The Torah column is supported by a generous donation from Eve Gordon-Ramek in memory of Kenneth Gordon.
Yom Kippur
Deuteronomy 29:9-14, 30:11-20
The Torah portion that is read on Yom Kippur morning at Reform synagogues like my own is taken from Parashat Nitzavim. It’s an important passage, and it conveys the idea that Judaism is not a distant and esoteric religion, high in the heavens or far across the seas, but an accessible and a doable one, a spiritual way of life that is “in your mouth and in your heart.” (Deuteronomy 30:14)
There is another section, though, that occurs later in the Torah portion, one that is less famous yet equally important. As the people of Israel prepare to leave behind their nomadic wandering in the desert for a more sedentary and settled existence, Moses offers them a vision of religious practice that looks very different from the Judaism we know today.
Every seventh year, Moses instructs the Israelites, during the festival of Sukkot, that the Torah is to be read, publicly and in its entirety, before all the men, women and children in the community. This event seemed to transcend all other sacred days.
Biblical Judaism was focused far more on festivals than on the Days of Awe. The three pilgrimage festivals — Sukkot, Pesach and Shavuot — each lasted a week, and each was marked by joy and celebration.
Things changed dramatically 2,000 years ago. When the Romans destroyed the Second Temple and conquered the Land of Israel, they also obliterated a spiritual way of life that had grounded the Jewish community for many centuries. With the Temple gone, pilgrimage festivals in Jerusalem were no longer possible; the priesthood had been wiped out; all of the classic expressions of Jewish religiosity were now dead.
Out of necessity, and in a courageous attempt to reconstruct Judaism and keep it alive, the leaders of the time created something new: the post-Biblical Judaism that we recognize today. The synagogue replaced the Temple as the key place for Jewish worship and assembly; prayers and liturgy supplanted incense and animal sacrifice; the rabbinate, a new class of scholars and educators, took the place of the hereditary priesthood. It was Judaism all right, but one that bore little resemblance to the Judaism we read about in the Torah.
With no more pilgrimages to the sacred Temple, no more dramatic, public spectacles that involved powerful visual imagery, the thrust of Jewish spirituality turned inward, and the focus of Jewish life became centered on the soul.
It was in this transformed religious environment that Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur took on new, and much greater prominence. Unlike the pilgrimage festivals, the Days of Awe could take place in a synagogue. (No priests or livestock were necessary.) The hallmark rituals of this 10-day period were prayers, songs and sermons — verbal, rather than visual expressions of the Jewish spirit. There were other rituals as well: the blast of the shofar on Rosh Hashanah and the fast on Yom Kippur. Taken together, the Days of Awe introduced a different sort of pilgrimage: a pilgrimage of the soul, an inner journey from repentance to renewal.
This transformation, this turn inward, stuck. Jews have observed this 10-day period in the fall, in more or less the same way, for 2,000 years. It continues to be practiced in synagogues around the world, from Napa to New Zealand, with its focus on personal contrition rather than public celebration. But it has also made the Jewish calendar feel top heavy and front loaded; this is the time of year when Jews fill pews, when members of the tribe “get religion” for a few days out of the year.
There is a lot of pressure on rabbis and cantors during this period; there is pressure on all of us, as we strive to get our Jewish fix, to clean our slates, to be inscribed in the mythical Book of Life before it is too late.
All that pressure isn’t necessarily a good thing. While so much focus on the High Holy Days brings people out of the woodwork and helps us to reconnect with our community, it has led to an imbalance in the Jewish calendar and the more episodic, natural rhythm of Jewish communal life that had once animated and inspired our ancestors. This imbalance is not just structural. It’s also cultural. We have become imbalanced, not only in our approach to the holidays, but in our mindset.
By design, the Days of Awe are meant to make us look inward, to focus on our mistakes and misdeeds, to repair them and then to recommit to becoming better people in the year ahead. But this idea of focusing on what is wrong with us, both as individuals and as a community, has seeped into our collective consciousness as well, and not necessarily in a healthy or productive way.
Jews have been preoccupied with our own demise for many centuries. Whether it was the destruction of the First and Second Temples, the Crusades, pogroms or the Holocaust, we have regularly worried about our extinction. Historically, we blamed that threat on an external force, antisemitism — a force that was and is very real. But these days, more often than not, we blame it on ourselves, on internal forces, specifically on assimilation and intermarriage.
In response to the lack of commitment and affiliation among today’s Jews, as well as the rise of interfaith unions, many Jewish leaders have begun beating up on our community for failing to preserve a “pure” Judaism and promote an “undiluted” bloodline.
The Jewish people have faced the challenges of assimilation and intermarriage for millennia, and we have always survived. We have done so because our people and our faith have been able to adapt to new circumstances with ingenuity and courage. Rather than focusing on what is wrong with us — rather than circling the wagons and creating a reactionary, disfigured Judaism more concerned with purity than with advancement — we should be focused on returning to a sense of balance, an approach to Jewish life that honors our traditions yet, simultaneously, embraces innovation and change.
We should stop worrying about our shortcomings and our survival; instead, let us return to our roots, let us reclaim the passion, confidence and fortitude of our forebears; let us create a religion and a community grounded in joy and celebration rather than insecurity, anxiety and fear.
How do we bring about this paradigm shift, this communal transformation? Do we start by de-emphasizing the Days of Awe and re-emphasizing the pilgrimage festivals? I think it is about more than that. It is about changing our cultural sensibility, the way we perceive ourselves, the comfort and confidence we feel in our own skin.
I am not advocating that we return to the “good old days” of animal sacrifice; what I am arguing for is a more creative and positive approach to Jewish life and identity, just as our ancestors followed 2,000 years ago during another period of transition and uncertainty. As a result of their audacity and innovative spirit, their sense of joy and affirmation despite all odds, we are here this New Jewish Year. May it be a blessed one for all of us.