Knowing We re Enough: Why We Need Healing, Not Fixing Tufts Hillel, Yom Kippur 5779 Ilana Zietman

Size: px

Start display at page:

Download "Knowing We re Enough: Why We Need Healing, Not Fixing Tufts Hillel, Yom Kippur 5779 Ilana Zietman"

Emil Tate
5 years ago
Views:

1 Knowing We re Enough: Why We Need Healing, Not Fixing Tufts Hillel, Yom Kippur 5779 Ilana Zietman Yom Kippur can be a tough holiday. It asks a lot of us. It can be really intense. We are supposed to fast for 25 hours, to not wash or anoint ourselves, including not brushing our teeth or putting on makeup, to abstain from wearing our sturdy leather shoes, and most of all, to spend the day immersed in prayer where we admit what we ve done wrong, again and again and again, five times to be exact. To be honest, for many years, I ve struggled with Yom Kippur, not only because I dislike fasting, [I m not afraid to admit it], but also because I haven t felt that endlessly criticizing myself ever led to healthy, inner transformation. If anything, the whole experience has often depleted me. Perhaps some of you have similar feelings. It s not that I haven t appreciated the need to think about my past errors and to ask God and others for forgiveness. That s all good. It s just that I struggled with the idea that we seem to do so while putting ourselves in a state of mind and body that says, I m nothing, I m unworthy God, so please forgive me. After all, we say in the famous words of Avinu Malkeinu, Avinu Malkeinu, choneinu, v a neinu, ki ein banu ma asim. Avinu Malkeinu, have mercy on us and answer us because we have no deeds, meaning, we have no past actions to our merit, what we ve done is wholly insufficient. Saying this always felt like more than just a healthy dose of humility. Yes, we re imperfect, but aren t we also good? Doesn t the Torah tell us that after God created humanity, the fullness of that creation was, tov me od, very good? How helpful is it to say that we aren t? For those of us who tend to be self-critical anyway, this can feel like overkill. So, what should we do? Is there another way to approach Yom Kippur to get something more constructive out of it? One of the greatest things I ve discovered in my quest to better understand this holiday, including its liturgy and customs, is that so much of what we ve inherited, tends to have a long history with layers upon layers of meaning and intergenerational conversation. And what I ve come to learn is that understanding this full history and putting it into context with our lives today can reveal a different, more wholesome approach. So, I want to explore some of this 1

2 context with you and, hopefully, help us find our own connections to Yom Kippur and how we can meaningfully engage with teshuvah or repentance today. Last night, we chanted the most famous piece of liturgy of all of Yom Kippur, Kol Nidre. I m not going to talk about Kol Nidre itself because it is so complex and has gone through so many iterations over the years, that I would have to spend the whole day on it and I won t put you through that. Instead, I want to talk about the verses that immediately follow it, because their contexts are powerful and the fact that they found their way into the Kol Nidre service is incredible. ו נ ס ל ח ל כ ל ע ד ת ב נ י י ש ר א ל ו ל ג ר ה ג ר ב ת וכ ם כ י ל כ ל ה ע ם chant, At the conclusion of Kol Nidre, we forgiven, The whole Israelite community and the stranger residing among them shall be : ב ש ג ג ה for it happened to the entire people by mistake. 1 This line comes from Numbers 15, where the Israelites are commanded to offer a sacrifice when the entire people have unknowingly disregarded God s laws. Through this offering, the High Priest can atone for them and everyone, even the non-israelites, are forgiven. What we learn from this verse is that according to biblical theology, God forgives us when we own up to, apologize and make amends for our unintentional mistakes. We even get a promise of this forgiveness at the very beginning of Yom Kippur. I ll come back to this idea soon. ס ל ח נ א ל ע ו ן ה ע ם ה ז ה כ ג ד ל ח ס ד ך ו כ א ש ר נ ש את ה ל ע ם ה ז ה is: The next thing we recite from our machzor Forgive the iniquity of this people according to Your great kindness, as You : מ מ צ ר י ם ו ע ד ה נ ה have forgiven this people ever since Egypt. Last night, I, the prayer leader, recited this verse but these words actually come from Moses. We find these exact words in Numbers, this time from Chapter 14, and the context is somewhat surprising. It s from the famous story of the twelve scouts who Moses sends to tour the land of Canaan. As the story goes, the scouts return from their mission and ten of them are up in arms. While they acknowledge that the land is flowing with milk and honey, they say that the Israelites will not be able to go in and inhabit the land that God promised them because the people who reside there are stronger and more powerful. Their report sends the entire Israelite community into a conniption, and they question why God would bring them to that land just to be killed. If only we had died in Egypt, they cried, or if only we 1 JPS translation 2

3 might die in this wilderness! 2 What a mess. As you can imagine, God gets angry and threatens to kill off the entire people for their doubt and their disregard for God s plan. Then, as per usual, Moses intercedes and begs God for mercy with the above verse. And this is how we get our next verse in the liturgy, God s response: ס ל ח ת י כ ד ב ר ך I have forgiven as you have asked. So what does this biblical story have to do with Yom Kippur? Well, again, we see that when we genuinely ask for forgiveness, God grants it. And this time, it seems to be true even for intentional mess-ups. But I think there s something more going on. The story of the scouts is about lacking faith in God and God s chosen leader, Moses, but it s also about the Israelites lack of faith in themselves. The scouts say, All the people we saw in the land are of great size and we looked like grasshoppers to ourselves, and so we must have looked to them. 3 That s heavy. Even though the competition may have been real, the underlying issue is that the scouts and most of the Israelites were insecure, and they compounded their insecurity by seeing it through the eyes of others. The Israelites not feeling enough caused them to disregard the assets they did have as well as the fact that God cared for them so much that God produced miracles for them before and probably would do so again. That s how strong self-doubt can be. And yet, as much as it might seem strange, I think we can understand where the Israelites are coming from. They were former slaves who had more than their fair share of emotional baggage from the trauma they experienced in Egypt. They were made to feel low and inhuman for generations. It s not easy to overcome a mentality like that. In fact, a famous commentary from Midrash Tanchuma, a very old collection of rabbinic homilies and law, addresses this very point: [When the scouts] said, We looked like grasshoppers in our own eyes. God said, This I can overlook. But, And so we looked in their eyes - here I am angry! Did you know how I made you look in their eyes? Who told you that you didn t look like angels in their eyes? In the words of Dr. Aviva Zornberg, God is angered at [the scouts ] fatal constriction of imaginative possibility. 4 Their insecurity colored the way they saw themselves so much that they decided how little others must think of them, too thus narrowing their mindset as to what may be possible and what they could achieve. 2 Bamidbar 14:2 3 Bamidbar 13: Tanchuma Shlach 7; Aviva Zornberg translation and commentary, Bewilderments,

4 When I sing Kol Nidre now and recite Moses plea for forgiveness and God s verbal pardon, I can t help but think that, given the biblical backstory, much of what we are asked to do today is to model God s forgiveness by forgiving ourselves, not so much for being imperfect or without merit, but for the ways in which our not feeling enough may have hurt or disappointed us, gotten in the way of our own fulfillment, or our health, or our ability to show up for ourselves and others in ways we would have wanted. All of us, at one time or another, have known what it feels like not to feel smart enough, talented enough, successful enough, liked enough, whatever enough, and we have examples of our own shortcomings and others successes to make it seem true. These feelings are natural, but when we confuse how we feel with who we must be in our entirety, we distort reality in ways that shortchange us and those in our lives. And acknowledging and working through the tendency to not feel enough, according to Jewish tradition, is worthy of our time and attention, 25 hours worth, at the very least. I recently heard Krista Tippett, who hosts the faith and spirituality podcast On Being, talk about how she approaches the messier, disappointing aspects of life. In facing what she calls our inner drama, Tippett said, You don t become yourself, you don t become whole, you don t flourish because you overcome that [drama] or in spite of it. You become whole and you become bigger because you integrate that thing into your sense of self. And that becomes a gift you bring to the world. It s healing as opposed to fixing. 5 I love this concept for teshuvah: healing as opposed to fixing. And it seems only possible when we balance the worthy and not-so-worthy parts of our lives. It s like doing teshuvah from a place of love for and acceptance of all that we are so that we can come out of this process more balanced and more integrated, rather than doing teshuvah from a place of pure self-chastisement in the misguided hope that we can or should completely reinvent or fix ourselves. Going back to my original question then, can our observance of Yom Kippur help us heal in the ways we need? That s a question each of us ultimately has to figure out for ourselves, but I d like to share what I find helpful. I m going to start with fasting. 5 How It Is Podcast Interview, Season 1 Episode 4 4

5 In truth, fasting is meant to make us feel more vulnerable and unguarded. But, it is not an avenue to deny our bodies pleasure and nourishment just to make us feel bad about ourselves or sick. Oddly enough, the rabbis who prescribed the fast on Yom Kippur did so in such a way that it could remind us to keep some joy in our teshuvah process. The rabbis actually wanted to make sure that our fast for Yom Kippur not be a sad one like that of Tisha B Av, the 9 th of Av, when we mourn the loss of the Temples in Jerusalem. Our fast today is meant to be contemplative but not reflective of unworthiness. Looking at the laws of the meal we eat before the fast, thirteenthcentury rabbi, Rabbenu Yonah notes that it is a festive one. He said, On holidays, we joyously partake in meals. Bearing in mind, however, that on Yom Kippur we fast, the law was established that we eat sumptuously beforehand. As we approach Yom Kippur, we eat a hearty meal, full of optimism, belief and joy. 6 And it s true, we are allowed to eat meat, drink wine, and have dessert before we fast. We are to do none of these things before Tisha B Av. We are not in mourning, but we are learning from our shortcomings and resolving to grow. Of course, not everyone can see fasting this way, but for those who think they can, I offer this framing as a more tender connection point between fasting and engaging in the process of self-examination and forgiveness. So what about all the viddui, the confessions? This brings me back to the point about sacrifices. As I mentioned, the Israelites were commanded to offer a sacrifice as part of their atonement, and this was how the ancient priestly system of worship worked. Rabbi Harold Kushner says that the Yom Kippur service remarkably offers us two, complementary models of teshuvah: the priestly and the prophetic. We just read the haftorah, which comes from the prophet, Isaiah. In it, we read about Isaiah s rebuke of the people for not acting more ethically in their everyday lives. Kushner writes, The prophet would point out the people s shortcomings and urge them to repent, warning them of God s judgement. The priest, by contrast, offered a gentler, more forgiving love: No matter what you have done, you are always acceptable here. 7 When we think about it this way, it s no surprise that we begin Yom Kippur with Kol Nidre, an annulment of our vows and a pardon reminiscent of the ancient priestly system, which says that each of us, even the most flawed among us, is enough. We are to start with knowing that we re worthy of 6 Sha arei Teshuva, Gate 4, Section 9, translated by Avi Weiss 7 Harold Kushner, How Good Do We Have to Be?, 44. 5

6 forgiveness and a clean slate, while soon afterward, we are to contemplate and atone for the things we should have done better. Then there s the content of the viddui we say throughout the day. We abuse, we betray, we are cruel, we destroy, we embitter. We say all this while beating on our chests. Sometimes, we have done or have allowed, really bad things to happen. But, the repetition can make it hard to remember that this day is about finding balance between where we are and where we want to be. There are certainly various ways to reinterpret or reinvent this practice, such as thinking about it as knocking on our hearts like doors, imploring them to open, or even opening our palms to caress our hearts for doing the hard work of teshuvah. And there is also the possibility that we go beyond the words of the machzor to add to or replace them with our own, remembering that we say these viddui in the first person plural because there is so much we can do to support and set each other up for success. But, I want to offer another suggestion. When we have time to personally recite the viddui, let s include a list of things we ve done well this year, and celebrate them while remembering that we certainly have it in our power to do those good things again. So, no matter how you choose to go about the confessions, there is a concept in Judaism that we don t bask or luxuriate in our faults. It says in the Talmud, One who elaborates on their sin seems brazen 8 Meaning, it s not okay to excessively harp on on what we ve done wrong. While teshuvah requires that we do the hard work to change and ask for forgiveness, we eventually need to resolve what we ve done or else we falsely teach our brains to see our failures as inevitable, making it even harder to evolve. In this spirit, I ve begun the practice of trying to feel increasingly forgiven as I recite each viddui throughout the day. I try to think of what I want to do differently and feel more resolved with each recitation, so that instead of solidifying my wrongs, I m facing them and working through them, and even feeling more optimistic about my ability to get it right in the future. Sometimes change is sudden, but more often than not, it s a gradual process of self-examination, reframing, and taking small steps toward living the life we want to live. It s making many mistakes and taking several steps backward along the way. Because real teshuvah is such an 8 Bavli Berakhot 34b 6

7 emotional and in-depth experience, it s important to be kind to ourselves as we seek to improve and try again and again. Yom Kippur, especially the way we may have learned about it or experienced it, is difficult, but more than anything, its difficulty should be about learning how to take ourselves and the process of growth seriously. Our liturgy, theology and customs tell us to know that while God will forgive us, the real work is in forgiving ourselves and healing ourselves by knowing we re enough. Perhaps there are times when it feels like we have no deeds, no merit, but that state of mind ought to be conditional, temporary, and not used to define all that we are and can be. The Hebrew word ki, which we say in Avinu Malkeinu, ki ein banu ma asim, is usually translated as because but it also means when. Perhaps we can read this prayer not as Avinu Malkeinu, have mercy and answer us, because we have no deeds, but rather have mercy and answer us, when we have no deeds, so that during times of self-doubt and fear, we can remember that we are not alone and we will get through it. 7

My wife, Toby, and I years ago attended a seminar called Marriage Encounter. Its goal: to help good marriages become better.

Ahavnu, beirachnu: Yom Kippur is also a time to confess our good OCTOBER 6, 2016, 10:19 PM My wife, Toby, and I years ago attended a seminar called Marriage Encounter. Its goal: to help good marriages