Yom Kippur 5781: Benign Reality
I want to transport you to a time not so long ago, and a place not so far from here. About a week ago on the Black Diamond Trail here in Ithaca. I went on a bike ride on a beautiful fall day, the blue sky was somehow shimmering and the leaves rustled in the wind. As I biked on the shaded path, I looked to my right and saw the sun shining through the yellow-green leaves, illuminating patches of earth here and there. Gazing at this simple, golden beauty, I was seized with a rare and somewhat unbearable gratitude for being alive. Every morning I, and many Jews, say the words “Modah Ani lefanecha,” grateful am I before You, that you returned my soul to me, that you have entrusted me with another day of living. But, rarely do I feel those words resound in my entire being as I did just the other day, feeling for just a moment how incredible it is to be a human being, how much and how deeply I want to continue to live. This is what Yom Kippur is about.
While this day of Yom Kippur is a day of looking within, of considering what we would like to shift or change in the way we relate to ourselves, one another, G!d, and the world, it is (perhaps more so) a day of celebrating our vulnerability as humans, and even celebrating being flawed. This understanding of Yom Kippur isn’t a new one, and yet it is a big departure from Yom Kippur as many of us knew it growing up, a time of beating our chest, feeling bad about ourselves, and above all else guilt. For myself as a kid, the one thing I knew about Yom Kippur was that if I didn’t feel guilty for at least some of the day, I didn’t fulfill my obligation. I am here to tell you that accountability, responsibility and self reflection happens all year in our tradition (and particularly in the weeks and days leading up to Yom Kippur) and that this is a day of celebrating our vulnerability and our humanity, not about furthering the spirals of shame and guilt. While many of our holidays could be seen as a celebration of human vulnerability, there is one holiday in particular where this celebration of vulnerability is as raw and visible as it is today, and that is Purim.
It is no mistake that the Hasidic masters considered this day of Yom haKippurim to be the day (Yom) like (ki) Purim. Purim, the day of costumes, banquets and drunkenness, is when we read the story of Queen Esther, the only book in all of our tradition that doesn’t mention G!d even once. On the surface, these days couldn’t be more different. On Yom Kippur, we take off our costumes, wearing only a white shroud, we fast, we pray and mention G!d’s name more than any other day of the year. When we look a little deeper, the connections start to become more visible. On Purim, we celebrate that for a moment the world turned upside down, that due to the actions of a heroic woman and divine intervention, Haman’s evil plan to murder us didn’t go through. On Yom Kippur, we similarly acknowledge that any number of our plans in life may not go through, a message that rings particularly true this year. On both days, we celebrate in the face of that uncertainty. We celebrate in the face of our extreme vulnerability. On Yom Kippur, we celebrate that we are not ever alone in that vulnerability, constantly praying in the we throughout the day. And we declare that, even or especially in times of deep uncertainty, tefilah (prayer), teshuva (return), and tzedaka (justice), lessen the harshness of our experience of that uncertainty, bring meaning to our lives, no matter what plans do or don’t go through.
I would like to transport you to another time not so long ago and yet an eternity away. March 10th, 2020 in this very room, with jewel toned fabrics lining the walls and string lights covering the ceiling. As people started to arrive at our Purim party, an email also arrived in all our inboxes. This initial email announced that after spring break, all learning would go virtual due to the coronavirus. Students in their senior year, especially, having just learned that their final semester of college would not be how they envisioned it, were tearful, angry, confused. As were we all. What do you do in the face of such uncertainty, in the face of such a literal expression of v’nafoch hu, a flipping of the world on its head? I think I can speak for all of us present that night and say that we were seized with a rare and somewhat unbearable gratitude for being alive. That we felt for just a moment, or an evening, how incredible it is to be a human being, how much and how deeply we want to continue to live. Looking back at that night, the last night we gathered in this home, where we laughed, sang karaoke, danced, and even davvened neilah (the closing prayers of Yom Kippur), I am carried forward into this perpetual uncertainty of our new normal, remembering our fervent prayer that night that, even as we mourn the way things were, we want to live. To feel joy, and even to center joy and pleasure in the face of uncertainty is an act of resistance.
Just as we are vulnerable human beings, we are resilient, we are creative, we are hopeful and we are joyful. May we be blessed this Yom haKippurim, this day like Purim, to tap into that perhaps unbearable gratitude for being alive. On this day and throughout this new (and strange) year, may we be blessed to (more regularly) tap into just how incredible, how beautiful it is to be human.
Gmar Chatima Tova.
