Creating Communities For the Whole Of Israel: A Dvar Torah for Yom Kippur
Creating Sacred Communities For The Whole of Israel: A Yom Kippur Drash
October 4, 2022 by
Thoughts For Yom Kippur 5782
September 15, 2021 by
Yom Kippur is often translated into English as the Jewish day of atonement, though I feel that this is a mistranslation. Yom Kippur’s awesomeness, in the literal sense of the word, is that the Jewish tradition provides us with a 25-hour period, Shabbat Shabbaton (the sabbath of sabbaths) to focus wholly on realigning with who we want to be in the new year. Part of that work is doing a soul accounting of the ways in which we missed the mark in this past year, including making amends with those we may have hurt. Doing teshuvah, returning/realigning (I don’t use the translation “repent” for teshuvah because of its punitive connotations) is a practice that is particularly encouraged this time of year, though it is a spiritual practice that we can engage in any time. There is a lot of emphasis in the Yom Kippur liturgy on confession–we recite the vidui or confessional prayer ten times. In addition to this there are beautiful piyyutim or liturgical poems throughout each of the five services of the day. If one arrives at synagogue without a lot of grounding in the liturgy of Yom Kippur, it often can feel like our holiest day is spent recounting again, again and again all of the wrongs we’ve done, in hopes that a new and better year will be granted us. This perception of the day saddens me tremendously, as it does not allow us to experience what the rabbis insisted was, in fact, one of the happiest days of the year in its fullness.
In his tremendous book, This Is Real and You Are Completely Unprepared, Rabbi Alan Lew, of blessed memory invites us to reframe the High Holyday season is a season involving the very transformation of our souls. We are intimately aware as the year begins that we don’t know what the year will bring. Yom HaDin, Rosh Hashanah, is our opportunity to recommit ourselves to being in relationship with the Divine, that which is bigger than us. The imagery of the coronation of a king may work for you or it may not, and that’s just fine. The Jewish tradition offers us a wide array of names for the Divine. The call of the shofar on Rosh Hashanah is intended to wake us up as we usher in a season of deep holiness and personal introspection, culminating with the opportunity to wholly immerse ourselves in community, sacredness and contemplation on Yom Kippur.
Rabbi Lew’s book helped me begin to reimagine my relationship to the machzor, the prayer book used on Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur. I love liturgy and find myself wanting to know more about those rabbis, sages and seekers who composed our prayers, weaving together texts from the Tanakh (Bible), Talmud, Midrash and other sources, alongside the longings of their own hearts and their personal theologies. Some of that theology may resonate. Some of it may not. And that’s ok.
We are living at a time in which we are finally becoming better attuned to the myriad of life experiences that we all carry within, along with those of those we are in community with. Too many of us associate Yom Kippur with a feeling of punishment–I confess over and over again because I am somehow fundamentally flawed. Jewish tradition says precisely the opposite about human beings. Against all odds, and sometimes despite ourselves, we have hope that human beings are in fact capable of change. This capability does not mean that to forgive is to forget or reconcile. We can forgive to free ourselves of the resentment we hold, but that does not imply–nor should it–that forgiveness grants the other person an automatic invitation back into our lives. The two are distinct.
And it is precisely because we believe that human beings can change, if they/we choose to, that taking responsibility for our actions is of such paramount importance. Covenant is another important Jewish concept, the notion that relationship, to be genuine and lasting, must be mutual, based on obligation to each other. When we break trust with one another, we are given the opportunity to return and begin again. Yom Kippur is about doing that work with the Divine and ourselves. The days prior and indeed the entire year, really, is about doing that work with our fellow human beings–and all beings.
Yom Kippur is one of our happiest days because we know that we are granted a fresh start right from the very get-go. We proclaim as much just after we say Kol Nidre, the part of the service that Rabbi Lew refers to as our soul’s name being called. Why go through the next 25 hours then?
This time is set aside for us to do the work we need to do to realign with the Divine, that which is greater, and even more so, to come back into alignment with ourselves. The Machzor is a roadmap for helping us get there. Though the liturgy is profound and beautiful, it is not the be all end all of Yom Kippur. Give yourself permission to take whatever and however much time you need over this next day to do the soul work you need to do, the self-care you need. We come together in community in a year such as this one, with all of our sorrows, wounds and traumas, praying for a better world. May we all have a meaningful, transformative Yom Kippur.
The Heart Knows the Bitterness Of Its Soul: Experience As An Integral Expression of Holiness
August 13, 2021 by
With the marking of Rosh Chodesh Elul this week, the Jewish tradition invites us into the holiest months of the year. It’s a time for personal introspection and stock-taking, a time to ask ourselves about the people we want to be in the new year. This Elul is particularly significant as with Rosh Hashanah, we usher in the Shmita or Sabbatical year, a time to think about personal and collective cessation and release.
We also direct our hearts towards teshuvah, or returning, realigning with our best and highest selves and with the Divine. Yom Kippur, the holiest day on the Jewish calendar is all about this realignment.
This may seem strange, but Yom Kippur is, after Pesach or Passover my favorite Jewish holiday. The liturgical poetry of the day is soul-stirring. The collective responsibility that we affirm and reaffirm for the ways in which we’ve missed the mark. The joy that comes knowing that we are able to begin again, just as we do every year and every day.
The Jewish tradition provides us with several physical observances intended to spiritually situate ourselves for the awesomeness of Yom Kippur. One of those, and perhaps the best known, is fasting.
In SVARA’s Mishnah Collective this season, we are learning Mishnah Yoma chapter 8, the chapter that focuses most directly on teshuvah/return. The fifth Mishnah of the chapter explicitly stipulates conditions under which a person may not fast for their own wellbeing. “עֻבָּרָה שֶׁהֵרִיחָה, מַאֲכִילִין אוֹתָהּ עַד שֶׁתָּשִׁיב נַפְשָׁהּ. חוֹלֶה מַאֲכִילִין אוֹתוֹ עַל פִּי בְקִיאִין. וְאִם אֵין שָׁם בְּקִיאִין, מַאֲכִילִין אוֹתוֹ עַל פִּי עַצְמוֹ, עַד שֶׁיֹּאמַר דָּי: If her fetus smelled food, she is fed until her soul is restored. [The fetus smells the food, and she desires it, and if she does not eat, both are endangered. A sick person is fed on the opinion of experts [i.e., doctors who are expert in their profession]. And if there are no experts, he is fed on his own say, until he says: “Enough!”.
Our Mishnah presents several case studies for determining when and by whose authority a person may not fast or may break their fast early. We learn that one who is pregnant, who smells food and craves the food is fed until satiated. Satiety is achieved, then, both for the one who is pregnant and the growing fetus.
The second case we receive here is that of one who is ill. If experts IE medical doctors or the like are present and they stipulate, on their professional authority that the person must eat, the person eats. On the one hand, I completely get it. If experts are present and say that a person is so sick that their life is in danger, pikuach nefesh—saving a life supersedes all other mitzvot. On the other hand, I bristle, noticing the way in which my own prejudicial encounters with the healthcare system color my reaction. I wonder if paternalism, that all-too-common assumption that many have that they know better than we possibly can is at play. I notice that reaction arising and hold it lightly, as we do. The importance the rabbis place on qualified experts here is incredibly important to lift up, especially in the time in which we are living. Ours is a tradition that honors science and medicine, full stop.
Our Mishnah is not yet finished. If a doctor is not present, the one who is ill eats on their own authority, until they say enough. Juxtaposed to the earlier case, this piece of Mishnah illustrates for us the importance of bodily autonomy. We know our experiences best. The rabbis will state this even more clearly later in the Gemara, citing a verse from Mishlei/Proverbs, the heart knows the bitterness of its own soul. At the end of the day, we know whether or not we need to eat. In its context, this is a radical claim. Yom Kippur is the most sacred day; the fasting is an integral component of that. Yet, we are reminded that fasting is not the totality of the day, not even close. In too many communities today, those who cannot fast for whatever reason feel profoundly alienated, disconnected from everyone else around them. This feeling can easily become even stronger, and folks can feel like they are, G-d-forbid, failing in some way because their bodies cannot do what other bodies do.
Those of us who experience any number of oppressions—ableism, fatphobia, transphobia—meant to reenforce the narrow conception of which bodies are acceptable and which are absolutely not know the way in which that feeling gnaws at our souls. This is even more acute, in my own experience and that of too many people I counsel in religious spaces. May this Elul be a time for us to not only do our individual soul-work, but also to take to heart the ways in which our tradition makes room, explicitly, for a multiplicity of experiences as we reaffirm that the individual knows the bitterness of their own soul better than anyone else can.
The Sfat Emet on Yom Kippur
September 21, 2018 by
This drasha was originally written in 5777.
One of the most beautiful teachings I have encountered about Yom Kippur is from the Sfat Emet. The Sfat Emet uses the symbology and metaphor of a mikvah to talk about what Yom Kippur is and how it functions. Yom Kippur is this day of total immersion, total unity with God. On Yom Kippur, we are forgiven, as God has spoken, which we say multiple times, so we know that at the end of the holiest day of the year, we will have a clean slate as it were, able to begin again. Yom Kippur is also very much about coming close to God. Just as a kosher immersion in a mikvah is an immersion in which the total body is submerged and there’s no barrier between the physical body and the waters of the mikvah, and just as mikvah waters are mayyim chayyim—living waters, on Yom Kippur, we ask repeatedly to be written and later sealed in the Book of Life for the coming year. And we don’t merely ask to be sealed in the Book of Life. We also ask God to write and seal us in the book of long life, good deeds, etc. We are immersed not only in reflection about the year which has past but we look forward to choosing life in the New Year. When we experience that day of complete unity with God, we are completely immersed in prayer and confession, supplication and fasting. These spiritual and ritual acts are the vehicles through which we achieve that unity with God. Yom Kippur has a unique character all its own. On other days, though we hope that our avodat hashem will get us there, on Yom Kippur, our tradition gives us particular ritual and spiritual tools that we can use in achieving that unity. We have a particularly special access to God on Yom Kippur that, though God is with us always, we don’t have the same level of immediacy. The difficulty, however, is that as beautiful as the Sfat Emet’s teaching is here, it is so aspirational. How many of us can truly say that on Yom Kippur we are achieving this unity all of the time? I think that perhaps a balanced way to think about this is that we are always striving for this unity, that even if we achieve this unity for only a few moments, we have still gotten somewhere spiritually significant and important.