Yom Kippur, 5769, Carol Dorf
Yom Kippur
October 9, 2008 / 10 Tishri 5769
Carol Dorf
Today, on Yom Kippur, we reach the culmination of our period of repentance. Ideally, this began at the beginning of Elul, or more realistically on Rosh Hashana, or as Rabbi Creditor said on Shabbat Shuvah, this past Shabbat. My life tends to be so filled with busyness that it is hard to find time to think about the past week, let alone the past year. Still, we are together today, and whether we began early in the process of Tshuvah, returning, or we began that process last night during Kol Nidre, the goal of this day is to reconnect with the divine, whether we define that traditionally, or as a connection between self, other people and the natural world.
The Torah portion prescribes the temple rites beginning with a warning. The processes of purification and return are not something to be entered into lightly. The moment of God's instruction of Moses is located in time after the death of two of Aarons' sons who entered into God's presence without proper direction and purification. Whether the sons' action occurred out of arrogance or through heedlessness, stepping into the holy of holies was fatal. Rashi, and many commentators see this as a warning to Aaron and future high priests. Thus, Moses is to tell Aaron not to come into center of the shrine without proper purification lest he die from facing God without preparation.
The Torah reading describes the temple rites including the ritual of the goat that is to be sacrificed as a sin offering and the goat that is to be turned out into the desert. (The folkloric version of this sacrifice continued into some of our great-grandparents' time consisting of assigning sin to an unfortunate chicken.) Our torah reading is primarily concerned with how the Cohain Gadol, the high priest, was to prepare for this day, and the ceremonies that revolved around the Temple. In our days, the time where study and prayer substitute for the temple rites, we remember those ceremonies, and learn about them, but we must find other ways to cleanse ourselves from sin.
The Isaiah haftorah continues the discussion of how to repent for sin, but focuses on the obligations of rest of us. In Isaiah it is not enough to banish the sin to the desert, or to fast, but we must change our lives:
The people ask god:
“Why when we fasted you did not see?
When we starved our bodies, did you pay no heed?”
God replies:
“Because on this fast day
You see to your business and oppress all your laborers! Because you fast in strife and contention,
and you strike with a wicked fist!.”
Reading this led me to thinking about our communal confession. Why do we all confess to this big list of sins? In Al Hait a few of the things we confess to are “immoral sexual acts, wronging others, deriding parents and teachers, using violence, dishonesty in business, usury”. The other penitential prayer Viddui includes “we mock, we neglect, we oppress, we pervert, we quarrel, we rebel.”
The first reason for communal confession that many commentators explain, is this way we can include all in the community whatever their sin. And if you need to confess a sin that isn't included, there is a custom that says to do it softly so as not to call attention to yourself -- that is don't be narcissistic even in the matter of confessing sin.
A second possibility is that as a community, together we witness this day of purification through the communal confession, through fasting, through prayer. Think for a moment about this day, this congregation. Some of us have been coming together for years on Shabbat, and on this Shabbat of Shabbats, Yom Kippur. Others have been persuaded by parents or close friends to join today with this Jewish Community, and still others are seeking out a Jewish community. A third reason for the communal confession may be that we are part of the community's transgressions. When I was talking to my 12-year-old daughter about this idea of Al Cheit and Vidui, the communal confessions, I told her we confess together so as not to exclude people for their sins and said, “For example, I don't exploit workers.” Then I started thinking about exploiting workers -- I don't own a company, and I'm a teacher, not an administrator. But then I started to think about workers I'm responsible for, tutors, and student teachers, and people who do things around my house. Am I treating them fairly? Outward from there; what about the support staff at my work; or the workers in the restaurants I go to. There are the workers who produce the food we eat; how safe are their working conditions? What about the workers who produce the clothing I wear; often in countries with almost no regulation of working conditions. So I realized, yes, this is a sin I am guilty of, mostly not directly, but by my participation in an unjust economy. My turning from this sin will have to be in considering ways I can contribute to better working conditions primarily as a consumer, and by laws that regulate working conditions, and the rights of workers to organize.
I thought it best not to go into detail on all those other sins, though I suspect that I could go through this same process in finding complicity in many of them.
The Isaiah calls on us to perform the deeper act of things right rather than only a surface act of confession and fasting.
“This is my chosen fast
to loosen all the bonds that bind men unfairly,
to let the oppressed go free, to break every yoke.
Share your bread with the hungry, take the homeless into your home.
Then cleansing light shall break forth like the dawn,
and all your wounds will soon be healed.”
Sometimes “share your bread with the hungry,” seems possible. One thing I like at cheeseboard is that they are set up for you to donate to the Dorothy Day program for the homeless on the way out. There are also the collection barrels at Berkeley Bowl, and at Netivot Shalom, as well as the Social Action project of cooking at the homeless shelter.
Sometimes “share your bread with the hungry,” or “take the homeless into your home,” seems impossibly hard. How can we act when we live in a country when there is systemic poverty; where for some Berkeley High students the free breakfasts and free lunches are their main meals of the day? How can we act in a country where people are sleeping in Ohlone Park, where some children in the Berkeley schools are living in homeless shelters?
I think we each need to think of the ways in which we can “share our bread with the hungry.” For some this will be related to direct assistance for the poor, and for some it may be related to political action, and for some it may be both.
The center of Yom Kippur, the holy of holies, is reconnection with the ways we can be righteous. With this we are given a promise that “All your wounds will soon be healed.” Returning to the divine has special urgency because Yom Kippur is a day where we come to terms with the possibility of loss. Last year, a friend of mine, Irene Bronston, joined us for the Rosh Hashana services. Not having been religious, she hadn't been interested in Jewish ritual, but at the end of her life she wanted to return to the melodies she remembered from childhood. This year she is no longer with us.
I'd like to share a poem by the Israeli poet Carmi with you:
In a Flash, T. Carmi, At the Stone of Losses
Some things are self-evident:
after lighting comes thunder;
after thunder, lightning;
there is a time to remember and a time to recall;
a time to forget and a time to be forgotten;
the first rain always surprises;
only later will you know you have heard the last rain;
it is dangerous to look eye-to-eye at the eclipsed sun;
there is a time to see and a time to be seen.
In a flash the woman goes from “wife” to “widow.”
Some things are self-evident:
lightning, thunder.
Carmi's poem begins:
“Some things are self-evident:
after lightning comes thunder;
after thunder, lightning;”
Why does Carmi reverse the order the second time? After all, we know from experience first we see lightning flashes, then we count the seconds before the thunder crashes to know how far away the center of the storm is. I think Carmi reverses lightning and thunder for two reasons, first the sense of being battered by a storm that goes on and on; and secondly to suggest the way loss reorders time.
Later in the poem he says,
“a time to forget and a time to be forgotten;
the first rain always surprises;
only later will you know you have heard the last rain;”
This poem evokes the surprise we feel confronting the radical upheavals that occur in our lives, and the way they create a sense of reality outside of linear time. In the days leading up to Yom Kippur, we confront that knowledge, and are forced to look at our days in the context of their fragile ordering.
“Some things are self-evident:
lightning, thunder.”
After Carmi's earlier reversal of this imagery we wonder what is “self-evident.” The self-evident nature of our own mortality is something we avoid. Using the imagery of the book of life our liturgy asks, “Who shall die, and who shall live.” On Yom Kippur we acknowledge that we really will die, and will lose those we love (though we entreat God that it is not in the coming year.) Once at dinner with some philosophers, I said, “During my illness, when I was worried about my mortality,” and one of them interrupted asking, “So now, you're immortal again?”
On that day, I remembered I was mortal. On Yom Kippur when we confront our mortality, the question becomes how can we send away the sin; the wrongness in our lives, so as to open ourselves to the presence of the holy; whether we define the holy as our connection to others, to our community; or as our connection to God, or as some combination of these.
So in the process of this day, we become part of a community with both sin and the possibility of T'shuvah, T'fillah, Tz'dakah. We turn away from sin in the presence of community, join together in T'fillah, prayer, in the presence of community, and perform Tz'dakah, acts of righteousness in the presence of community.
I'd like to conclude with a midrash that was in our Chumash: On the Shabbat before Rosh Hashanah we read the words “ha-mitzvah ha-zot,” the mitzvahs, the commandments you learn this day. When we first begin thinking about Tshuvah, returning to mitzvot, it all seems far away. The midrash says: it is like a mirror. The figure we see in the mirror seems to be twice as far from us as it really is. But with every step we take toward the mirror, the reflection takes a step toward us. So it is with repentance. Our goal seems so far off, but God says to us, “Take one step toward Me and then another, and I will meet you more than half way.”
Gemar Hatimah Tovah