727-5780 for more information.

A young person pauses before entering Congregation B'nai Abraham. The synagogue, at Fifth and Lombard Streets in Society Hill, held services last night for Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement.

Two Philadelphia schools in areas hardest hit by Hurricane Floyd likely will remain closed for at least a week, affecting more than 1,700 students. Penrose Elementary and Pepper Middle School, both in Southwest Philadelphia, were flooded, causing mechanical equipment to fail and transformers to blow, said Eric Shapiro, who oversees district facilities. After further assessing the damage over the weekend, district officials will announce on Monday how long the schools will need to be closed and if temporary locations have been found for classes.

All passages of life - a new year, a wedding, a bar/bat mitzvah, a confirmation or a circumcision - focus on one hope: change. But if the popular fever surrounding the millennium is any indication, the internal change Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur demand is far different from the changes anticipated by the turn in the solar calendar. Not just because loud extravaganzas are different from solemn synagogue ritual, or because the squeals of thousands of party horns are so unlike the inspiring sounds of the shofar.

Gun control becomes a big-time Jewish issue today. The American Jewish Congress plans announcements at the Liberty Bell and in nine other cities that it is seeking a million petition signatures aimed at Congress on the theme, "Stop the Guns, Protect Our Kids. " The timing - amid the High Holidays - is no coincidence. "This is a period of introspection, and it's right before Yom Kippur, the holiest day of the year, the day of atonement," said Joel D. Beaver, the group's interim state director in Philadelphia.

When Rabbi Albert Gabbai blows the shofar to mark the Jewish New Year of Rosh Hashana this weekend, he'll consider it "a wakeup call" to Congregation Mikveh Israel congregants to "mend your ways, become a better person. " The message is timeless, but the rabbi's words are especially haunting as Jews welcome in the Hebrew year of 5760 tonight with wariness and vigilance. Recent hate-inspired shootings targeted Jewish men in Chicago and Jewish children in California. In Los Angeles, the alleged shooter, neo-Nazi Buford Furrow Jr., said his motive in wounding five kids and killing a Filipino-American postman was "a wakeup call to America to kill Jews.

On Friday evening, the first day of Rosh Hashanah, Jews everywhere will lift their hearts and prayer books to God. Rosh Hashanah, along with Yom Kippur 10 days later, marks the holiest time in the Jewish calendar, the time of atonement known as Days of Awe. That word awe unnerves some people, observes Rabbi David A. Teutsch, president of the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College in Wyncote. Many Jews call this season the "High Holidays" instead. But an awesome surrender to the divine lies at the heart of this holy season, Rabbi Teutsch insists.