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Yom Kippur Readings: Inspiration, Information, and Contemplation, Edited by Rabbi Dov Peretz Elkin, Jewish Lights, 2005
Yom Kippur: Teshuvah and Memory
- Rabbi Shawn Israel Zevit
Teshuvah also does not happen all at once. It happens in increments, and maybe something will stir for you this day that will percolate during Yom Kippur and long after.
Perhaps the projections we place on others may not withdraw back into our own souls until the first notes of Yom Kippur, when Kol Nidre and the confessionals spark a place of blocked grief or anger, withheld love or apology, and struggle for meaning and purpose in life. Maybe not even then! Maybe your time will be after the Days of Awe. Our sages wisely offer that teshuvah between us and God is the explicit work of Yom Kippur, but for teshuvah between human beings, the gates of heaven on earth are open until Hoshannah Rabbah- the end of Sukkoth, when we traditionally take willow branches and go to the river side and hit the ground with them until all the leaves come off as if to try and shake the last vestiges of sin and spiritual blindness still clinging to us. It is in the journey that we can find hope amidst the challenging world around us, and the struggles within our own hearts.
This Day of Awe, we return and turn again to face the dreams we yearned for, comforting the broken hopes that lie aching on the ground of a lifetime. We turn to face the dreams we buried, that with some watering are lying, waiting for nurturance to blossom into heaven in our lifetime. We return to seek forgiveness with those who share our lives that we have forgotten under the weight of making ends meet or habitual ways of relating, or taking for granted. We remember that “I’m sorry” is not a defeat, but freedom from our own prison of closed-heartedness. We remember the world outside our little narratives, a world that longs for us to accompany it in discovery, compassion and healing.
We return to the world in our own neighborhoods and communities, which need our hands and hearts to avoid declining into environmental, social and economic hardship. We return to those who have come before us, family and friends, inspirational people of many ages ago, and those we new fleetingly that gave us an angel’s touch and changed our lives. And we return to those who left our world this past year, whether through death’s door, or through relationships severed or lost. It is painful to return. It is joyful to return. It is this day of actively returning that reminds us to claim what we hold dear, and reclaim what we have forgotten or repressed.
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