Each year on Yom Kipur—the Day of Atonement, the holiest day on Israel’s annual calendar—it is the responsibility of the lone Kohen Gadol (high priest) to take the lives of innocent animals and, with their shed blood, make atonement for himself and all the people of Israel. And for that brief moment, he and the people for whom he stands as mediator before God, are clean—their sins covered by the blood.

The word of truth—that sweet, sweet, powerful sound—lies dormant and useless before us. We sit. And listen. And hear. We revel in the sound it makes, and it stirs us up… inside. Though we invite it in and absorb its perfection, it ultimately does nothing but serve as fodder for our minds’ feeble and fruitless activities. The word is rendered wholly weak and inert… unless and until the time we begin to put the word into action.

Have you ever had that feeling during an intensely heated argument or disagreement when your vision starts to narrow, and you begin to actually feel the inside of your ears start to close up, and you start getting super hot in your face and body, and you have this sensation of being surrounded—closed-in, trapped—while the pressure inside of you keeps mounting and swelling and building and magnifying until you feel like your head is about to implode?