In the fall of 2021, 67-year-old Nancy Piness couldn’t bring herself to pick up the phone and call her friend, even though they had known each other for decades.

Earlier that year, they had something of a falling out. There was no one terrible thing that happened, but over the years they had disagreements, differences of opinion and tension. One day, it just became too much and they stopped talking.

“I deliberately avoided her street,” Piness said. “I deliberately hoped I wouldn’t run into her at the grocery store.”

This time of year, Piness thinks about her friend a lot.

That’s because Friday night marks the beginning of Yom Kippur (the Day of Atonement) — the holiest day of the Jewish year. It’s observed with fasting, prayer and deep introspection.

“Yom Kippur is seen as this really special window where if you express an actual regret and you ask to be absolved, then God will absolve anything — literally anything,” explains Rabbi Chana Leslie Glazer, interim rabbi at a congregation in King of Prussia, Pennsylvania.

“There is one little caveat, though. If you don’t make right with the other people that you’ve hurt, then that can’t be forgiven,” said Glazer.

This idea is central to the Jewish High Holidays. And in the weeks leading up to Yom Kippur, many Jews try to repair broken relationships.

“There are a lot of people who will go around,” said Glazer, ”writing up a list of all the people that they need to ask forgiveness from and that they want to apologize to.”

But this process requires preparation.

One way this is done is through a service called selichot, which happens within the week before the Jewish New Year (Rosh Hashanah). The word selichot means pardons, and the service is designed to help one reflect on the ways in which they’ve fallen short in the past year.

For the sins we have committed

On a humid Saturday night in northwest Washington, DC a small group of congregants gather together at Temple Micah. Nancy Piness was one of them.

Standing in a circle, they lit a braided candle, sipped from a ceremonial cup of wine, smelled sweet spices and recited the blessings that mark the ending of Shabbat. Then they filed into the sanctuary, and began the selichot service.

One of the prayers they recited is the Al Chet — a communal confession of sins which is said many times over the course of the High Holidays. It pairs with another prayer called Ashamnu, in which many congregants clench their right hand in a fist and pound their heart as they recite each sin.

This is the fourth High Holiday season that Piness has been out of regular contact with her friend, who isn’t Jewish. This year, she finally feels ready to have a conversation. And she’s been thinking a lot about what she’ll say.

“I can tell it’s emotional now and I can feel the lump in my throat and I may burst into tears, which she doesn’t always understand,” said Piness. When she finally picks up the phone to call or text, she said her message will be something like: “Too much time has gone by. I miss you. And I hope we can find some time soon to talk.”

Forgiveness is a process

The Jewish philosopher Maimonides outlined four steps that make up the process of seeking atonement or forgiveness. Glazer explains that the first step is to recognize the improper action and stop. Second, to verbally confess. Third, to genuinely regret the action. And the fourth is to make sure not to do it again.

For years, Piness was stuck between those steps.

“I could be in services for hours on end and think about things. But I’m a feeler, and I’m a doer. And it’s time to act,” said Piness.

So this year, she finally did reach out.

“I was anxious,” said Piness. “I was really anxious. And I didn’t want to pick up the phone and call because she’s not a phone person. And so I texted.”

She asked how her friend was doing and if they could talk in person.

“She wrote back minutes later. And she said, ‘Hi Nancy — thank you for being in touch. I’m willing to get together, but right now I’m the one with too many things going on.’”

Piness plans to sit down with her friend, as soon as they both can. But she knows there’s still a lot of work to do, and it won’t be done before Yom Kippur begins at sundown on Friday. 

Glazer advises a lot of people who are having trouble making amends, and who may feel pressure to do it on deadline around Yom Kippur.

“We talk about at the end of Yom Kippur that it’s the closing of the gates and that’s the end of your window. And that’s more meant to inspire people to really think deeply, as deeply as they possibly can about what they’ve done and to really go as far as they can with it,” Glazer said.

“But also it’s important to understand that if you don’t quite get all the way there by the end of Yom Kippur, it’s perfectly fine to go in later and do the rest of your work.”

Piness is relieved that even though things aren’t completely resolved, at least she’s taken these first steps.

Former President Donald J. Trump and his surrogates have repeatedly accused the Biden administration of losing tens of thousands of migrant children, distorting, conflating and inflating government statistics.

The misleading claim, now a staple of Mr. Trump’s stump speeches, appears to have originated from Fox News and snowballed. Its evolution shows Mr. Trump’s penchant for exaggeration as well as his symbiotic relationship with the network.

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London-listed shipbroker Braemar closed down 6 per cent on Thursday, the biggest one-day drop in more than a year, after the Financial Times reported its involvement in the sale of nine ageing oil tankers that have joined Russia’s “shadow fleet”.

Braemar’s shares ended the day at 278p, the lowest since May, and were down another 5 per cent to 264 on Friday.

London has been a global centre of the maritime industry for centuries, and Braemar, founded in 1982, is one of the sector’s leading brokers, matching buyers and sellers of vessels in return for a percentage of the purchase price.

Since the first western restrictions on Russian oil exports were introduced in December 2022, Moscow has assembled a so-called shadow fleet of more than 400 such vessels that are at present moving about 4mn barrels of oil a day beyond the reach of the sanctions and generating billions of dollars a year in additional revenue for its war in Ukraine.

Most of those tankers were bought from western sellers but the use of offshore ownership structures has meant western officials have struggled to identify how the ships were acquired and who owns them now.

The FT reported on Thursday that at least 25 of the vessels in the shadow fleet had been purchased by a British accountant on behalf of Eiger Shipping DMCC, the Dubai-based shipping arm of Lukoil, Russia’s second-largest oil producer. Eiger had financed the acquisitions by paying in advance to charter the vessels, the FT reported.

The accountant’s lawyers, and one other person familiar with the matter, told the FT that Braemar was fully aware the vessels were being acquired for, and financed by, Eiger.

Braemar confirmed it had served as the broker for at least nine of the purchases but declined to comment on its knowledge of Eiger’s involvement.

“For every transaction that Braemar considers undertaking, it conducts all appropriate due diligence with know-your-customer checks, legal, compliance and regulatory adherence,” it said in a statement. Braemar on Friday said it had no further comment.

It is not alleged that the transactions have broken any laws. Although Lukoil has been under US sanctions since 2014, neither Eiger Shipping DMCC nor its Dubai-based owner Litasco Middle East DMCC, is a sanctions-hit entity. Dubai-based companies are also not required to comply with the west’s restrictions if they do not use G7 financing or services.

However, individuals and companies that have helped to assemble and operate the shadow fleet are increasingly in the crosshairs of western governments. At least seven of the 25 vessels originally acquired by the British accountant have since been hit with sanctions by the UK or EU, as have two companies that previously managed many of the ships.

In a call to action in July, 44 European leaders, including UK Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer, pledged to target the shadow fleet’s “ships and facilitators” and called for the support of the maritime industry, including ship brokers.