Ann Arbor Reconstructionist Congregation

Yom Kippur

What is Evil

by

Yom Kippur Sermon 2022, Rabbi Debra Rappaport

One of my teachers in rabbinical school used to say that all rabbis have basically one sermon that they continue to give in different forms throughout their rabbinate. Of course that made me really curious about what the essence of my one sermon might be. Sometimes I think it’s some variation on “be kind” and/or “be conscious;” it’s certainly about the importance and potential of community. I also believe what Richard Bach wrote: “we teach best what we most need to learn’’ – lest you think I come in with all this figured out. I share these perspectives on my sermon writing because I do tend toward practices for wellbeing and cultivating positive traits in ourselves for the sake of the highest good for our communities and world. 

But on Yom Kippur, I find the dark side compelling. Maybe it’s the scapegoat story we just read, prodding at my psyche, wanting to know – what are those sins and what does it mean to confess them onto a goat to sacrifice to God and onto another goat to send into the wilderness? The story raises the aspect of the numinous, the aspects of forces of wickedness or evil that perhaps defy neat categories of sin and confession and the possibility of teshuvah. The trends of the past several years have also forced me to do some rethinking of my theology, that godliness is in every one of us and we just have to make good choices. Because so many humans are making bad choices – ranging from unkind to harmful to cruel. Hate-based speech and actions are on the rise; violent gun attacks on crowds and schools are on the rise; Putin’s heartless war on Ukraine is the most Euro-centric example we’ve had of stunning, inhumane cruelty inflicted on fellow human beings. There are so many more ordinary instances of human evil, including domestic violence, limiting access to voting, banning books and curriculum topics. It’s harder to be in a state of mind in which I believe these are simply differences of opinion and I believe everyone wants the highest good. 

I don’t use the word “evil” much. It seems to evoke the demonic, like there is some force, the devil out there that might get us – which I don’t really believe. Yet our tradition uses the word “evil” rasha frequently, including in today’s liturgy and Haftarah. 

Here’s my question: According to Jewish sources, is evil a force in its own right, that we can annually send away on a goat to Azazel? Or is it in each one of us, something to reckon with and integrate? What, if anything, do our sources offer to help us combat the forces of wickedness, of cruelty? It doesn’t feel like my place to tell you which places of wrongdoing or the evil of collective negligence need your attention. There are so many to choose from. But it does feel like my place to offer up Jewish sources in the hope that they can inspire you to do your part. We’ll start with some of what we encounter directly on Yom Kippur, then I’ll offer a brief survey of Jewish teachings – which have a lot to say about it! 

Specific to the High Holiday liturgy, the Unetaneh Tokef poetic prayer talks about all the ways we could die, then offers: u’teshuvah, tefillah and tzedakah (repentance, prayer, and doing justice) ma’avirin et ro’at-ha’gezerah, lessen the evil of the decree. I think this use of evil refers to our human vulnerability, or the fact of death, more than to human wickedness. Bad things just happen in the world. This is the sort of “evil” in which children develop cancer, families die in car or plane crashes, a pandemic takes millions of lives. In these instances, our clear obligation is to respond, to call upon our spiritual and material resources toward healing, loving, resilience and choosing life. Asking “why” in these moments, while a natural place for our minds to want to go, is not fruitful because we can’t know. 

In the Haftarah we just read, Isaiah 58:6-7 “No, this is the fast I desire: To unlock fetters of wickedness – rasha, 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 him..” Here, rasha wickedness is equated with heartlessness toward the suffering of others. 

The Biblical story that involves human evil begins with the Tree of Knowledge of Good & Evil. When Eve and Adam ate from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, childhood innocence ended. Humans were now in a world of consequences, and even more importantly a world of self-consciousness, having to take responsibility for our actions. We have access to knowledge of good and evil, to a conscience. 

Satan, or HaSatan appears in the Hebrew bible not as a devil or evil incarnation, but as an adversary. The word’s root means to obstruct or oppose. In Job, HaSatan (the Satan, not a proper name) is translated as the prosecutor. In all cases, haSatan is one of God’s servants or angels. The notion of opposition is clear, he’s more like your partner “playing devil’s advocate” than the devil himself. Facing an adversary, we are then called to recognize that that too is God, and to bring our most exemplary selves. 

The rabbis following the Torah developed the idea of wickedness within each and every one of us. They called it the yetzer-ha-ra, the evil inclination, which we can imagine sitting on one’s left shoulder arguing with the yetzer ha-tov, the good inclination on our right shoulder, like in the Capra movie. Our job is to keep the yetzer ha-ra, our wild impulses, under the yoke of the laws of Torah. 

Medieval philosopher Maimonides understood both God and God’s Created world as essentially good. He understood evil as the privation or absence of God. “Evil in comparison with good is like darkness in comparison with light. It is not the contrast between one being and another being, but between a being and its absence. …For Maimonides, to speak of good and evil as two independent entities would have been as if we offered a child a partnership: come, let us bake a bagel: you supply the flour and water and I supply the hole. This example would face us with the absurdity of comparing a void and an entity, evil and good. The hole is not something which exists in its own right. It is merely the result, and accompanying symptom, of a certain structure of the universe, which is itself good.” (Shalom Rosenberg, p. 29) In Maimonides’ worldview, human evil is the consequence of stupidity, ignorance, blindness, and irrationality – all related to the lack of knowing God. Human evil stems from distortion of our subjective lens. Unlike God, we can never see the full picture. So in this model, because evil does not exist as an independent force or power but as the absence of God, humans have the obligation to learn about the way of the world and thereby choose good. 

Some early Kabbalistic theology actually saw sitra achra – the dark side – as a force independent of God. This dualism didn’t last. The dominant theology of the mystics emerged in a story of creation in which longing for companionship inspired God to create. Only Adam Kadmon, the original creation, could not contain God’s brightness – so sparks of God scattered throughout the world, encased in klippot, shards or shells which appear to contain evil but actually contain sparks of redemption. Our work is to free the sparks of holiness from their klippot through teshuvah, and bring more holiness into the world and thus to heaven too. In other words, in every negative encounter, every place that’s difficult or where suffering is experienced, there is a spark of holiness somewhere within that, and our job is to find and free that spark. 

Zooming forward a millennium, I want to share philosopher Hannah Arendt’s observations after covering the Eichmann trial in 1961. After living through the Holocaust, arguably the most radical evil in human history, and hearing the testimony of one of its most horrific perpetrators, she came away with the understanding of evil as banal – NOT trivial, she spent the rest of her life clarifying. What she meant by describing evil as banal is that it is not deep. Here I quote her: 

“It is indeed my opinion now that evil is never ‘radical’, that it is only extreme, and that it possesses neither depth nor any demonic dimension. It can overgrow and lay waste the whole world precisely because it spreads like a fungus on the 

surface. It is ‘thought-defying’ as I said, because thought tries to reach some depth, to go to the roots, and the moment it concerns itself with evil, it is frustrated because there is nothing. That is its ‘banality’. Only the good has depth and can be radical.” (The Jewish Writings, p. 471) 

“Precisely because these criminals were not driven by the evil and murderous motives we’re familiar with – they murdered not to murder but simply as a part of their career – it seemed only too obvious to us all that we needed to demonize the catastrophe in order to find some historical meaning in it. And I admit, it is easier to bear the thought that the victim is the victim of the devil in human disguise – or as the prosecutor in the Eichmann trial put it, of a historical principle stretching from Pharoah to Haman – the victim of a metaphysical principle, rather than the victim of some average man on the street who is not even crazy or particularly evil.” (p. 487-88) 

This is chilling. The worst human evil is perpetrated when people are being shallow, unwilling or unable to connect with the depth of our interbeing. It’s happening in our world. We can blame the explosion of social media, making everything about image and ratings. We can blame reducing communications and relationships to Twitter. We can blame late stage capitalism. But all the energy we might spend blaming is wasted. 

What Hannah Arendt said most succinctly, and all of our tradition teaches, rings true to me. Evil is simply not a force that we can sacrifice to God or send away with the scapegoat, as our Torah reading described. Rather, the story invites us to think about what wiping the slate clean might entail. We need to put our energy toward responding, and each of our sources points in a direction that supports a balancing and healing response. 

Adam and Eve brought us conscious awareness. Let’s not hide from it or bury it in business. 

Isaiah reminds us to tend to the suffering of others, now! 

Interpersonally, when we’re faced with wickedness or simple frustration, we have the choice to look for and lift up the presence God or of good, the holy sparks in husks of wickedness. I recently heard a story of a cab driver whose ride didn’t come out right away. It was a poor neighborhood, and he knew his fellow drivers would have waited the obligatory two minutes and left. But he decided to give the person the benefit of the doubt. He rang the doorbell; inside was a frail elderly woman; and all the furniture was covered as if no one lived there. He helped her out to the car. She shared that she was on her way to hospice care, and didn’t have any living relatives. He ended up taking her around to the various places that had mattered in her life; and he refused to charge her anything. That is lifting up the sparks. The driver himself was nourished, by having responded with love in such a tender moment. 

Maimonides taught that we should each consider ourselves as well as all the world half meritorious and half culpable all year long. And we should believe that if we were to commit just one sin, we would incline ourselves and the entire world toward guilt and bring about destruction; and, contrarily, that if we were to fulfill just one mitzvah we would incline ourselves and the entire world toward merit and bring about salvation and redemption. Every choice, every action can have that impact. I walked in Nichols Arboretum yesterday. I witnessed the difference made by a few people’s attention to the natural environment, generations ago. The biodiversity in there was remarkable. 

The Musar movement gives tools for practicing responding well in each moment, through cultivating middot, values. Musar acknowledges that all worthwhile values exist on a continuum. In the mussar worldview, “evil” and wickedness come from an extreme at either end of a virtue continuum. For example, at one end of a continuum of humility would be excessive pride, and at the other end, excessive self-effacement. Neither extreme is in service of the highest good; evil applies when one is off-the-charts in one direction or the other – megalomania on one end, or at the other end the kind of invisibility that leads to despair or violence. Musar, while not focused on evil, understands wickedness and harm as coming out of the extremes of good qualities each one of us has. It is our soul’s work to practice moderation where we tend to the extremes. Each one of us must find our own soul curriculum within the context of each value, like humility, patience, giving the benefit of the doubt, kindness, and so on.1 

Hannah Arendt offered this: “We resist evil by not being swept away by the surface of things, by stopping ourselves and beginning to think.” she adds, “the more superficial someone is, the more likely he will be to yield to evil. An indication of such superficiality is the use of clichés, and Eichmann, God knows, was a perfect example. Each time he was tempted to think for himself, he said: Who am I to judge if all around me – that is, the atmosphere in which we unthinkingly live – think it is right to murder innocent people?” (479-80) Again, a chilling example of what can unfold if we don’t stop some of the trends happening in the public square. 

Yom Kippur is the time to reflect on what we are mindlessly doing or colluding with. What are you willing to see and respond to you that you weren’t last year? What are you willing to speak out about? Where are you willing to put your time and other resources? As we progress through this season, may we be mindful of all the little choices that make the entire world tilt toward merit. As we are called by God, let’s Choose Life! 

L’shanah tova u’metukah! 

Fasting and Nourishment

by

R’ Debra Rappaport, AARC, Kol Nidre 5783 / 2022 

I’ve been wanting to write this sermon for a very long time. It’s called “Fasting & Nourishment.” I’ve always been curious about why so many Jewish people, especially those who don’t observe the letter of the Jewish law throughout the year, take the Yom Kippur fast so earnestly. Tonight I’m going to reflect on the layers of significance of a 25 hour fast on the holiest day of the year. 

In full disclosure, I don’t observe a halakhic, pure fast of abstention from all food and water; and I understand the appeal, and it’s complicated. At its best, fasting on Yom Kippur gives us the opportunity to bring increased awareness to the true nourishment we receive from all we consume, food and otherwise. I believe that bringing conscious awareness to all of what we take in is an important aspect of honoring the godliness in each one of us, created b’tzelem elohim, in God’s image. When we honor our own bodies and souls, we are able to show up for others at our best, and do our piece of tikkun olam. So here are some teachings from our tradition and some reflections for today. 

Why fast on Yom Kippur? 

Where does the custom of fasting on Yom Kippur originate? The Torah commands that all the Israelites on this day are to practice self-denial, bring a holy offering, and not do our ordinary work. (Lev. 16:29 and Lev 23:27-32) The Hebrew for self-denial is: נּוּ֣ע ַתְּ 

כםֶ֗תיֵשׁ ֽ ֹפ ְנַאת־ ֶThe root, ayin-nun-heh, became a word for fasting. Literally, though, t-annu et nafshotechem translates to “afflict or humble your body-soul.” While the Torah does not define what is meant by affliction, it makes clear that if you don’t observe the command, you are to be cut off from the community. Karet, being sent away by your community, was the worst possible punishment for our forebears: one could not live without community. The threat was significant; people would observe. 

In the rabbinic era, the early centuries of the common era, the Mishna – also known as Oral Torah – elaborates on what the Torah means by self-affliction, saying: “On Yom Kippur, the day on which there is a mitzvah by Torah law to afflict oneself, it is prohibited to engage in eating and in drinking, and in bathing, and in smearing oil on one’s body, and in wearing shoes, and in conjugal relations.” (Yoma 73b) 

But, lest we think that simply following the laws of the written and oral Torah suffice, the prophet Isaiah, in our Haftarah we’ll read tomorrow, emphatically adds a moral layer to our fast: (Isaiah 58:3-7) Isaiah rejects the idea of our fast as some self-wallowing thing we do just to appease God. God says, I will be appeased when you not only feed the hungry and share your home with those experiencing homelessness, and make sure people have clothing. God says, I will celebrate your fast when you “unlock the fetters of wickedness… and free the oppressed” According to Isaiah, our fast must be accompanied by acts of justice to be meaningful. 

Our tradition also has other examples of fasting. Some fasts are the physical demonstration of atonement, of teshuvah. Tomorrow’s afternoon Haftarah, the story of Jonah, tells of the people of Nineveh’s fast of atonement. Another biblical type of fast is in supplication, a way of showing God you’re serious and humble about your prayers; Our Purim heroine Esther demonstrates this type of fast for three days before approaching King Ahashueros on behalf of the Jewish people. 

The fast of Yom Kippur evokes all these and more. Rabbi Yitz Greenberg describes Yom Kippur’s fasting from all bodily functions as a way to come face to face with our mortality. By denying all our physical needs, we enact a death within life, in order to embrace life all the more passionately. Writer Penina Adelman articulated the beauty of the Yom Kippur fast in these words: “Praying when fasting feels the way I imagine it to be when one who is facing death prays. Priorities become as clear as a finely tuned radio. Feelings are sharp and at times as overwhelming as a tidal wave. The senses are more vivid and vibrant. I am inside the birdsong, the flower’s scent, the fallen leaf’s changing colors. How ironic that on a day when we are denying our physicality, we may experience the physical world more strongly than ever.” 

To recap so far, Jews fast on Yom Kippur because it’s commanded, and we fast to remember all those among us who don’t have enough to eat and who are afflicted by those in power taking advantage of those with less power; to speak out, to identify with the afflicted and to take action to support them. We fast to to physically enact our teshuvah, to encounter our mortality, to focus so deeply on our prayers, as these all speak to waking up from our sleepwalking through life and really embrace what we’re here for. And we fast in solidarity. 

Complicating factors/Other Aspects 

All of these traditional reasons we fast on YK are powerful, and perhaps even more relevant today. Yet there are complicating factors. 

Some of us have a medical condition in which fasting makes you sick or does harm to our bodies or our mental health. Some of us have eating disorders, in which case an association of fasting with holiness can truly be life-threatening, not life-affirming. 

Fasting is a striking act of asserting agency over our bodies. It’s a powerful spiritual practice when having agency over our eating and our bodies in general is the norm, but it has often not been the norm – for women, for people who are enslaved, for people who live in poverty. Today is a day to appreciate that our fast is a choice. 

Moreover, as a society, we are less than healthy in our eating habits and in our relationships with our bodies. While some among us have serious eating disorders, most of us have some level of disordered eating. With endless access to food, we eat when we’re bored, we eat when we’re anxious, we eat when we’re sad – often our eating is not connected with our metabolism. We eat without paying attention, while we’re driving, or at our computers. Families give mixed messages about when to eat and when not to eat: you should eat if it’s dinner time even if you’re not hungry, you shouldn’t snack even if you are hungry and so on. 

In this room, I imagine everyone has ultimate agency over your own food consumption, and yet we are all impacted and distorted by our culture and our inheritance. If we are descendents of survivors of Nazi camps or other severe trauma from deprivation, that trauma is literally in our cells, perhaps triggered by fasting. And possibly healed by leaning into our actual agency today. 

Further complicating our relationship with food, we can’t help but psychically consume messages from our consumer culture about body image, how we’re supposed to look, what we should eat, what we shouldn’t eat. Commercials entice us with foods and beverages that would make our doctors cringe. And then we add gendered layers of the messages around eating. Women’s relationships with our bodies, I believe, have suffered more than men’s for all who are alive today. Even as there are now a lot of body-positive messages that counter the thin and fit (and let’s not forget white and blond) expectations of the dominant culture, more and more men and certainly non-binary folks are suffering from body image expectations completely disconnected from their embodied experience. Feminism has taught us to honor our lived experiences, and sometimes prioritize them over the dominant culture’s dictates. 

So where does all this leave us with regard to fasting? 

My intention is to raise awareness and thus intentionality about our choices around what we consume. I feel like this fast – whether you’re literally fasting from food or practicing humility and self-denial in other ways – can focus our attention on all the little choices that contribute toward more sickness OR more wellbeing for our world. Our individual choices are like stones dropping into a lake – the ripples reach far and wide. I offer a spiritual take on our personal relationship with our bodies, and then a bit of reflection on the ripple effects. 

A couple weeks ago, I learned a Hasidic text from my teacher R’ Jonathan Slater, from Likutei Morohan, a collection of teachings from Rebbe Nachman of Bretslav, the great-grandson of the Ba’al Shem Tov, founder of Hasidism. “Each of us must have great compassion for our physical body, to show it every illumination and each insight that the soul attains, so that the body might know, as well, of that insight.” R’ Nachman actually uses a passage from the Yom Kippur Haftarah to support this teaching. In our passage from Isaiah, which we usually read as “don’t ignore your kinfolk’s need” The Hebrew is לּםָֽע ַת ְת ִאֹל֖￾ ֥רְשׂ ָבּ ְמ ִוּ “‘do not ignore your own flesh’ (Is. 58:7). Precisely ‘your own flesh’! Do not turn away from having compassion for your own flesh, i.e., your own body. We must have great compassion for the body, to make it transparent, so that we can inform it of all the illuminations and insights that the soul attains.” When the body attains this state of good health and feeling cared for, “it is good for the soul, as she sometimes falls from her high estate. When the body is bright and shining, the soul can raise itself up and return to her state through the body. That is, through the delight of the body the soul can remember and return to her own delights.” This interdependence of our bodies and souls rings so true for me. What I like about the teaching is that Reb Nachman suggests that we need to tend to the health of both body and soul. And when we do that, either one can return us to balance with the other. Sometimes my mind gets so caught up in ideas that I lose my connection with what is really present in the moment. Then it’s my body, a physical experience, that re-integrates my body-soul. Fasting can bring us back to connecting with our physical selves. When your stomach is literally rumbling or your head aching, it is much harder to ignore. A reminder that, not only is my body here, but my body needs attention and care. This is about recognizing that tending to our bodies is also tending to the godliness within us. 

There are so very many implications of each of our food choices – on biodiversity, on global food distribution, on waste and greenhouse gasses, on local sustainability vs corporate profits, on animal welfare, organic vs cheap, and so much more. Jonathan Safran Foer, in We Are the Weather, intimates all these implications when he writes, “We do not simply feed our bellies, and we do not simply modify our appetites in response to principles. We eat to satisfy primitive cravings, to forge and express ourselves, to realize community. We eat with our mouths and stomachs, but also with our minds and hearts. All my different identities – father, son, American New Yorker, progressive, Jew, writer, environmentalist, traveler, hedonist – are present when I eat, and so is my history.” If you’re like me, you infer various food choices from each of these markers of identity. Each of us has our own identities and communities; and each circle establishes norms of appropriate eating. Which means that each choice we make influences others’ choices. 

Foer also speaks of the even wider ripple effect of our personal food choices: “Our food choices are social contagions, always influencing others around us – supermarkets track each item sold, restaurants adjust their menus to demand, food services look at what gets thrown away, and we order ‘what she’s having.’ We eat as families, communities, generations, nations, and increasingly as a globe. Individual consumer choices can activate collective action that is generative, not paralyzing. … We couldn’t stop our eating from radiating influence even if we wanted to.” (p. 201) 

What does this day’s fast mean to you? Are there other fasts you might contemplate, like taking the day off of your device? Or off of certain apps? The day is an opportunity to bring mindfulness to all of our choices. Does this nourish? Or does it make you sick? 

My prayer in the year ahead is that we grow in compassion for our embodied selves, and for the wellbeing of our neighbors. May this Day of Atonement increase all of our awareness of what and how we consume. May we discern what is actually nourishing for our bodies in real time as living organisms. May our choices have meaningful positive impact on the healing of our earth. I won’t wish you an easy fast. Wishing you a meaningful one. May you be inscribed for good in the book of life. 

For Further Study and Action: 

● AJWS From the Sources: Texts on Social Justice; Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur: Bounty and Scarcity 

● Mazon: A Jewish Response to Hunger ● Hazon’s Jewish discussion guide to Jonathan Safran Foer’s book We Are the Weather: Saving the Planet Begins at Breakfast

Yom Kippur Community Kavanot

by

This Yom Kippur brought more opportunities to learn from the incredibly wise members of our congregation. There is enough wisdom and perspective within this blog post to keep you thinking all year! Mazel Tov to our Kavanot team on your incredible insights, your contributions are deeply appreciated.

Green sprout in parched earth

Al Heit , Sins Against Our Future

By Joshua Samuels

When speaking of different transgression we should atone for on Yom Kippur an important  learning from the Mishna states:

Sins between a person and Makom, Yom Kippur atones for, between two people, Yom Kippur does not offer atonement until the wronged person is made whole. (Rabbi Elazar Ben Azariah Mishna yoma Het Zayin)

I have left the phrase used for God in the Hebrew form, it is a less commonly used name, and also means place in Hebrew.

This teaches us those transgressions where we have sinned against the creator can be atoned through prayer, but those against our fellow person require us to make them whole again. 

If we take the word Makom in its simple everyday meaning, we can view this as sins against our place, our world can be atoned for on Yom Kippur. Unfortunately, the havoc and destruction we are wreaking on our environment is a transgression not only against Makom, in all its meanings, but against future people who will live on this planet, against our children and our children’s children.’

From those people of the future, as yet unborn, we cannot ask for, nor obtain forgiveness for the world we leave them.

While we cannot ask for forgiveness from the people of the future, we can strive for atonement through our actions.

There are many things that I do in my everyday life, that with a bit more awareness and thought would have less of an environmental impact.

It can be succinctly summed up as consuming less and producing less waste, but behind that lies a myriad of choices.

There are many things that I do out of lack of attention, quotidian things such as

I forget my reusable bags and use plastic bags from the store

I run the garbage disposal instead of collecting the scraps for the compost heap

I make multiple trips in the car when I could consolidate with some attention and so on, the list is long.

And there are changes in habits, such as changing what I eat to eat more local food and less meat.

Many choices are a question of changing habits or opting for a bit less convenience when the cost in resources is high, but some choices are far more challenging and there are things I am not willing to give up. Travel, particularly to visit family, is not something I am ready to forego. There is value in making these choices consciously, in weighing the global cost against the personal benefit

It is at times overwhelming when we feel that the actions we take are but a drop in the ocean, but the ocean is composed of drops, many drops.

So for this Al Het I will say in Hebrew:

Al Het Shehatanu neged Atid Olamaynu

For sins against the future of our world.

So let us strive to consume less, produce less waste, live with more disorganization and imperfection. Embrace entropy, it saves energy.

Releasing What Does Not Serve Us 

By: Seth Kopald 

We have finished the days of repentance when we asked our family and friends for forgiveness for our harmful deeds throughout the year. We have cleansed our actions. Yet, perhaps there’s more. Deep in our cells, our bones, our muscles, and our energy, our ancestors have transmitted to us many things, gifts and burdens. 

Our ancestors carefully crafted life rules to live by, ones that kept them safe, free, and prosperous. Perhaps these rules include: don’t shine too brightly, don’t advertise who you are, be the best at everything no matter the cost, or be alone because we get hurt when we are in numbers. Yet, they have also given us gifts. Like, the value of learning, community, singing and dancing, questioning authority, and having personal connections with G-d. 

Kol Nidre, the namesake prayer of this service, is an aramaic prayer revoking vows made before G-d and it is a call to reconnect with our ancestors. We were born into these vows and we are called to release them, the ones that don’t serve us. We are called to make a choice – to embrace life and live it fully. In order to do that, we must release the burdens that keep us from living. 

As we uncover burdens passed down by our ancestors, perhaps you may hear voices inside saying, “we can’t let it go, or we will lose connection”, or perhaps ”These burdens help us to never forget”. From my experience, when we ask our ancestors if this is true, they tell us, “You will always remember and we will always be here, but you don’t need the pain and these restrictions to life.” They want us to be free. 

We are now moving into the Amidah, a silent prayer, and in this place there is an opening, a moment to connect with G-d and our ancestors. I want to offer you a brief mediation to free us more deeply into that experience. 

So now I invite you to notice in your body any energy, beliefs, or unnecessary rules that have been passed down to you, ones that keep you from living and being your full Self. 

Now notice the gifts that have been passed down to you. 

Now, put them in two separate piles. 

See if it is ok to release the burdens. Perhaps you can send them back to your ancestors and they can be cleansed by sending the burdens over the horizon. Perhaps you need time to decide if this is ok and you want to temporarily put the burdens in a sacred container and save them, in case you do need them. Either way, you can experience what it is like to be free, to release the vows of our ancestors that no longer serve us. You can bury them with honor, like we would an old Torah that can no longer be used. You can step into a mikvah in your mind and allow the waters of Miriam to wash them away. See what, if any of this feels right for you. 

Now, embrace the gifts, and allow your natural qualities to emerge: curiosity, calmness, compassion and courage. Let them fill you up. With those qualities and gifts, let’s enter the silent Amida together, a chance to connect with G-d, one-on-one. As you do, if it feels right, invite your ancestors to be with you as we all turn toward G-d’s essence.

How To Approach The Process of Change

By Deb Kraus

Today is a day we afflict our souls.

It’s a day where we rehearse our own death.  Where we say over and over again all the sins we could have possibly committed, even ones that wouldn’t have occurred to us, and ask God to forgive them.  We beg to be written into a book of life that most of us don’t really believe exists.  We abstain from eating, from drinking even water, from bodily pleasures, from adorning ourselves.  We spend all day in shul.

In other words, it’s a day we can really “get our self-hatred on.”

So why, out of all the holidays of the year, is Yom Kippur my favorite holiday?

Possibly because I reject most of that.

Somehow, along with the orthodoxy I was raised with [which had me worrying one year about having turned on—and then immediately off—the light in my bedroom as I went to sleep after Kol Nidre (clearly I was more afraid of my mother than I was of God)] I was also brought up with the idea that to change, you had to really hate yourself.  As a clinical psychologist with 35 years of experience, I know that I’m not the only one to have gotten that message. 


But I also know that it’s not true.  You can’t self-hate yourself into self-acceptance or change.

Instead the radical notion, the one that actually works, is that we can love ourselves into changing.  I have three ideas about how we might do that:

First, if you are here trying to become a better person, in the sense of becoming someone other than you are, please be kind and know the impossibility of that.  As Nadia Bolz-Webber, the tattoo’ed Lutheran pastor of the House of Sinners and Saints in Denver says, “we can grow in wisdom but we still fundamentally remain ourselves.”  In other words, let’s try to stop being someone else or some ideal version of ourselves, and become, instead,  the best “us’es” we can become.  It’s the Rabbi Zuzya story all over again:  when asked what his main concern was in dying, he said “God won’t judge me on why I wasn’t more like Moses.  He’ll ask me why I wasn’t more like Zuzya.”

Second, we can take a lesson from one of my more self-loathing clients, who nonetheless parents very well. He says to his toddler daughter, “there’s nothing wrong with you that you can’t fix with what’s right with you.”  I love that, and I offer it to all of us.  “There’s nothing so wrong with us that we can’t fix it with what’s right with us.”

Thirdly, and perhaps most importantly, I know we don’t believe in the actual book of life, but in case you do, I have it on good authority (that is, a podcast) that we come into this holiday already written in.  If we believe we need to be saved on this day, know that we already have been. 

What if we took these three ideas into our day of prayer?  As we take this deep-dive look inside ourselves, cataloging all the ways we missed the mark once again this year, what if we did it with the idea that together, with a combination of God, community and ourselves, we can fix it.  And become the best versions of ourselves that we can.

As Rabbi Ora said at this point last year,

 “…it is love – the love we receive, the love we transmit – that enables us and energizes us to change. It’s not that we will be more worthy of love if we change. It’s that love – being loved, and being loving – is precisely what enables us and energizes us to undertake the holy work of teshuvah.”

She concluded with an invitation.  “Let’s start from that loving place.” 

Yom Kippur Workshops 2022

by

The War in Ukraine: Empire, War, Refugees, and us with Debbie Field 1:30-3pm

Our own family histories, and Jewish history in general, have been shaped by empires and their wars of conquest. In this interactive session, we’ll learn a little about the war in
Ukraine, its impact on civilians, and the creation of refugees. We’ll make some comparisons with our own experiences as Jews, and end by considering actions we might take as individuals and as a community.

Movement Workshop with Alison Stupka. 1:30-3pm

People will gain a reconnection with their bodies during their fast.

Jonah Workshop with Rabbi Debra, 3-4:30pm

During this breakout session, we will read the book of Jonah together, and share informal discussion about its themes and why the rabbis chose such a seemingly silly story for the Yom Kippur afternoon Haftarah.

Sing and Connect with Deb Kraus, 3-4:30pm

Deb Kraus will hold space outdoors if weather permits to sing together and connect.

Introducing Debra Rappaport, AARC’s Rabbi for the High Holidays

by


The Ann Arbor Reconstructionist Congregation (AARC) is delighted to announce that Rabbi Debra Rappaport will lead our High Holiday services for the fall of 2022 (Hebrew Year 5783). 

Rabbi Debra shares this warm greeting:

“Greetings from Minneapolis! My name is Debra Rappaport, I use she/her pronouns, and I share a home overflowing with plants with my husband Bobby Zelle and our fierce funny cat Ozi. I have served two wonderful congregations for seven years each since my ordination from the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College in 2007, one in Vail, CO and one in Minneapolis, MN. I’m really excited to be with you this High Holy Days season! Though we don’t really know each other yet, I have been moved by the way the AARC values member engagement at every level.

I’m inspired by the way the people I’ve “met” (by Zoom) are approaching the High Holy Days, with active roles for as many people as possible. And I’m really excited to meet more of you!”

A bit more info on Rabbi Debra: she is co-chair of the Minnesota Rabbinical Association and she served as co-chair of the Reconstructionist Rabbinical Association Bi-Annual Convention in March 2022. Before becoming a rabbi,  she had a career in sales, marketing, and change management, earning  an MBA from the Wharton School in 1990. AARC Board Co-Chair Debbie Gombert shared that after a just a few conversations, she felt connected and thrilled that we will be sharing High Holidays and partnering with Rabbi Debra this year.

In addition to leading Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur services for the AARC, Rabbi Debra will also lead several workshops around the high holidays.  The first workshop will be for a Kavanot (intentions) team on Sunday, July 31. Rabbi Debra will also lead three adult education/workshops via Zoom on these Thursdays: September 15, 22 and 29th to help us get spiritually ready for the holidays. Mark your calendars!

We are at this time forming a Kavanot (intentions) team for those who would like to contribute liturgy in the form of stories, poems or intentions to the High Holiday services. Here are details from Rabbi Debra:

The first opportunity I will have to meet some of you will be a
Zoom gathering on Sunday, July 31st, 1:30-3:00 pm ET with Deb Kraus as your local host.

This gathering of what will be the Kavanot team is for folks who feel moved to write and share something during our Rosh Hashanah or Yom Kippur services. Everyone is welcome! 

You don’t need to know what you want to write at this point; together, we’ll start to explore the themes of the services and the questions that inspire reflection. Please RSVP to Deb at drdebkraus@gmail.com by Friday, July 29.  

Alternatively, if singing, chanting, musical prayer, and making music in general suits you better, please be in touch with Etta Heisler at ettaqueen@gmail.com.
The “Davenning team” is beginning to convene this month as well. Likewise, everyone is welcome – it’s about bringing our voices together in prayer, not about performance.

Stay tuned as more information about plans for the High Holidays 5783 will be available in future blog posts and emails. As a community, we have a lot to plan and a lot to look forward to, and we are grateful to have Rabbi Debra Rappaport as our rabbinical leader for this season.

Take Part in This Year’s Participatory High Holidays Services!

by

By Deb Kraus

This year the high holidays are later in the fall:  Rosh Hashanah lands on Sunday night, Sept 25 and Monday, Sept 26, and Yom Kippur will be on Tuesday night October 4 (Kol Nidre) and Wednesday, October 5 (Yom Kippur day).  We hope you are making plans to join us for the full time, but as always you are welcome to join for any part.  This gives us lots of time to plan.

We are proud to announce that this fall we will welcome Rabbi Debra Rappaport as our High Holiday rabbi for 5783.  One of the many things she brings to us is a desire to empower us to participate broadly—through music, poetry, storytelling and of course, torah and haftarah readings.

As her partner in this endeavor, I want to include everyone in this process.  Please read below to see how you can contribute your words, your voice, your presence.  I’m dividing this into four “teams;” please respond to as many of these suit your interests and abilities:

Musical team:  We will NOT have a cantorial soloist this year.  Instead, we will divide up those cantorial pieces (Kol Nidre, Unetaney Tokef, HaMelech, Hineni, Ya’aleh, some of the Kaddishes) to those who can take these on.  We will also have a group of singers with hopefully guitar accompaniment, who can lead us in communal song (all our old favorites plus some new selections).  Let me know asap if you would like to be in the group (our own personal “davening team”!) or would like to do one of the solos.  If you want to contribute with an instrument, let us know this as well, and because I don’t know where else to put this, please know that we are always looking for shofar blowers, both for RH day and for Ne’illah at the end of YK.

This team will be meeting to practice outdoors in Ann Arbor on:

Wednesday July 20
Thursday July 28
Wednesday August 3
Thursday August 11
Wednesday August 17
Thursday August 25

Kavanot team:  We will be looking for poetry, your own or something that you already love or that you find, stories and liturgy.  The initial meeting of this team will be July 31, from 1:30 – 3:00.  Please let me know if you are interested!

Torah/haftarah team:   We will have an opening for a Torah reader for both Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, so let me know if you would like dibs on one of these.  And once again, haftarah for Yom Kippur will be done by the post B mitzvah teens.  Several of these young adults have also moved on, so parents, please “voluntell” your kids to do this?

Workshop team:  Once again, there will be workshops on Yom Kippur afternoon.  If you have something that you would like to present for discussion, please let us know as soon as you can, with a blurb that explains your goals, along with what format (discussion, lecture, etc.) you plan to use.  If there is competition for these slots, we might have a survey to determine which have the most likelihood of attendance.

We will also be needing our standard High Holidays Volunteers to help set up, staff the welcome table, and schlep the Mishkan to the Unitarian Church etc. Sign up to volunteer for these volunteer spots here.

If you would like to join any of the teams mentioned above, please email Deborah Kraus!

Carrying Our Imperfections Gently In Our Hearts

by

By Rabbi Ora Nitkin-Kaner

Rabbi Ora Nitkin-Kaner

Kol Nidrei 5782/September 15, 2021

“I regret any offence that may have been caused.”

“I’m sorry you had your feelings hurt.”

“If there’s been a mistake, I do apologize. But you must know it was never my intention to cause anyone any pain.”

“Look, I’m sorry I snapped at you, but to be fair, you were being really annoying.”

How often have you heard these sorts of terrible apologies? Saying sorry is one of the most important speech acts we have as human beings. But on average, bad apologies, also known as ‘fauxpologies,’ happen way more often than good ones.  

There are so many fauxpologies out there that two social scientists created a website to keep track of them back in 2012. This website, called Sorrywatch.com, analyzes current and historical public apologies made by celebrities, politicians, and CEOs.

If you read just one of the hundreds of terrible apologies compiled on Sorrywatch, you might come away thinking, ‘wow, that person is a jerk.’ If you read another, you might think, ‘oh, that person is a jerk too.’ But the more fauxpologies you read, the more you’d realize: This isn’t just a couple of jerks. This is widespread problem, and people really need help figuring out how to apologize better.

The founders of Sorrywatch agreed. So a few years ago, they published a list on their website: ‘The Six Steps to a Good Apology.’

According to Sorrywatch, these are the six steps to a full apology:

  1. Use the words “I’m sorry” or “I apologize.” “Regret” is not apology! Regret is how you feel. Apology is about how the other person feels.
  2. Say specifically what you’re sorry for.
  3. Show you understand why the thing you said or did was bad.
  4. Be very careful if you want to provide explanation; don’t let it shade into excuse. This could mean just erring on the side of listening.
  5. Explain the actions you’re taking to ensure this won’t happen again.
  6. If you can make reparations, make reparations.

Although SorryWatch feels like a distinctly 21st century phenomenon, its founders – one of whom is Jewish – were partly inspired by Jewish wisdom from 900 years ago: the writings of Maimonides, also known as Rambam. Rambam’s Mishneh Torah devotes 10 chapters to the art of repentance, and includes the original ‘how to apologize’ list. Rambam also engages with broad range of related questions, including whether you should bother apologizing if you’ll probably commit the same sin again (hot tip: it’s the moral equivalent of dunking in a mikvah while holding a lizard carcass – very not kosher!).

If we took all the medieval wisdom of the Mishneh Torah and all the contemporary wisdom of Sorrywatch and boiled it down to one sentence, it’s this: saying sorry is hard. 

And it’s not because some people are jerks. It’s not because we don’t always have the wisdom of Sorrywatch or Rambam at our fingertips. It’s because saying sorry can be painful—to the person saying sorry! It can hurt the person who’s apologizing. Or at least it can feel that way. 

This is because at its heart, an apology is an acknowledgment of imperfection. 

It can be hard for many of us to admit that we’re not perfect. So instead of saying ‘I see how I hurt you,’ our apologies become complex verbal pretzels to help us avoid looking in a moral mirror, to wrap our ego in layers of self-defense, to widen the gap between what we did and how we want to think of ourselves. We want to avoid the pain of seeing ourselves as the villain in someone else’s story.

But it’s a fact; a fact that’s true regardless of how often we’re the hero or the villain in someone else’s story. The fact is: I am not perfect. You are not perfect. We, collectively, are not perfect.

I’m going to say that again. I am not perfect. You are not perfect. We are not perfect.

Our adult minds know what do with this statement. We say to ourselves heartily, ‘Of course I’m not perfect!’ Intellectually, we know perfection is impossible. But under that vigorous acknowledgement of reality and that cool adult rationality, there’s often still a voice that whispers frantically, ‘But I have to be perfect! That’s the only option!’

The little voice that tells us we have to be perfect—where does it come from? For some of us, it’s the voice of our parents and caregivers from when we were children, socializing us, teaching us to be good, and maybe also injuring us a little in the process. For some of us, it’s our history as a people. For centuries, Jews have strived for goodness and success, partly because we imagined that if we were without flaw, we would be less hated by the world. Perfection became our hope for mitigating or avoiding anti-Semitism and anti-Semitic violence. 

If that’s where the little voice comes from, what makes it louder? Well, our tradition, for one. For some of us, compulsory perfection can feel like it’s commanded by our High Holy Days. The fasting, the beating on our chests, the communal reciting of sins can all combine to make us feel like we’re failing some ideal. These holidays can highlight the gap between who we are and who we think we should be.

What happens when the voice that whispers ‘I have to be perfect!’ runs us? We are harsh with ourselves, criticizing our bodies, our accomplishments, our career paths, our relationships. And often, when we cannot hold our own perceived imperfections with lightness or acceptance, we push away weakness and vulnerability and failure in others. When we cannot sit with our own imperfections, it’s harder to sit with others in theirs.

Why does this matter so much? Of course, it’s damaging to empathy and compassion, and those are fundamental to a good life. But I wanted to talk with you about perfection on Kol Nidrei because perfection is the opposite of change. And change is what the High Holy Days are all about. 

When we prayed, on Rosh HaShanah, to be written in the Book of Life—when we pray, tonight and tomorrow, to be sealed in the Book of Life—it’s not a negotiation with God-as-Santa Claus, checking a list of naughty and nice to see whether we’ll get the present of life in the new year. It’s not a simple equation of if we’ve been good, we’ll live, and if we’ve been bad, we’ll die. Being written into the Book of Life simply means that we’ll have the chance to keep making mistakes in the coming year. 

For life to exist, there needs to be imperfection. If something is perfect, that means it can’t change. And the essence of life—the only condition that makes life possible—is change. 

We understand this implicitly when we look at the natural world, but it takes a little more time for it to sink in when it comes to us. If we were perfect, it would mean we wouldn’t—couldn’t—change. 

And our tradition knows this. This is one of the foundations of our faith: That the world was not created as perfect, and that we were not created to be perfect. There’s a midrash I love that speaks to this. In the Talmud (Pesachim), we read that before creating our world, before anything else was created, God created teshuvah. Repentance existed before anything else. Back when there was nothing, the possibility of moving towards healing and repair was set into the foundations of our world. And then God created our fallible world, and us within it, with the acceptance that we could never be anything but beautifully imperfect.

How do we repair our relationships with others? We can start by releasing our expectations that they will be perfect. How do we repair our relationship with ourselves? We can start by understanding that imperfection is our nature and our heritage, our past and our future. When we let in the truth that we were never created to be perfect, we start to quiet the little voice with its fearsome whisper. 

If imperfection is our nature, and teshuvah is our sacred heritage, the work of our hearts is to hold all this vulnerability tenderly. To hold our past and present, full of missteps, with as much warmth as we welcome our futures. Because our failures and our missteps, our selfishnesses and our egos, our heartbreaks and our dark moments of despair—we’re not meant to ignore them or throw them away. They are part of who we are. They give us knowledge of ourselves. And if we are lucky, and we put in the work, they can become signposts on the path forward.

I want to share one final midrash, one final bit of Torah to carry us into our soul-work, this Yom Kippur:

In Exodus, we learn that Moshe ascended Mount Sinai to receive the two stone tablets of the Ten Commandments. When he came down the mountain, he found the Israelites worshipping an idol, a calf made of gold. Enraged, Moshe smashed the tablets. And eventually, he had to go back up the mountain to receive a new set from God.

What happened to the stone tablets, the unbroken set, and the broken ones? The Talmud (Berachot) teaches that when the Israelites built the mishkan, the traveling tabernacle for God, they placed both sets of tablets, the broken and the unbroken, side by side into the holy of holies. They placed what was broken and unbroken at the heart of their community. That was where God dwelled.

We are meant to treat what was broken with as much reverence as what is still whole. To embrace the rough with the smooth, the past with the present, the losses and the failures with the joys and successes of our lives. We cannot cast anything away. We must carry our imperfections gently in our hearts, nestled alongside our highest hopes for ourselves, our communities, our world. Only in that way can we achieve wholeness. When we carry both in our hearts.

I’ll close with the priestly blessing—a blessing of shalom, peace, and shlemut, wholeness, for us all:

May the Source bless you and keep you;

May the One turn towards you with light and grace;

May the Eternal face toward you with uplift, and grant you peace.

Amen.

Making a Habit of Tenderness

by

Rabbi Ora Nitkin-Kaner

Yom Kippur 5779 Sermon
by Rabbi Ora Nitkin-Kaner

Making a Habit of Tenderness

Some of you know that before I moved to Ann Arbor to serve as rabbi of this holy community, I worked as a chaplain at a hospital in New Orleans. I was assigned to the oncology ward, so my weekdays, 8 to 5, were spent with cancer patients and their families. But at least once a week I would also work an overnight shift, which meant covering any death that happened in the hospital over a 24-hour period.

I ended up witnessing a lot of deaths – sometimes one per shift, occasionally as many as three. I rarely had time in the immediate aftermath of each death to grieve or process. But it was my job to show up, fully present, each time I walked into a hospital room. So I developed a ritual for myself: After each death, once the family had left the room and the body was taken away, I would take a few moments, alone, to wash my hands twice; first with soap and water, and then again, just water. It felt like this small ritual helped wash away some of the emotional residue that clung to me, so that I could show up for the next patient and family, with an open heart.

One patient who I remember vividly, in life and in death, was a man called Mikal (pseudonym)  in his early 60s. He was the proud patriarch of a large, loud, Armenian Orthodox family. He’d emigrated to New Orleans in the 1970s, raised a son and daughter there, and established a successful jewelry business.

During the two months Mikal spent coming in and out of the hospital for treatment, I could always tell when he’d been admitted because there would a stream of visitors – family, friends, customers – spilling out of his hospital room into the hallway, laughing and talking animatedly and bothering the nurses for more fridge space in the lounge to store dishes of homemade food they’d brought.

Mikal had an aggressive form of cancer, but he was a dedicated optimist. He never admitted, at least to me, that he was dying. But he passed quickly, within a few months of his diagnosis.

The morning that Mikal passed away, I’d just started my shift when I got a call from the head nurse telling me that Mikal had just died, surrounded by his family. When I walked into the hospital room, I saw Mikal’s 32-year-old daughter Tamar lying in bed next to her father’s body. Her right arm spanned her father’s chest, and she was kissing his cheek again and again and crying.

One thing I discovered in my work as a chaplain is that the length of time family will stay with the body of a loved one varies tremendously from family to family and culture to culture.

Most families will leave within an hour of their loved one being pronounced dead.  Tamar stayed with her father’s body, cradling him and crying, for more than four hours.

And I stayed with them in that room the whole time, because that was my job, to be there, to witness, to comfort. But I was uncomfortable. Because as a Jew, that kind of clinging to a dead body felt foreign and unsettling to me.

The Torah cautions us repeatedly not to touch a dead body, because it makes the living ritually impure. Many passages in Leviticus and Numbers warn against any contact with a corpse, and then outline how to cleanse oneself if contact does accidentally happen. But beyond these biblical, archaic prohibitions, even contemporary Jewish practices around death seem to communicate a hands-off feeling.

When someone dies, we bury their body as quickly as possible. After a funeral, all those who’ve attended are supposed to wash their hands as they leave the cemetery. And when Jews walk through a cemetery, we’re supposed to take care not to walk across any graves. So it seems like as Jews, we’re supposed to avoid contact with the dead.

But: this attitude doesn’t reflect the fullness of our traditions around death and mourning. Judaism also has a number of rituals that demonstrate deep tenderness towards the dead – rituals that seem to encourage care and physical closeness. I want to highlight four of these.

The first is the custom of the shomer – guard, watchman. After a Jewish person dies, their body is taken to a funeral home, where a relative, or a volunteer, or an employee of the funeral home sits with the body overnight and reads poetry out loud to it – usually Psalms. This ancient tradition came about because of the belief that a soul could become lost and confused right after death, and hover around the body until it was buried. The presence of the shomer was meant to be a comfort to the soul. And there is always a shomer until the funeral – the body is never left alone.

The second custom also takes place before burial, and involves a group called the chevrah kedisha, a community of volunteers that prepares bodies for burial. The preparation, known as tahara, is fixed, slow, and careful. First the body is ritually washed. As it’s washed, care is taken to preserve its modesty; only one small section of the body is uncovered at any given time. Then the body is dressed in white garments, wrapped in a tallit, and laid in a casket. At the conclusion of the tahara, the members of chevrah kedisha silently ask forgiveness from the soul for any indignity the body may have suffered during the ritual. They then ask God to gently receive the soul of the body they’ve just washed and dressed and tucked in.

The third custom I want to highlight is a more public-facing one: how relatives recite Mourner’s Kaddish for a year after a loved one’s death. This tradition dates back almost 2,000 years. The early rabbis believed that when a person died, their soul would go down to Gehinnom, a temporary purgatory. There, the soul would review their life’s actions and do teshuva. The more sins a person had accumulated in life, the longer their soul would stay in Gehinnom, with the maximum time being 12 months before the soul could finally ascend to heaven.

It was believed that having living relatives recite Kaddish could help speed up the soul’s process of teshuva. Some rabbis recommended that relatives stop reciting Kaddish after 11 months – to assume that their loved one had already ascended to heaven, and had not been so sinful as to have needed the full 12 months.

The final custom I want to share with you is that of visiting the graves of loved ones on yahrzeits and before holidays. Many Jewish families will take a yearly trip to the cemetery before Rosh HaShana and spend some time at each family member’s grave. At the end of the visit they’ll place a small rock on each gravestone, a way of marking ‘I was here’.

All of these rituals fall under the umbrella term ‘chesed shel emet.’ Chesed – meaning lovingkindess. And Shel Emet – meaning truth. Our tradition teaches us, with this name, that these acts of loving care for the dead are the truest form of compassion. Why? It’s simple: The dead will never be able to do the same for us in return. Chesed shel emet is considered true altruism.

What does all this have to do with Yom Kippur? Well, last night and this morning, we’ve been repeating the Vidui and Al Chet, doing teshuvah for this past year. And, as Dave said so eloquently last night, even as we reflect on the past, we’re also meant to be thinking about the future.

Audre Lorde once wrote: ‘We have to consciously study how to be tender with each other until it becomes habit.’ I’m wondering what it would be like, in the coming year, for us to reach for the delicacy and tenderness of chesed shel emet. Not, God forbid, treating the living as though they’re dead. But seeing if we can be so tender with one another, and without waiting for our gentleness to be returned.

So what would our day-to-day look like, guided by the tenderness of the rituals I just described?

Well: The shomer serves a comforting presence to a soul that may be lost, disoriented, or afraid. And of course being a shomer isn’t easy, or joyful; sitting up at night, alone with a dead body is hard. But what if, similar to a shomer, we challenge ourselves to radical accompaniment: to sitting with friends and strangers and family, even when their vulnerability or their need makes us uncomfortable. Can we show up and stay there in the messiness, even if it makes us afraid? Can we show up knowing we might not be thanked or appreciated?

And the chevra kedisha, performing tahara, the ritual of cleansing the body, with so much gentleness and respect. We could treat each other with the most delicate of touches, knowing how easy it is to cause shame or embarrassment. Knowing that sometimes we’ll still need to apologize even when we’ve done our best.

And, guided by Mourner’s Kaddish? We would assume positive intent in others. We’d believe that if a person hurt us, that they’d been doing the best they could at that moment. We’d limit how long we held grudges, held onto hurt. And we’d try to believe that even if the apology never came, that the person who hurt us was, on some level, sorry.

And finally, graveyard visits: Literally, visiting people where they’re at. What if we showed up, from time to time, uninvited, on each other’s doorsteps, bringing a gift, leaving a note, reminding someone we care about: Hey. I’ve been thinking about you.

It’s so freeing to act out of love without needing it to be returned. This kind of chesed, tender loving kindness, can transform the person who loves and the person who is loved.

This new year, 5779, can we love like this? Can we take up Audre Lorde’s challenge to reach for tenderness until it becomes habit?

On Erev Rosh HaShana, I said to you: ‘If we choose life then we are obligated to remember that although daily acts of love do not win headlines love has always existed, it does exist, and it will continue to exist. Love is an endlessly renewing resource.’

And, this afternoon, I want to add: More than just a resource like water, more than that which flows from us and to us and through us, love – chesed – is the foundation of this world. Love is the ground that we build and rebuild with each gesture, with every small act.

One of my favourite Hebrew songs is called Olam Chesed Yibaneh. The lyrics are just these three words, repeated. Olam Chesed Yibaneh. Meaning: we will build this world from love.

Let’s hold onto this possibility for ourselves, and for one another. Olam chesed yibaneh – we can build this world out of love.

Join me.

Yom Kippur Afternoon Sessions 2019

by

AARC Yom Kippur practice is to have afternoon sessions of learning, discussion, meditation, and song between the morning service which ends about 2pm and our community Yizkor service, which begins at 4:45pm.  The hour long sessions are at 2:30 to 3:30pm and 3:30 to 4:30pm.

Meditation Workshop led by Anita Rubin-Meiller

2:30-3:30pm

Yom Kippur is the ideal time to grow in our connection with ourselves. This time of guided meditation will focus on fostering gratitude and self-compassion. I will draw on Jewish resources for both. If you’d like to, bring a journal to write reflections in after each meditation. There will also be time for sharing.

Sing, Chant, Walk led by Deb Kraus

2:30-3:30pm

For the past two years on Yom Kippur afternoon, I have found myself outside with other members, singing and chanting our way through the afternoon between services. It’s been deeply meaningful to us, and a great way to pass the time. You are welcome to join us for all or part of this time. I’ll provide some song sheets but we will also have machzors nearby to aid us in our efforts.  We’ll meet outside if we can and inside if we can’t.

Yoga led by Allison Stupka

A restorative session of yoga led by Allison Stupka.

3:30-4:30pm