Yom Kippur scenes from around the world

Yom Kippur is Judaism’s Day of Atonement, when devout Jews ask God to forgive them for their transgressions. They refrain from eating and drinking and attend intense prayer services in synagogues. The day caps a traditional 10-day period of soul-searching that began with the holiday of Rosh Hashana, the start of the Jewish new year.

Pictured: Ultra-Orthodox Jews prayed as they performed the Tashlich ritual in Ashdod, Israel, on Sept. 24.

Streets were empty of car traffic in Jerusalem during the Jewish holiday of Yom Kippur on Sept. 26.

Children at the Judy Gordon Nursery School at Temple Israel of Natick sang songs and blew the shofar to celebrate Yom Kippur on Sept. 25.

Jewish worshippers prayed on a roof of a Jewish seminary overlooking the Western Wall, Judaism’s holiest prayer site, ahead of Yom Kippur in Jerusalem’s Old City Sept. 25.

Ultra-Orthodox Jews wore white holiday cloths and ate cake during noon prayers a few hours before the start of Yom Kippur on Sept. 25.

Ultra-Orthodox Jews swung chickens over their heads, as part of the Kaparot ritual, in which it is believed that one transfers one’s sins from the past year into the chicken, in Bnei Brak, Israel, on Sept. 25.

Jews of the Hassidic sect Vizhnitz gathered on a hill overlooking the Mediterranean Sea as they participated in a Tashlich ceremony in Herzeliya, Israel, on Sept. 24. Tashlich, which means ‘to cast away’ in Hebrew, is the practice by which Jews go to a large flowing body of water and symbolically “throw away’’ their sins by throwing a piece of bread, or similar food, into the water before Yom Kippur.

A Jewish boy took part in a prayer at the Western Wall on Sept. 24.

Ultra-Orthodox Jews prayed as they performed the Tashlich ritual in Tek Aviv on Sept. 24.

Jewish men from the Vizhnitz Hasidic dynasty prayed next to a plastic pool containing fish as they performed the Tashlich ritual outside their synagogue in Bnei Brak, Israel, on Sept. 24.

A man swung a chicken over his son’s head as part of the Kaparot ritual in Bnei Brak on Sept. 24.

A Jewish child fed chickens, later to be slaughtered as part of the Kaparot ritual, in Jerusalem’s Mea Shearim neighborhood on Sept. 23.