I make jewellery for a living. And on Monday I will take mine off.
Not because I have to. Because there is a custom, and because the reason behind it is the most interesting thing I know about the material I work in.
The High Priest changed his clothes
The Kohen Gadol had eight garments, and they were spectacular. Gold thread. A breastplate set with twelve stones, one for each tribe. A gold plate across his forehead with the Name engraved on it. Bells of gold along the hem, so that you heard him before you saw him.
He wore them every day of the year.
On Yom Kippur, at the one moment he had been preparing for — going into the Holy of Holies, the innermost room, which no one else entered and which he entered only on this day — he took them off.
“He shall put on the sacred linen tunic, and linen breeches shall be upon his flesh, and he shall gird himself with a linen sash, and he shall wear a linen turban.”
— Vayikra 16:4
Four garments, all plain white linen. The clothes of an ordinary priest. Less than what he wore on a Tuesday.
The most important man, on the most important day, in the most important room, deliberately underdressed.
Because gold has a history
The reason the sages give is one line, and it is devastating:
אין קטגור נעשה סניגור
The prosecutor cannot become the defender.
Gold is not neutral. Gold is the material that built the calf. When Israel panicked at the foot of the mountain, the thing they melted down and shaped into a god was jewellery — the rings out of people’s ears.
So on the day the whole nation stands to be judged, you do not send in a man wearing the evidence. The material that testified against you once cannot be the material that speaks for you now.
Nothing about the gold itself changed. What changed is what it had been used for.
And so, a custom
From that comes a practice that survives to this day: many people avoid wearing gold on Yom Kippur. Not law in the way that fasting is law — a custom, recorded in the codes, kept in some communities and not in others.
And here the sources begin to argue, which is where it gets good.
Rabbi Akiva Eiger writes that the custom does not apply to women — because women had no part in that sin.
The Mateh Ephraim disagrees: even if the women did not sin, they are part of Israel, and Israel does not want reminders of that day in the room.
Both of them are working from the same story. It’s worth telling.
The women said no
The midrash records that when the gold was being collected for the calf, the men came to their wives and daughters and asked for their jewellery.
The women refused.
Not one of them handed anything over. The gold that went into the calf came from the men’s own ears.
And then — this is the part I keep turning over — a few months later, when the collection was for the Mishkan, the sanctuary, the women gave first and gave everything. Bracelets, nose rings, rings, body ornaments. They emptied their jewellery boxes without being asked twice.
Same women. Same gold. Opposite answers.
Which tells you their refusal was never about the value. It was about what the thing was being made into. They understood something about their own jewellery that the men in that story did not: an object has no character of its own. It takes the character of what you give it to.
The tradition remembered this. Pirkei d’Rabbi Eliezer says the women were given Rosh Chodesh, the new moon, as their own — a small monthly holiday, a reward for the one time they said no.
This is what teshuvah means
These ten days have a name for what is being asked: teshuvah. It is usually translated as repentance, which is not wrong but is not it either. The word comes from shuv, to turn back. Return.
And the Rambam gives it a definition precise enough to measure yourself against:
What is complete teshuvah? When the same thing comes into his hands again, and it is possible for him to do it, and he holds back and does not do it — not out of fear, and not from weakness.
— Rambam, Hilchot Teshuvah 2:1
Not remorse. Not an apology. Not a better feeling about yourself. The same situation, the same opportunity, and a different answer.
Which is exactly the shape of the story above. Those women were asked for their gold twice. Once for a calf, once for a sanctuary. Same women, same request, same metal — and the second answer was not a repeat of the first.
That is why this custom belongs to these ten days and to no other week of the year. Teshuvah was never about the material. It is about what you do with it the second time it is in your hand.
What I take from it
I sell objects. I am not neutral about this: I think a piece of jewellery can carry meaning, or it wouldn’t be worth making by hand.
But this week says something harder, and truer. A thing made of gold is not automatically good. It can be a sanctuary or it can be a calf, and the metal will not tell you which. The only thing that decides is what you attach it to.
That is why the High Priest could wear gold all year and not on that day. Not because gold is bad. Because on that particular day, in that particular room, it would have been arguing the wrong side.
Monday
So on Monday, the rings come off, and the chain, and whatever else. Not out of guilt about making them. If anything, the opposite — it is the one day of the year that says out loud that the object is not the point.
And on Tuesday it goes back on, and it means something it did not mean on Sunday.
May your sealing be a good one.
גמר חתימה טובה
Nothing we make is the point. It’s what you attach it to.
