Yom Kippur - Day of Atonement

Today I would like to say a few words about Yom Kippur - the Day of Atonement, which is upon us. This is a fascinating and a holy day, dedicated in its entirety to reflection, regret, and repentance. It is the most important day to all religious Jewish people; it should also be the most important day of the year for any Jewish person - anyone who is willing to stop, just for a moment, and reflect about their own Jewish identity.

Growing up in Israel, Yom Kippur was always very special to me. Indeed, as a young boy Yom Kippur was, first and foremost, the annual "Kids’ Day": Since no car rode on the streets of Tel Aviv – voluntarily so, without any law or regulation to enforce it (pause to consider the implication of a voluntary norm respected by all) – all the kids took advantage of the day to claim the roads as their own. We all took our bikes, skate boards, and roller blades and went as far as we could go – even on our local highway. This trend peaked when I became a real “big boy,” maybe seven or eight, and rode my bike all the way to Herzlia from North Tel Aviv – which seemed at the time as far as driving Coast to Coast in America (to be sure, the entire distance it is less than ten miles).

But in later years I began to reflect upon the meaning of a single day, every year, which requires of us to give our bodies a full rest – no food, not even water may get in – and our minds a serious workout: All day we are ordered to reflect upon the evil things we have done, the sins, the misdeeds, the failures, the disappointments, the lies. Only then have I began to understand how wise our sages really were when they enumerated all those sins – way back when – that are included today in the Kol Nidrei prayer (please go see the text if you haven’t done so lately – it’s amazing). Indeed, for a good reason they have insisted that each of us has committed all those sins, one by one, year after year, without any improvement, without any possibility to be redeemed in the future. A Jewish person has to recite that list until the day he or she dies, without the possibility of parol. 

And lest there be any doubt – we are instructed to declare that we the Jewish people, each and every one of us, has committed them all. This contra-New Age way of thinking made me surmise that perhaps through a negative (thinking) we may sometime achieve the result of positive (doing). Indeed, knowing and understanding that we are fallible, wrong, and prone to sin may lead to the humbling realization that we are only “all too human” (in the words of a great German philosopher); that, in turn, may lead us to attempt to behave better next year.

Another aspect of Yom Kippur that always fascinated me was that Yom Kippur may – upon proper repentance – absolve all sins between a person and the Lord our God (“Bein Adam La’makom), but cannot, despite all of its might, absolve sins committed toward other people (“Bein Adam Le’Chavero). In that, just for a moment perhaps, a Jewish person’s relationships with his or her friends appear to be even more important than their relationship with God. And recall that this moment – emphasizing the importance of human connection – does not appear on any ordinary day; rather, it appears on the holiest of days, a day when every Jewish person feels closer than ever to their God. Is that a contradiction? A conundrum?  A tension to be resolved? In this short post I cannot attempt to begin discussing this wonderful issue. [For those who are interested I would highly recommend the first of Nine Talmudic Readings by Emanuel Levinas for a fantastic presentation of both the issue and the several attempts made to resolve it]. I would say, however, that I love the fact that on the day we think most about God we are also required not forget for a moment our "earthly" friends – which are, in the end, our most important connections to our spiritual selves.

 Finally, I want to make a short comment on the wonderful prayer that concludes this very special day. This special service – in Hebrew, “Tfilat Ne'eela” [literally, "the prayer of locking," which refers to the belief that the heavens are beginning to shut down (and therefore ‘block’ any more prayers) right before God makes His final choices as to who would live and who would die after the Day is over] – is one of the greatest literal achievements of the Hebrew speaking tradition. Said usually after an entire day of fast and other physical and mental anguish, the prayer reminds us of the simple truth that

"man and beast are no different, for all is vanity."

(Ecc. 3:19; my translation; unfortunately, all ten "classic" translations -- see http://bible.cc -- make the assumption that the verse suggests that man claims "no superiority" over animals; the original, however, is much more poignant.)  

This is a "tough sell" for such a holy day: Here we are, standing all day before God in the synagogue (or elsewhere), praying and pouring our hearts out, and yet we have to read -- in the holiest of prayers -- that we are no different than any of the animals. How come? Professor Leibowitz suggests that the solution to this harsh realization may be found only two lines further down in the text, which reads:

"You have recognized a man from beast, and acknowledged him to stand before You."

In other words, as long as we live our lives without "standing before God" – or, for that matter, without standing before what we perceive to be the real meaning of life – then truly our lives are not any different than those of the animals.  Indeed, if our only aim in life is for a better car, a better job, beautiful jewelry, or the (so-called) trophy wife, our aims are not much different than the ape who aims for a better tree, higher spot on the food chain, more handsome partner.  Things are different, however, if we "stand before God": There, and only there, we are recognized by Him to be different. This – the ability and the option to stand before God – is the only thing that truly separates us from the beasts around us. Not our empty and shallow needs, but our “higher faculties” and the rare option given to us to rise above life’s everyday needs.    

Shabbat Shalom, Tzom Kal, and Gmar Tov. 

Doron