Yom Kippur is a day of holding back. For twenty-five hours we give up food and drink and set aside many of the comforts we usually take for granted. By the afternoon, most of us are feeling it. Then, as we gather for the afternoon Bible reading, we hear a verse from Leviticus that speaks not about holding back, but about living:
On a day when we give up food, drink, and comfort, the Bible speaks to us about living. What does it mean to live through God’s commandments? And why is this the message we hear as the holiest day of the year moves toward its close?
The Sages built one of the most important principles in Jewish law on two Hebrew words from this verse: v’chai bahem, “and live by them.” They explain that a person should live by the commandments, not die by them (Babylonian Talmud, Yoma 85b). If keeping a commandment would put a life at risk, the commandment steps aside and the life comes first. The only exceptions are the three cardinal sins, idolatry, murder, and the gravest moral prohibitions, which a person may not commit even to save his own life (Babylonian Talmud, Sanhedrin 74a).
This principle, known as pikuach nefesh, the saving of a life, shapes Jewish practice in powerful ways. A doctor drives to the hospital on Shabbat to treat a patient. A sick person is fed non-kosher food if nothing else can keep him alive. Even on Yom Kippur itself, a person whose health is in danger is required to eat. On the very day we read this verse, some people in the congregation may be fulfilling it by breaking their fast.
The lesson is clear. God does not want His commandments to cost us our lives. Life is sacred, and the Bible treats it that way.
But there is another way to read these two words.
Rabbi Yitzchak Meir Alter, the first Rabbi of the Gur Hassidic dynasty offered a very different interpretation. He read v’chai bahem not only as a rule about when commandments give way, but as an instruction about what the commandments are for. In his reading, the verse is telling us to find life in them. To borrow a modern phrase, “get a life through them.”
Rabbi Ephraim Mirvis, Chief Rabbi of the United Kingdom, draws out the meaning of this idea. The mitzvot, God’s commandments, were never meant to weigh us down or drain the joy out of our lives. They can be demanding. Some require sacrifice, discipline, and effort. But their purpose is to give our lives depth. Through them we find meaning, a sense of purpose, and a joy that goes deeper than passing pleasure.
This turns a common assumption on its head. Many people picture a life of faith as a long list of restrictions: don’t eat this, don’t work then, don’t say that. From the outside, the commandments can look like fences that keep us from living fully. Rabbi Alter says the opposite is true. The commandments are not the fence around life. They are the path into it.
Anyone who has sat at a Shabbat table surrounded by family, with the phones put away and the week’s worries set aside, knows this is true. Anyone who has given charity and felt the quiet satisfaction of helping someone in need knows it. Anyone who has opened the Bible and felt God speaking directly to them knows it. These are not burdens. They are the moments when we feel most alive.
Now return to Yom Kippur. Throughout the Ten Days of Repentance, we add a short prayer to our daily services: “Remember us for life, O King who delights in life, and inscribe us in the Book of Life, for Your sake, O living God.” On Yom Kippur we say it again and again. It may be the central request of the entire season.
What exactly are we asking for?
The simple answer is that we want to live through the coming year. We want health and safety for ourselves and the people we love. That request is real, and God hears it. But the reading from Leviticus suggests that we are asking for something more.
When we ask God to write us in the Book of Life, we are also asking for the kind of life the Chiddushei HaRim described. Not just a pulse and a year on the calendar, but a life full of meaning. A life of purpose. A life connected to the One who gave it to us.
Moses made this connection clear in his final words to Israel.
Moses does not define life as simply staying alive. He defines it as loving God, listening to Him, and holding on to Him. “He is your life.” A person can breathe for a hundred and twenty years and never truly live. Another person can fill each day with purpose, kindness, and closeness to God, and that is what the Bible calls life.
On Yom Kippur, we set aside food and drink for one day not because the body is bad, but because we want to remember what our lives are really for. For twenty-five hours, we step away from the things that usually fill our days and focus on the things that give our days meaning. We are not running away from life. We are reaching for its source.
As the afternoon light fades and we hear the words “by the pursuit of which humans shall live,” the message comes into focus. God is not asking us to shrink our lives to fit His commandments. He is offering us, through those commandments, a bigger life than we could build on our own.
So this Yom Kippur, when you pray to be written in the Book of Life, ask for both kinds of life. Ask God for another year of health and strength. And ask Him for a year that is truly worth living, filled with meaning, joy, and closeness to Him. That is the life His word was given to bring us.
