One who says: I shall sin and repent, sin and repent, they do not afford him the opportunity to repent. [If one says]: I shall sin and Yom HaKippurim will atone for me, Yom HaKippurim does not effect atonement. Atonement is granted only to those whose repentance is genuine. A person who says that he is going to sin and then repent is not granted atonement because this person is trying to “trick” the system. Similarly, one who says that he is going to sin and then he intends for Yom Kippur to give atone for his sins, does not get atonement.

For transgressions between man and God Yom HaKippurim effects atonement, but for transgressions between man and his fellow Yom HaKippurim does not effect atonement, until he has pacified his fellow. This was expounded by Rabbi Elazar b. Azariah: “From all your sins before the Lord you shall be clean” (Leviticus 16:30) for transgressions between man and God Yom HaKippurim effects atonement, but for transgressions between man and his fellow Yom HaKippurim does not effect atonement, until he has pacified his fellow.. The second lesson in our mishnah is perhaps the most important one in the tractate. Yom Kippur is a ritual through which we repair our relationship with God. It simply does not work the same way when it comes to our relationship with our fellow human beings. With other human beings we must repair our relationship, ask for their forgiveness and appease their anger at our mistakes. Only after we have done this does the divinely granted day of Yom Kippur effect atonement for our sins.

Rabbi Akiva said: Happy are you, Israel! Who is it before whom you become pure? And who is it that purifies you? Your Father who is in heaven, as it is said: “And I will sprinkle clean water upon you and you shall be clean” (Ezekiel 36:25). And it further says: “O hope ( of Israel, O Lord” (Jeremiah 17:13--just as a mikveh purifies the unclean, so too does he Holy One, blessed be He, purify Israel. As is typical, the tractate concludes with some words of “aggadah.” Rabbi Akiva gives a message of hope to all of Israel, telling us how blessed we are that God cleanses us of our sins. The verses in Ezekiel talk about God’s redemption of the people of Israel, what we usually call the Messianic age. Rabbi Akiva seems to be alluding to this ultimate cleansing of sin, one in which God will give us a “new heart” (v. 26). Rabbi Akiva also makes a pun on the word “mikveh” in Jeremiah the word in its context means hope, but means “ritual bath” in other places. God acts as a purifier for Israel, cleansing us both in the here and now and in the redemptive future for which we long. Congratulations! We have finished Yoma. It is a tradition at this point to thank God for helping us finish learning the tractate and to commit ourselves to going back and relearning it, so that we may not forget it and so that its lessons will stay with us for all of our lives.