Those who sow in tears, reap in gladness: Joy on Yom Kippur- Yom Kippur 5783
Some of my earliest memories of Yom Kippur are of my father’s voice. Every year on Yom Kippur, I am transported back to Skokie, sitting on the women’s side, tucked in close next to my mom, hearing the sing-song notes of my dad’s voice guide me through the service. My dad has always been one of the gabbaim in our synagogue, and that meant that he often stepped in to lead on the High Holidays– singing various parts of the service, calling page numbers from the Birnbaum and Artscroll Machzorim, picking up a Torah reading. Quite remarkably, filling in in any capacity he could. And from my perch on the women’s side, myself not always able to see or fully participate in what was happening just on the other side, my father's voice arrived as if to say, “This is yours, too. I am here, just listen, just follow my voice, and you’ll be ok.”
Every year, for as long as I can remember, my dad led Neilah, the final service of Yom Kippur. The fleeting moments just before the gates swing shut. And while he helped out in lots of unofficial ways throughout the year, Neilah belonged solely to my father. And each and every year, as he led, he would cry. He would weep his way through melody and text. In a voice that was at once shaky and miraculously strong, my father would carry the congregation through those final, most dramatic moments of the day.
Growing up, I struggled with Yom Kippur. For me, the holiday always carried with it a deep sense of dread, fear, real existential worry. I worried about fasting, worried about saying the prayers exactly right. Worried that I had disappointed both my parents and G-d alike. That yet another year had gone by without any change, without any Teshuvah, that I was coasting, and people would notice. And perhaps that meant that my teachers and the liturgies of the day had succeeded. I had internalized the intensity of Yom Kippur in a way that left me terrified– I wondered what would happen if I was found guilty of sins I had committed unwittingly. I worried that I wouldn’t be forgiven, that my name would be written in the book of life– and then, as if by some stroke of doubt or spite, G-d would see my name, furrow G-d’s brow, and erase me from the list. That G-d would sweep away the eraser shavings, clap G-d’s hands together, and say, There, that’s better. Every year, I felt this mortal fear, because I really did believe in the purpose of the day–this great big איום ונורא day, so holy, and so powerful.
And so the first time I heard my father cry during Neilah, that sense of dread bubbled up to the surface. It’s a scary and unsettling thing to hear a parent cry. To hear your parent, who is supposed to be a model of strength and composure, be so vulnerable. And because I couldn’t look directly at my father while he led, my only sightline of him peripheral, ephemeral, seeing him distorted through a piece of nearly opaque cloth– I couldn’t see the body language or the effect, but could only hear what I perceived to be deep sadness and fear, the same feelings that I carried deep in my bones.
When I got older, I decided to ask my dad about his Yom Kippur tears. And his answer transformed my relationship with Yom Kippur forever. He said, “Shani, I cry for two reasons: I cry out in sadness because I worry I haven’t done enough. And I cry out in joy because I know there is more time, that I have another chance, another year to do better.”
I cry out in joy. Before that moment, I had never associated Yom Kippur with joy, would have thought it impossible, totally inconceivable that those two could go together. But here I was, listening to my father explain his inner emotional experience, and that mattered a great deal.
For most of my life, I believed in this common misconception about Yom Kippur, and was so viscerally weighed down by it– that Yom Kippur is a day to fear, a day that I always hoped would come and go with little drama. But it’s time we set the record straight, for our sake, and also for G-d’s.
In the Mishnah, the Rabbis teach:
Rabban Shimon ben Gamliel said: there were no days as joyous for the Jewish people as the fifteenth of Av and as Yom kippur, as on them the daughters of Jerusalem would go out in white clothes, which each woman borrowed from another. Why were they borrowed? They did this so as not to embarrass one who did not have her own white garments.
Here, the Mishanh points to Yom Kippur as a moment of collective renewal and communal joy. The women would go out to the fields in white clothing in search of a partner, in search of fertility. This ritual is quite stirring symbolically. Dressing in white, as we continue to do now on Yom Kippur. Going out to the fields with a sense of faith, optimism, and belief that a new kind of future is possible. That is what we are meant to feel on Yom Kippur– a radical sense of joy that something wonderful is waiting for us out in the field. And the joy and jubilation of this moment was not private or individual, but achieved collectively, in trusting partnership with other people.
The women described in this Mishnah helped each other participate fully and without shame.
The Talmud takes this idea further. In the Babylonian Talmud, Tractate Taanit– the tractate dedicated to the topic of fast days in Jewish tradition, we read:
There were no days as happy as the fifteenth of Av and as Yom Kippur. The Gemara asks: granted, Yom Kippur is a day of joy because it has the elements of pardon and forgiveness. And moreover, it is the day on which the last pair of luchot, of tablets, were given.
This teaching calls our attention to two important facts about Yom Kippur. First, the day is joyous because it has elements of pardon and forgiveness. Here, the Rabbis are signaling to us that the very possibility of forgiveness and repair is itself something to celebrate. And second, the Rabbis remind us that the quintessential moment of repair in Jewish history took place on Yom Kippur– today!
The Sin of the Golden Calf proved to be a moment of near-permanent rupture in our history. On his way down the mountain, the first set of tablets in hand, Moses sees the Israelites dancing around a Golden Calf– an idol reminiscent of Egyptian worship. And in his anger, his disbelief, his utter despair, Moses hurls the tablets down on the mountainside– effectively shattering the law, shattering the covenant, severing himself and G-d from these wicked and ungrateful people. But we know that Moses goes back up the mountain, remains there with G-d for another 40 days and night, etches the tablets all over again, and returns to the people with a renewed covenant– a renewed sense of trust, relationship, and hope. For the Rabbis, this moment signifies the most joyous day in our history. Because when Moshe came down the mountain with the second set of Luchot, we were given the greatest gift of all– the radical reminder from G-d that even after such disappointment, we were in fact worthy of that Divine relationship. That even though we fell short, failed so critically in a moment of temporary lapse, that we were not in fact unlovable or irreparably damaged. In bringing down the second set of Luchot, Moshe taught us that we are fundamentally capable of so much change– and that is miraculous.
In Psalm 100, we read:
עִבְדוּ אֶת־יְהֹוָה בְּשִׂמְחָה בֹּאוּ לְפָנָיו בִּרְנָנָה׃
Serve G-d in gladness; come into G-d’s presence with shouts of joy.
We are commanded to live a life of joyous service– to G-d, to community, to the planet. Joy is encoded into our experience as Jews. It has to be. But joy can also be hard to find. And in this world, the joy that we are lucky enough to find is so fleeting, so hard to believe.
But the service that is described here in this psalm is active. It’s chaotic, it has movement and texture and character. It is a service that wholly reflects our messy, imperfect lives.
On Yom Kippur, we engage in confession in each one of our services. During Kol Nidrei, Shacharit, Musaf, Mincha, and Neilah– five distinct times– we publicly announce our shortcomings. Five times throughout this day of atonement, we do the work of acknowledging, and in turn beginning the process of rectifying, our failures both big and small. The work of confession, of saying out loud in the presence of our community, beating our chest for each individual sin, is difficult and painful work if we take it seriously. It takes a great deal of courage and moral fortitude to admit wrongdoing, to begin paving a way forward, building a future in which our very best selves may be realized.
But when we confess, we are doing something else, too. We are affirming, over and over and over again, that each of us is a work in progress. And that is the work, that is how we authentically and joyously serve G-d– by being radically honest about who we are and who we are capable of becoming.
Yes, we move through a great deal of liturgy that lists our shortcomings, that forces us to reckon with who we really are on an elemental level. But Yom Kippur insists that we are not fundamentally unlovable, not fundamentally flawed. Yom Kippur teaches us that we are always good enough for G-d. And if we are good enough for G-d, surely we are good enough for each other, and perhaps most importantly, for ourselves.
The 10th Century Midrashic work, Tanna Debei Eliyahu, recounts the following teaching:
Yom Kippur is a day of great rejoicing for “The One who spoke and the world came into being,” a day which G-d gave to Israel out of G-d’ great love for them. Moreover, when G-d pardons the iniquities of Israel, G-d is not sad at heart, but rejoices exceedingly, saying to the mountains and the hills, to the springs and to the valleys, “Come and rejoice greatly with me, for I am forgiving the iniquities of Israel.”
On Yom Kippur, the Yeshivah Shel Ma’aleh, the heavenly, Divine realm, and the Yeshiva Shel Matta, our realm, the human realm, meet. On Yom Kippur, G-d comes down from the mountain to meet us where we are, to delight in our imperfections, to witness our Teshuvah up close. On Yom Kippur, G-d celebrates, too. G-d rejoices with the whole of creation, in all that is made possible today.
Soren Keirkegaard, the Danish Existentialist philosopher wrote that it takes religious courage to rejoice.
Our quest on Yom Kippur, is to locate that courage– be it religious, spiritual, communal– so that we may wildly rejoice in all that we are, and all that we are becoming. That we may desperately hold onto the gift that Yom Kippur gives us: to confront who we are, to really reckon with who we want to become, and to begin making our way through the wilderness, to that promised place.
On Yom Kippur, we are reminded not to give up. Not to abandon the hope that we can change. That other people can change. That the world can change.
I don’t know if tears will come this year during Neilah. But I do know that I will be standing, just like my father before me, rooted somewhere between past and future. Looking backward with regret, but looking so purposefully, so faithfully with hope, toward the future. And when that great big Tekiah Gedolah is sounded later tonight, when we are flung into Sukkot, into Z'man Simchateinu, the time of our great joy– I know that I will have found the courage to believe in myself and my own capacity to change, because of all of you. And that is miraculous. That is joyous. That is Teshuvah.
G’mar Chatimah Tovah!
