the magical thinking of yom kippur: yom kippur 5784
In her book, The Year of Magical Thinking, Joan Didion writes her way through the sudden death of her husband, the writer, John Gregory Dunne, and the illness and prolonged hospitalization of their only child, a daughter, Quintana Roo. Didion, who died in 2021, was a prolific essayist and novelist; she writes in the opening pages of her book:
This is my attempt to make sense of the period that followed, weeks and then months that cut loose any fixed idea I had ever had about death, about illness, about probability and luck, about good fortune and bad, about marriage and children and memory, about grief, about the ways in which people do and do not deal with the fact that life ends, about the shallowness of sanity, about life itself.
For Didion, writing is a passageway, not an escape or a way out, but a way through. Not a denial, but an honest confrontation with her pain. For Didion, the work, the labor of writing, of putting something so true and so vulnerable down on paper, of giving voice to the depth and complexity of her grief– that is where the healing lives.
As Didion chronicles this tragically difficult year, she takes us on a journey through some of the most universal and complex human emotions– grief, anger, resentment, profound loneliness, ecstasy, transformation– all the things that make us human, that make us alike, that make life somehow so extraordinary, and at the same time so painful, so devastating. And so the name that she gives to this year, and this book– The Year of Magical Thinking– seems itself to be a testimony to the absurd challenge of living. In just five words she seems to say that in order to live our lives fully, to move upstream in a world that pushes its current back at us with such force and such violence, a world that resists the truth of who we are; in order to believe that there really is goodness in the world– even if it means getting down in the dirt and turning over every stone just to find it– that we have to be willing to let go of a lot. We have to be willing to suspend reality, release what we know to be true. We have to let ourselves be carried away by magical thinking. We have to believe, with an almost reckless abandon, that things will turn out ok, that we will heal, and not suffer, that we will be alright.
I read The Year of Magical Thinking for the first time when I was in college. And as an English major who had not yet experienced a close loss; reading at a time in my life when that eventual loss seemed so far off, impossible even– I read Didion’s deeply personal writing mostly as an intellectual exercise. Trying my best to understand her experience, but so obviously and thankfully removed from it. I read in pursuit of literary themes, fabulous sentences, and with the casual arrogance of reading someone’s lived experience as cultural criticism more than what it really was– the truth. But I had no idea. Not then. And now, rereading and looking back on how I first encountered this text, I think I believed that magical thinking made grieving easier. That being able to put pen to paper and give grief a voice, to make grief a character in the story, made it easier. I believed that maybe you could think and write yourself out of the pit. That winning the National Book Award and being a finalist for the Pulitzer had to count for something. Had to make it all easier, somehow.
But then, I read The Year of Magical Thinking again. After so much in my life had changed, been ruptured, really. I was suddenly able to appreciate the truth of what Didion writes, because her story was now mine. I could see myself in those literary themes, and the fabulous sentences, and the cultural criticism of what it means to experience loss in this country– because I felt the same way.
Reading this book all these years later, I became desperate to be carried away by the magical thinking that the title promises. But just as soon as I lost my mom, the truth about magical thinking revealed itself– healing from a loss, moving through the sadness, the loneliness, the anger, all of it, requires a tremendous amount of effort. It requires us to wake up each morning and promise ourselves that as hard as it is, we’ll get out of bed, brush our teeth. Remember to eat and shower. We’ll take help and support wherever we can get it.
And what I learned during my own year of magical thinking–and the truth is, it’s still going– is that it’s not about luck, or some fantasy about our lives that we desperately want to believe. Living in a state of magical thinking is not passive or random. I learned that the magic of it is making the impossible choice to keep moving. Every step forward at once an embrace and a rejection of the pain.
This kind of magical thinking is central to our experience on Yom Kippur. Because on Yom Kippur, we face the most harrowing possibilities of life. We stand, with our feet firmly planted, and we collectively acknowledge the suffering, the loss, the grief– we stand and confront the arbitrary nature of all the pain in the world. The Unetaneh Tokef prayer invites us into that place of difficult, heartbreaking truths: who by water, who by fire.
And so much of the ritual that we reenact on Yom Kippur is about magic– about affirming even in the face of the harshest realities of the world, that we are so vitally alive. We fast in order to tap the depths of our spiritual well; we wear white to evoke renewal, innocence, our angelic qualities; and we stand and sit– up and down, up and down, every time the ark is opened and closed– as if these repetitive, physical motions somehow awaken something buried in the Divine. Our Kohanim and Leviim duchan, perform the priestly blessing– hidden beneath their tallitot, holding their fingers apart to allow blessing to pass through. We bring all sorts of magic ritual into our experience of Yom Kippur, because without it, how could we possibly make sense of, or process the immensely difficult thing we are being asked to do here today?
Our Torah reading for today highlights what is perhaps the most magical of the Yom Kippur rituals. In Leviticus chapter 16, we read about the goat of Azazel. Aaron is instructed to take two identical goats, cast lots upon them– one marked for G-d and the other marked for Azazel. The goat marked for G-d is is killed and offered as a purification sacrifice, a קורבן חטאת. While the goat marked for Azazel is left standing before G-d, alive. Aharon then lays his hands upon this goat, confesses over it all of the transgressions and iniquities of the community. The community’s sins rest on the head of this goat. The goat is then sent out to the wilderness.
This is the very first scapegoat. This goat quite literally carries the sins of the community away into some unknown, unreachable wasteland. The people’s sins walk away, and are never seen or heard from again. How joyous and how cathartic this moment must have been– to watch the worst parts of yourself disappear. To know that another creature has taken on the burden of your guilt.
The ritual of Azazel is expanded in the Rabbinic literature. The Mishnah in tractate Yoma, the section dedicated to Yom Kippur teaches:
They made a ramp for the goat due to the Babylonian Jews who were in Jerusalem who would pluck at the goat’s hair and would say to the goat: take our sins and go. Take our sins and go, do not leave them with us.
The Mishnah goes on to teach that there was one person who was designated to escort the goat to the cliff– which the Rabbis also introduce.
When they arrived at the cliff’s edge, the escort divided a strip of crimson into two parts. He tied half of the strip to the rock, and the other half was tied between the two horns of the goat. Then, he pushed the goat backwards off the cliff.
The Mishnah goes on:
And how did the people who were waiting back at the Temple know that the ritual had been completed? They would build platforms all along the way. People would stand on them and wave scarves to signal when the goat arrived. Rabbi Yishamel, however, teaches that there was a strip of crimson tied to the entrance of the sanctuary. And when the goat arrived and the mitzvah was fulfilled, the strip would turn white.
I love what the Rabbis do with this ritual. They transformed this moment into something participatory and communal. They turned it into a moment in which the magic of the ritual is not only palpable, but created by each person in attendance. And again, how incredible. What a release to stand on a platform and watch your sins fall off the edge of the universe, leaving you open and ready for a new year. What I would give to witness this. To be just a stranger in the crowd, rejoicing in our collective pardon.
But despite its power, there is an obvious limitation to this ritual. We know that this isn’t actually how forgiveness or change works. If only it were so simple. If only we really could place our sins elsewhere, and not only rid ourselves of them, but truly be forgiven. But that would make the work of our lives far too easy, and I think unsatisfying. Achieving forgiveness and change without having to put in the work, I believe, would undermine the very purpose, the very magic of our lives.
The Yom Kippur Liturgy, as we’ve received it today, full of scripted choreography and moving melodies, can also draw us into the same kinds of incomplete magical thinking. It can become rote– the same thing every single year.
But I do think it can also serve as an antidote, a solution to the challenges and limitations posed by the earliest chapters of our religious history. Our Yom Kippur liturgy provides us with an answer, a correction to the unrealistic expectation that the Azazel ritual creates.
Yes, we acknowledge G-d’s majesty and sovereignty in the world and in our lives. We read about elaborate sacrificial ceremonies designed to expiate and expunge sin.
But we also confess. Repeatedly, we give voice to our sins. We give our flaws and shortcomings a platform, we put them out into the world, speak them into existence, so we can ultimately be released of them.
Over the course of Yom Kippur, we confess ten separate times. Whether in a silent Amidah or in a repetition, we speak and come face to face with those things that we are most desperate to change about ourselves. And as much as the literature or the High Holiday social media zeitgeist wants us to believe, I don’t know that confession is designed to be entirely about shame or self-flagellation. I think we confess to be drawn back into the reality of our lives. We spend so much time on Yom Kippur being carried away by magical thinking– the Torah reading and the ritual of Azazel lets us believe that this work is easy, maybe not even real work at all. And so we are called back by the liturgy, the Vidui, the confession calling out as if to say, this is the real world that we live in. It is imperfect. You, we, are imperfect. And while it might be nice and we might take great comfort in the notion that our sins can be so easily disappeared, that is simply not realistic. Not helpful. Doesn’t move us forward on the path of teshuvah in any meaningful way.
Our Haftorah, calls out with a similar warning: Don’t allow the magic of the ritual to serve as a replacement for your teshuvah, for your personal responsibility, for the difficult work of living this life and moving through this world. In Isaiah 58 verse 5 we read:
הֲכָזֶ֗ה יִֽהְיֶה֙ צ֣וֹם אֶבְחָרֵ֔הוּ י֛וֹם עַנּ֥וֹת אָדָ֖ם נַפְשׁ֑וֹ הֲלָכֹ֨ף כְּאַגְמֹ֜ן רֹאשׁ֗וֹ וְשַׂ֤ק וָאֵ֙פֶר֙ יַצִּ֔יעַ הֲלָזֶה֙ תִּקְרָא־צ֔וֹם וְי֥וֹם רָצ֖וֹן לד׳
Is such the fast I desire, A day for people to starve their bodies? Is it bowing the head like a bulrush And lying in sackcloth and ashes? Do you call that a fast, A day when GOD is favorable?
The Haftorah continues:
No, this is the fast I desire: to unlock fetters of wickedness, and untie the cords of the yoke to let the oppressed go free; to break off every yoke. It is to share your bread with the hungry, and to take the wretched poor into your home; when you see the naked, to clothe them, and do not ignore your own flesh.
What pleases G-d, and what ultimately transforms each of us, the Haftorah teaches, is the willingness to go out into the world, to act kindly and justly, to be in the weeds of all that is so broken, and to play even a small role in trying to repair it.
Throughout Yom Kippur davening, throughout services, we dance between two poles: the pole of Divine intervention and fate, and the pole of our own making; our lives, our choices, our responsibility. We dance between magic and pragmatism; between fantasy and reason.
In the final chapter of The Year of Magical Thinking, Didion writes:
I realize as I write this that I do not want to finish this account. Nor do I want to finish the year. The craziness is receding but no clarity is taking its place. I look for resolution and find none. I do not want to finish the year because I know that as the days pass, as January becomes february and february becomes summer, certain things will happen.
As she closes her book, Didion is painfully honest about how difficult it is to go on once the spell of magical thinking has been lifted. Once the book project is completed, once winters turn into summers, and memory really does become the final frontier.
And I think in her way, Didion reminds us of the beauty and the power, but also the limits of magical thinking. It helps for a time to suspend reality and believe in something wholly different from the truth. It helps for a time to believe that the goat of Azazel will fully atone for us, or that a fast will convince G-d of something that is not quite true about who we are. It helps for a time to let go of the things that weigh us down. But then reality comes calling us home, and we have to learn to venture out into that wilderness, perhaps alongside the goat of Azazel. We have to be willing to make a new kind of magic for ourselves. Each of us is dancing meaningfully and so wildly between magic and truth. Yom Kippur reminds us that that is the only way to keep on living.
Gmar Chatimah Tovah.
