Yom Kippur messages reflect current events

The turbulent life of the late technology pioneer Steve Jobs -- who died this week -- provided the inspiration for one Long Island rabbi's Yom Kippur address Saturday.

"I think there are aspects of his life that are truly teachable," Rabbi Raphael Adler of the Woodbury Jewish Center said Thursday as he prepared his remarks for delivery on the holiest day of the year for Jews.

Yom Kippur, which begins at sundown Friday night and continues until sundown Saturday, is the Jewish Day of Atonement and completes the High Holy Days that began with Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year, at sundown on Sept. 28.

Jobs, 56, the founder of Apple and developer of the iPad and other tech devices, died Wednesday after a series of illnesses that spanned the last decade.

Adler noted that Jobs was a college dropout, suffered severe illness and had corporate setbacks during his life.

"Too often we focus on our own grief," Adler said. "He never focused on his own problems. He surmounted them. . . . They did not make him bitter or despondent. These are some lessons we can learn from a real person."

At the B'nai Israel Reform Temple in Oakdale, Rabbi Steven Moss said he spends more time working on his Yom Kippur message because more worshippers will turn out for the High Holy Days. This year, he will take note of the economy, violence in the world and problems in the Middle East, he said.

"What I try to get across to my congregants is the importance of understanding that to confront all of these problems . . . we must have a foundation, embedded, of faith in God and faith in humanity," Adler said.

Rabbi David Altman of the Mastic Beach Hebrew Center, said his theme this year will be threefold: "being good, doing good and feeling good."

"Growing up in Montreal, I had a teacher who told us it was important to be good, but also do to good -- soup kitchens, helping others. And if you do that, you're also going to feel good," Altman said.