Good evening, my fellow congregants.
Gut yontiff, shanah tovah. Welcome to all of you. And thank you to Cantor Kerry
Katz for bringing beauty and meaning to this Kol Nidrei service.
I want to talk to you this evening
before we get too far into this holy day of Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement. I
want to talk about the nature and purpose of prayer, and the reason that we
fast.We all know that the prayer books that we use have a set form of prayer - the daily and Shabbat prayer book that we use is called a siddur, which comes from the word “seder”, which means order. It is the order of prayer, set down for us over the past two millennia, and which our tradition declares to be halakhically mandated - it was determined to be so by chazal, the wise rabbis of old, may their memories be for a blessing. And this puts many of us off, in a number of different ways.
On this, of all days, when each of us is trying to atone for our sins of the past year, when we are trying to do teshuvah and turn ourselves around, on this of all days, why must we recite long, formulaic prayers? What of the sins that we did not commit? Why must we accept responsibility for them? And what of the sins which, in the great scheme of things, do not seem like such a big deal? And what about those of us who are not able to form the words properly, who can read little or no Hebrew? And what about those of us who have trouble in believing - believing in a God who listens to and responds to prayer - or believing in a God at all?
These questions really go to the big question - why are we here? Not the existential question of why we are on this little ball of dirt called planet Earth, but why are we HERE, in this sanctuary, tonight?
The overall reason for Yom Kippur is to “afflict our souls.” What that means is not clear from the Torah. What it has come to mean is that, even before doing teshuvah, and the reason we are here tonight, and why it is indeed right and proper that we are here, is to engage first of all in that introspection, that self-examination which our tradition calls “cheshbon hanefesh”, a reflective accounting of the soul. If we have trouble with the concept of sin, which is what Cheshbon Hanefesh and teshuvah address, and with the concept of a God who cares about sin in the way that our tradition describes it, well, I want to tell you that this questioning itself is deeply embedded within the Jewish tradition. We are all descendants of prophets who have questioned God, who questioned the traditional notion of sin, and who questioned the sacrificial system that the Torah mandates for atoning for sin.
But for those who still question, I would ask you rather to examine the gap - not the gap between righteousness and sin, but the gap between conscience and conduct. One need not be observant, nor even at all religiously observant, to have conceptions of right and wrong - we have all heard the phrase, “Let your conscience be your guide.” What one who can not believe should be doing here, truly, what each and every one of us ought to be doing here, then, is examining the gap – the chasm, between the standards we profess and the actions we actually performed this past year.
The idea of teshuvah, of turning, or returning, then, can be the idea of not only returning to God, but of returning to the true path - the path of easily understood and well-grounded principles. None of us considers ourselves a truly bad person, yet each of us knows that we have fallen short of the mark - whether it is the mark God set for us or the mark we have set for ourselves. And that, friends, is the purpose of cheshbon hanefesh and prayer - to help one find and hit the mark. Our presence here tonight is to begin to seek the strength and the wisdom, whether from God, or from the Jewish tradition, or from within ourselves, to hit the mark.
Now, to illustrate some of the other points I raised. What of the person who does not know how to pray?
You might have heard this story before, but it bears repeating. A chasid of the Baal Shem Tov had a simple son, a shepherd boy, who could neither read nor write. One Yom Kippur, at the synagogue, the chasid discovered that his son had brought to shul his flute, which he used to calm his sheep. The father grabbed it, and put it in his pocket. All day long, the boy tried to take it from his father, to no avail. Finally, at neilah, the concluding prayer service on Yom Kippur, the father was lost in prayer, and the boy snatched the flute, and began to play. The father and all of the other chasidim were shocked, and angry. How dare he play a musical instrument in the synagogue, on Yom Kippur of all days, for God’s sake, committing who knows how many sins by that act, and interrupting their prayers! At the Baal Shem Tov’s shul, there was quite an uproar. The Baal Shem Tov slowly turned to his chasidim, calmed them down, and said, “My friends. All this Yom Kippur day, I have been banging on the gates of Heaven, demanding that our prayers be accepted, but the gates would not open. However, when this simple boy, praying in the only way he knows how, played his song, the song of a shepherd watching over his sheep, the gates opened and all of our prayers went pouring in.”
Unlike the Baal Shem Tov, neither Cantor Katz nor I have a direct pipeline to God, or the Besht’s presumptuousness. And that, my friends, is the reason that our machzor has an English translation - so that each of us can pray in a language that we understand. And more, that is the reason that our machzor has other readings and meditations - so that we can find words that have meaning for us, because if the words we say mean nothing to us, you can be darned sure that they will have no meaning to God. And for those who have trouble believing, meaningless words will certainly not strike the conscience in any significant way!
If, during this evening, or during the various prayer services tomorrow, you should find your mind wandering, or if the words on the page do not speak to your heart and soul, then look through the machzor for words of meaning. Look at the piyyutim, the medieval poems, throughout the book. Or look at the handout you will receive in the morning service. Better still, look deep within yourself and search for the words you need to say, the music you need to play - to God, to your spouse, to your children, to anyone you love or care for – even to yourself. The words might be as simple as - “I am sorry. I will do better.” They could be as profound as the words of Shakespeare or the prophet Isaiah. But they must be your words, spoken from the heart, for that really is the only language of prayer that God understands. It is the only language that any of us can truly understand.
Friends, the day, this day, is short - it may seem long, even interminable, but it is short. How can we fit in all of the spiritual work we need to do? How can we fit in all of the self-examination we need to conduct, a year’s worth, a lifetime’s worth, in only 25 hours of Yom Kippur? The answer is - we can’t. But this is not the last day for doing so. It is simply the first day of the remaining days each of us has in this life to do the things we should do, the things we must do.
That is the deeper purpose of the Yom Kippur fast - not that we should focus on our physical hunger, but that we should focus on and begin to satisfy our spiritual hunger. The usual wish for this fast day is “tzom kal” - have an easy fast. That is not my wish for myself, or for you. We should eat! “V’achalta v’savata” - eat and be satisfied. Eat? Yes, eat - eat at the table of confession, imbibe in teshuvah, speak meaningful words, turn anger into forgiveness, and your soul will be satisfied. Don’t afflict your soul – feed your soul! So I do not wish you “tzom kal”. I wish instead for a “tzom mashma’uti” - a meaningful fast. That is the fast God desires. Find meaning in the prayers, find meaning in the nusach, find meaning in the people in this sanctuary and everywhere in your life.
L’shanah tovah u’metukah u’mashma’utit tikhateimu - may you be sealed for a year of goodness and sweetness and meaning.
