Yom Kippur 2026: Our Holiday Hours and Covering a Closed Day
Our team is out for Yom Kippur and back Tuesday, September 22. Here is a short note on the day, and what to do with the phone when your own shop closes for one.
By Oren, founder of BH Dispatch
Holiday hours for our team
Yom Kippur begins at sundown on Sunday, September 20 and ends at nightfall on Monday, September 21. Our team is out for Yom Kippur on Sunday, September 20 and Monday, September 21, and back Tuesday, September 22, 2026 at 9:30 AM Eastern Time.
Only our team is away. BH Dispatch itself does not close for the holiday, so your dispatch board, your jobs, and your customer records are there as usual while we are out.
Our regular office hours are Sunday to Thursday, 9:30 AM to 5:00 PM, and Friday, 9:30 AM to 12:00 PM, Eastern Time. We are closed on Saturdays.
What is Yom Kippur?
Yom Kippur means "day of atonement." It is the most solemn day of the Jewish year, ten days after Rosh Hashanah, and in 2026 it falls in the opening stretch of the year 5787.
It is a fast day of about twenty five hours, from sundown to nightfall, spent largely in prayer. Work stops the way it does on Shabbat, which is why our phone and our inbox are quiet for the whole of it rather than part of it.
In Metro Detroit, candle lighting is at 7:15 PM on Sunday, September 20, and the fast ends with havdalah at 8:13 PM on Monday, September 21. In White Plains, New York, candle lighting is at 6:37 PM and havdalah is at 7:35 PM. Those are Hebcal's times, and they vary by city.
The greeting for the day is "G'mar Chatima Tova," may you be sealed for good. Many people simply wish each other an easy and meaningful fast.
Covering the phone on a day you are closed
Most home-service shops close for something at least a few times a year, for a holiday, a funeral, a wedding, or a week away. The days themselves are fine. What costs money is the hours around them, when customers call a line that nobody told them was closed. Four things make that stretch behave.
- Name the day you reopen, not just the day you are closed. A message that says only "we are closed today" leaves the caller with a decision to make. A message that says which morning and which hour you are back gives most of them a reason to wait instead of dialing the next shop on the list.
- Send the closed days to voicemail instead of letting the line ring out. A ring that never gets picked up reads as out of business. A short recording reads as closed today, and it is the cheapest fix on this list, because a missed call costs more than it seems.
- Decide what counts as an emergency before the day starts. If someone is carrying the phone for genuine emergencies, write down in advance what qualifies and what waits. That judgment is much easier to make on a calm afternoon than at ten at night from a number you do not recognize.
- Leave the first morning back unbooked. Two closed days put two days of messages into one inbox. Keep the first hour after you reopen free, work the backlog down, and start the day's jobs from a clean board instead of from behind.
None of it takes long. All of it is easier before the closure than during it, and the shop that does it comes back to waiting customers rather than to lost ones.
From our team to yours, g'mar chatima tova. We wish an easy and meaningful fast to everyone observing, and we will see you on Tuesday.
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