Kapparot
Question
Why do some people wave a fowl over their heads on the day before Yom Kippur?
Answer
The name of the ceremony is kapparot, which is connected with kippur - "expiation". The ceremony derives from the 9th century and symbolically transfers a person's sins. 
Ramban and Joseph Karo (Tur, Orach Chayyim 605) thought it was a stupid custom.
After reciting Biblical verses, a male waves a male fowl three times around his head and a female, a hen (the choice of the fowl is because many families had poultry), and they say a formula: "This is my substitute, my replacement, my atonement: this fowl goes to its death, but may I live long."
The fowl is then slaughtered and given to the poor. In many circles, the ceremony is performed with money (in ancient Babylonia, plants such as beans and peas were used).
The Ramban and Joseph Karo (Tur, Orach Chayyim 605) thought it was a stupid custom; and the Rashba (Shlomo ben Adret) regarded it as a pagan superstition. Kabbalists, however, took it very seriously. Moses Isserles, who adds Ashkenazi glosses to the Shulchan Aruch, says it is an accepted custom and should be followed.
Those who oppose it recognise that it may contain a hint of the scapegoat ritual in the Temple, but argue that the best way to rid oneself of sins is genuine repentance. Giving money fulfils the tradition of charity and symbolises the determination that any sins we may have committed will now be replaced by good deeds for the benefit of other people.
Standing on Yom Kippur
Question
Why do people stand for the important prayers on Yom Kippur?
Answer
As a mark of respect, but also because on this day we try to emulate the angels. According to midrashic sources, Satan tells God he has no power over Israel on Yom Kippur. He says:
"This day, they resemble the angels. Angels do not eat and neither do they. Angels do not wear shoes and neither do they. Angels stand and so do they."
Why then can we not be like angels for the rest of the year? Because we are flesh and blood, and we have an earthly nature and needs. We can aspire to be higher beings, but we still remain humans.
On Yom Kippur we can spend a day as higher beings, and the experience certainly improves us, but it cannot last. One day we might become angels, but in the meantime we have tasks to perform on Earth.
Fasting in Black and White
"It's your Jewish black fast again this week, isn't it?"
This is the question put to me by a non-Jewish acquaintance.
"There is nothing black about Yom Kippur at all," I tell him. "If the day has any colour, it is white. Black signifies mourning and Yom Kippur is not an occasion for mourning, but for joy."
"Joy?" he asks me. "Isn't it too solemn for that?"
"Something can be solemn and happy at the same time," I reply. "There is definitely a joy and happiness about Yom Kippur. In fact, even when we recite confessions of sins we use quite a bright melody; we actually sing at having our souls cleansed and the burden of sin lifted."
"But you fast, don't you? Surely that's no fun?"
Answer: "Even the fasting, which is the best known Yom Kippur observance, is no morbid experience. What it does is to raise us above normal physical and material concerns; it gives the day a sense of spiritual exhilaration. People tend to wish each other, 'Good Yom-Tov - a Good Festival', though the correct greeting is 'G'mar Tov - a good sealing in God's books', but Yom Kippur definitely is a festival."
I tell my acquaintance that, as well as fasting, there are four other innuyim or restrictions - the prohibition of washing, anointing, wearing leather shoes and cohabitation. "All these rules," I add, "come from a verse in the Bible which tells us to afflict our souls (Leviticus 23:32; Mishnah Yoma 8:1). There is a much-loved Israeli rabbi, Shlomo Riskin, who thinks the Hebrew doesn't necessarily denote self-affliction, but is linked to the root anah, which means to "answer" or "respond". To Rabbi Riskin, the five innuyim respond to the recognition that something in our lives has gone wrong, and through them we begin to rebuild ourselves."
"But no eating, no drinking, no sex? This helps to rebuild your lives?"
It's clearly a good question. How do I answer?
"One element in the rebuilding comes," I say, "when we note that each of the innuyim is an activity which is normally good, kosher and permitted. Eating and drinking are definitely permissible, of course they are, but on Yom Kippur we show who's in charge. They don't rule our lives; it's we who master them. Sexual activity is permissible (Jews don't have much regard for celibacy), but on Yom Kippur we can manage without it. A 3rd-century rabbi, Rav, said, in fact, 'In the World to Come a person will be called to account for the legitimate pleasures which he denied himself,' and he might have added that one will also be called to account if we allow pleasure to make slaves of us."
Conversation goes back to fasting, and I quote Abraham Joshua Heschel of Apt: "On Tisha B'Av, with its tragic memories, who can eat? On Yom Kippur, with its spiritual elevation, who needs to eat?" I add, "What makes someone feel hungry on Yom Kippur is not that we are desperate for food, but the clock tells us it is our normal eating time, our body is used to its fix of food or coffee, and I am afraid there is often some rather distracting conversation in the synagogue pews about how well or badly a given person is fasting."
This is what I tell my non-Jewish friend. To fellow Jews I have something to add, and I don't really mind if he listens in. What I say is this. If we gave Yom Kippur a chance, we would find that we can actually manage without physical comforts, pleasures and indulgences. Yehudah HaLevi says in his Kuzari (3:5), "When they fast on this day they become like the angels. The fast is marked by humbling themselves, lowering their heads, standing, 
"Something can be solemn and happy at the same time," I reply.
bending their knees and singing hymns of praise. Their physical powers abandon their natural functions, as if they had no animal nature." To be like an angel is possible one day in the year, though it is too much to expect it more regularly. Nonetheless, we ought at least to try to become more spiritual more often and to lose ourselves in the ecstasy of the Divine presence.
Fasting is also a symbol of compassion. We do without eating for a day once in a while, but there are many people who are hungry throughout the year, and our day without food should stimulate us to give practical support to those who have many days at a time without enough to eat or to give their families.
Yet, despite all this, there are those who watch the clock all day long. How slowly the hours pass for them! How uncomfortable they get as the day wears on! Others, made of sterner stuff, almost ostentatiously avert their gaze from the passing of time. But both categories might not know that the pious men of the past did in fact watch the clock quite anxiously on Yom Kippur. Not in order to calculate how much of the ordeal still lay ahead, but to count how few precious moments remained to experience their spiritual closeness to God.