Not white

Yom Kippur’s robes are the color of light that has never fractured. Unadulturated, all-encompassing, streaming, shining white. Yom Kippur wears the white of the sun, of angels and the holiest consecrated secrets. Watching it too long is to risk earthly blindness, to willingly wither away.

There are millions of colors in Shabbat’s coat—a rainbow in every fold. Yellow-brown, ruby-black, rust-gold, cream-peach and more blues than there are permutations in the sea.

Shabbat does not wear Yom Kippur white, though. Every thread in Shabbat’s coat is a remnant of shattered perfection—a soothing multi-faced retelling of the cornea-burning whiteness.

Yom Kippur is draped in purity. Shabbat’s sleeves are lined with loam-brown and blood-red, edged with silver-embroidered teardrops.

I wear Shabbat’s coat because it matches the world I walk through. It looks like peace and restlessness, compassion and gloating, spring, autumn and dawn. It is cut to human size.