(Jewish Group) What's an L.A. Jew to do on Yom Kippur if they don't go to synagogue?

Yom Kippur is a complicated day for Miriam Bar-Zemer.

The Jewish holiday, which begins this year on the evening of Sept. 24, is considered the holiest day of the year — a time of deep introspection, fasting and repentance, which Jews have traditionally honored by spending the day in synagogue in a collective act of prayer, meditation and atonement.

But for Bar-Zemer, a 29-year-old graduate student who was born in Israel and grew up fairly secular in Los Angeles, deciding what to do on that day is an annual challenge. Her family didn’t belong to a synagogue for most of her childhood, and now as an adult it’s not a space that she finds conducive to self-reflection. Her father fasts, and some years she does too, but she feels like fasting in isolation misses the point. At the same time, eating normally doesn’t seem right either.

“I feel like it being the most important holiday, I’m obligated to recognize it, but then I struggle to meld the tradition with my own interpretation of what it means to feel redemption,” she said. “It’s a confusing day.”

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One of the things I have always liked about Judaism is its flexibility (for the most part) ini how one clebrates/acknowledges a holiday or tradition.