T’shuvah
Yom Kippur 1981
Temple B’nai Tikvah, Calgary Alberta
“And the tenth day of the seventh month will be the Day of Atonement; and you shall afflict your souls...” By “afflict your souls,” the rabbis understood the Torah to command us to inflict some pain on our bodies. Hence the tradition of fasting on Yom Kippur. Was fasting the original intention of the Biblical commandment? It is not at all clear that punishing our bodies is a way of afflicting our souls. In fact, I think that most of us feel that fasting is good for our souls! On an extremely limited basis of course--once a year is probably the optimal amount of fasting for the average soul.
But if fasting doesn’t satisfy the Biblical command to afflict our souls, have we been all wrong in our observance of Yom Kippur? I don’t know. But I do know that my soul is plenty afflicted on Yom Kippur. Here is the most important day in the entire Jewish calendar, and I’m tormented by the fear that I don’t have the first Idea of what this holiday is about. Sin? Atonement? Forgiveness? Give me a spring-time holiday, or a celebration of freedom from slavery, or victory over some ancient enemy. Give me something to celebrate! Or if I must be depressed, tell me what it is I’m mourning.
But Yom Kippur is not connected to any historical event, not tied to a harvest or spring-time. The only special food we eat is no food at all, and there are no heroes or heroines linked to Yom Kippur. Can you imagine the kids putting on a costume pageant of Yom Kippur? It could get a little dull. No Maccabees, no Greeks, no Esther or Haman, no Moses or Pharoah. We are the only heroes and villains of Yom Kippur.
There is no historical drama to help me understand Yom Kippur, and the religious categories that dominate the holiday are difficult to accept. Take sin, for example. We don’t talk about sin during the rest of the year. And don’t get me wrong; I don’t want more discussion of sin. It depresses me. I like Judaism precisely because it reminds me of my holiness, helps me see the beauty and honor in the human condition. The exalted Jewish view of human beings, in turn, inspires me to strive to fulfill my holy potential. All the reflections on sinfulness during Yom Kippur make me want to go home and watch T.V.
Another major difficulty with this holiday, of course, is God. The central premise behind the act of atonement is that when we have dredged up the ugly memories of all our sins, God will forgive us and release us from those sins. That notion of atonement may have been appropriate for a time when people chatted and negotiated with, apologized to and could be forgiven by God. But we don’t have the face to face relationship with God that our ancestors did. I’m afraid to dig into the deepest and darkest recesses of my past and bring all those thoughts and actions to the light. What if there is no one standing by at the moment of my despair, ready to tap me on the head and pronounce me ‘Clean!’
The concepts of sin and atonement just are not part of my everyday vocabulary. So I approach the High Holidays, and Yom Kippur in particular, angry that the only season in the Jewish calendar with which I feel uncomfortable is the one which the tradition declares to be the holiest time of the year.
Having gotten some of my unhappiness with Yom Kippur off my chest, I would like to share with you some of my attempts to grab hold of the holiday. I’ve just begun turning them over in my mind lately and hope that they may help you in your struggle with this impossible season Hayamim HaNoraim--the Days of Awe.
There is one rule of thumb for beginning the study of any concept in the Jewish tradition. Very simply, we must get out of the English language. In English, for example, these are the ‘ten days of repentence.’ But the word repentence calls to my mind one image only: a preacher scaring the living daylights out of a congregation with his vision of hell. Repentence is the way to avoid damnation. But fire and brimstone do not give me a clue to what repentence involves. Is it torturing oneself with memories of sin and weakness? Is it fasting: making a physical sacrifice? The word ‘repentence’ is an abstraction; it tells me nothing. Give me a metaphor!
So let’s get out of English. In Hebrew, these are Aseret Y’mey T’shuvah. T’shuvah-—from the word meaning ‘to return.’ These are the ten days of returning. The tradition has given us a metaphor, a fertile poetic image. Let your imagination loose; let it fly with the metaphor of returning. And then, when you have discovered the emotions and meanings of ‘return,’ bring them back to the religious problem of T’shuvah.
All I can give you today are my own responses to the word ‘return.’ It has been a source of comfort and anxiety in my life. Six years ago, I left home to go to college. It was a strange new universe, and I felt uprooted from my native soil. I went home on every single vacation, and carried out rituals of return: I walked down the familiar streets of my paper route, walked past the houses of old friends, wandered through the woods we used to play in.
Four years passed, and I left the States altogether to spend a year in Israel. My people’s homeland, but the strange smells and sounds and tastes constantly reminded me how far I was from my personal home. When I finally made it back to Rochester, I was frantic to carry out my rituals of return. I couldn’t get enough of the old familiar streets and yards and woods. Last year, I moved to Los Angeles; never have I felt so far from home. But I am coming to understand the emotional power of ‘return,’ of T’shuvah.
Once a year, at this season, Jews make T’shuvah, the trip home. It is a time of terrible anxiety. Will I be able to communicate with my Parent? We never had the easiest time breaking through to each other even when I was younger. I’ve been away so far and for so long, haven’t called when I should have...But every year, the need to return home brings us back. And God is there, as full of love as ever: “I made your favorite meal. I haven’t touched your room. It’s so good to see you again.”
T’shuvah as homecoming is one of the poetic fruits yielded by exploring the metaphor of return. Another completely different understanding of return was suggested seven hundred years ago by the Jewish philosopher Moses Maimonides. True T’shuvah occurs, Maimonides said, when I find myself in the exact situation in which I sinned previously, and given this second chance--do not sin. T’shuvah is a return to the moment of my sin, and shaking loose, getting free from the events which determined my behavior.
What is sin? It is mud, quicksand, fetters binding our minds in slavery to desire, to passion, to anger. Sin is insidious, and whispers to us that this slavery is inevitable, that freedom is an illusion. When I gossip or speak badly about a person, I don’t plan it out in advance. I realize it only as the words are leaving my mouth. “...Say, did you hear about David’s latest romance?...” I can’t believe I said that! I feel terrible, but...I am not at all certain that I will be free to resist the impulse to gossip the next time it strikes. The next time-- that is the moment of T’shuvah. True T’shuvah means return…to the temptation and weakness of the moment…and keeping my mouth shut--a demonstration of freedom.
The rabbis asked about freedom in the Biblical story of Cain and Abel. When God accused Cain of killing his brother Abel, the rabbis say that Cain replied: “Whoa! Who made me the way I am? You created me with the passion of jealousy. You rejected my sacrifice and now you blame me for behaving the way You made me!” Sin was ‘crouching at Cain’s door,’ the Bible asks him the same old question: Cain, are you free? But God storms back: “Cain, what have you done? You Cain-—not God, not society--you are free and can be whoever you like.”
Yom Kippur is a holiday of freedom. The freeing of all slaves in the Jubilee Year was proclaimed on Yom Kippur. A Jew making T’shuvah returns to a moment of anger and passion. And in that moment of helplessness, proclaims his or her freedom from fear, from jealousy, from anger...from sin.
The metaphor of return creates one further understanding of T’shuvah that I would like to share with you today. It grows out of the traditional dictum that in making T’shuvah, we must ask our fellow human beings for forgiveness before we can take our case to God.
Asking another person for forgiveness is another return to the moment of sin. Two people link their minds and memories and in this communication, reconstruct a broken moment. The injunction to seek out the person against whom we have sinned is one of those flashes of rabbinic genius at which we moderns can only gaze in wonder. So why do we all resist it with all out might?
We all have similar reasons for not approaching the person we have hurt:
“What right do I have to re-inflict the pain of that moment on him or her, simply for the sake of my own T’shuvah?’ Catholic confession seems much more humane; a priest will not be hurt by recalling my sin. This popular excuse that a shared return is too painful is a key to understanding the rabbis’ requirement to ask each other for forgiveness. T’shuvah is dangerous-—we make ourselves vulnerable, weak and afraid when we ask for forgiveness. In a return to a painful moment, we recreate our original botched choice--act freely or obey the fear and sin.
Too often, we follow Cain and deny our freedom. We fear making the wrong choice a second time and refuse to reconstruct our sin with another person, refuse to make T’shuvah. The thing is buried deep, we insist, it can’t hurt us-—why bring it up again? The tragedy will just repeat itself.
The rabbis knew, long before modern psychology came along, that as long as an issue remains unresolved, no matter how deeply buried, we are not free of its power. T’shuvah is that act of will through which we shatter sin’s power over us; it is a leap into freedom. “In the day of atonement,” says the Torah, “you shall proclaim with the shofar throughout all your land. And you shall proclaim liberty throughout the land, unto all the inhabitants thereof.”