Returning to a Better World

October 10, 2008
by Daniel E. Levenson

Yom Kippur is a day on which we stand alone before God at a kind of crossroads – behind us lie all of the experiences of the previous year, both good and bad, while ahead of us is an unknown path, the coming year, the future.  It is also a day which brings Jews together, to offer prayers of repentance and express our deeply held desire to be inscribed for another year in the book of life. As with any other form of ritual or observance, I find that I have many more questions than answers - What is the purpose of Yom Kippur, I’ve often asked myself, why do we need to spend a day, once a year, fasting and considering past transgressions? What is it about setting aside this time that can make a difference in my own life and community?

In looking at various writings on the holiday, one idea that I find myself drawn to is the suggestion that by participating in “Teshuvah,” which may be translated as “return” or “repentance,” that our act of repentance before God is not merely meant to reconcile past transgressions against God, but that in some way it makes us better people going forward. In returning to the source of creation and life on this sacred day, we come back not only having removed whatever spiritual taint we might have accumulated throughout the year, but ready to face a new year and the challenges that will come with it, in a positive way.

The late Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveichik touches on this idea, commenting that in the process of teshuvah there is a concept of “taharah,” or “purification,” which has the potential to empower and reinvigorate us. Soloveichik writes: “Taharah does not entail the act of reinstating man into a former status of repeating the past, in copying good deeds or previous performances. It must activate one, not alone to return to a former status of innocence and righteousness … but must convert and elevate one to a new stage. It must energize an ever-ascending spiral in man’s spiritual state …”

I would suggest that part of what we are doing when we observe the holiday, by fasting and taking the time to step back within ourselves in meditation or prayer to connect with the divine, is letting go of some of the clutter – spiritual, emotional and mental – that we have accumulated throughout the previous year. By shedding the cumbersome detritus of the previous year we are not only declaring our willingness to admit some of the things we might have done wrong, but making a powerful and positive statement that we are ready to embrace the new year without being held back by any of the mistakes we have made in the previous year. In this sense we are embracing the sanctity of the day not out of a desire to curry divine favor or to be forgiven for our sins, but in order to improve ourselves and our community.

From a communal perspective, numerous writers have also observed the way that Yom Kippur brings Jews together. Elie Wiesel reflects this idea in his description of a Yom Kippur he spent in Russia as a young man, writing of the closing moments of the service on the eve of Yom Kippur at a Moscow synagogue, that “As if in response to a mysterious command from an unknown source, three thousand Jews turned as one body toward the visitors’ section, stood up straight and tall, facing the representatives of Israel, looking directly into their eyes. As if trying to read in them their past and their future, the secret of their existence.”

As I write these words it is the afternoon before Yom Kippur, and I find myself haunted by Professor Wiesel’s description of these persecuted Russian Jews. What courage they must have possessed, what depths of strength and resolve in order to persevere. In our own age, a time of relative prosperity and great assimilation for the American Jewish community, I wonder if we possess this same strength of faith. There is no question that we are lucky to not always have to look over our shoulder for agents of the Czar or Politburo, but perhaps we face a more insidious threat, that of sinking quietly into assimilation, our Jewishness evaporating like so much steam from the melting pot. On this Yom Kippur I will try to hold in my mind some of the images Professor Wiesel describes. They are a reminder, to me, that as individuals and as part of a community, we have duties and obligations that extend beyond ourselves and our immediate circumstances, to the past, as well as the future and to ourselves and all those around us.L’shana tova!

*All quotes are from The Yom Kippur Anthology, edited by Phillip Goodman.