Kevin Thomas, writing in the "Los Angeles Times" said, "Kippur" was a "classic war film, at once elegiac and immediate, that takes you smack into the chaos of combat yet is marked by a detached perspective." Lisa Schwarzbaum in "Entertainment Weekly" offered a mostly positive review commenting, "Amos Gitai's intense, autobiographically based drama is set during Israel's 1973 Yom Kippur War, but current Middle East tensions add urgency to this stark study in the unglorious matter of factness of battle." She expressed satisfaction by saying, "this sobering antiwar war movie is his rueful acknowledgment of those who fight with no Godot in sight."