Successful self-examination on Yom Kippur depends on shaking us from our complacency

O

ne thing a columnist living in Israel never has to worry about is running out of topics. Presently, I have a list of six topics at my side, and related stacks of paper scattered on or near my desk.

Nevertheless, the chagim always come with a certain stress for me, and not just because of the tight deadlines as the massive holiday issues are prepared for print. On the one hand, I could just move through the current list of topics, and those sure to pop up any minute — e.g., the Israeli strike on Qatar, the horrific assassination of Charlie Kirk. But isn’t a Jew supposed to be immersed in thinking about the Days of Awe at this time of the year? Isn’t that why we have been blowing the shofar — to awaken us to that task — since the beginning of Elul? And shouldn’t that be reflected in the topics addressed by a Torah Jew?

On the other hand, I have been writing about each of the chagim almost annually for more than 35 years, and it is hard to say something new. Nor do I imagine myself to be an original Torah thinker. What do I have to offer readers, given the proliferation of Torah shiurim easily accessible from talmidei chachamim of the first rank, including those featured in these pages, bearing original Torah insights?

In that proliferation, however, I have found the answer. I love to read. And at the very least, I can point to Torah thinkers whose ideas have inspired me in my avodas Hashem connected to the Yamim Noraim. It will come as no surprise to regular readers of this column that one of those contemporary thinkers is Rabbi Immanuel Bernstein, who has published seforim on all the holidays and on aggadeta, and multivolume works on Chumash, including the just-released From the World of the Meshech Chochmah (Mosaica Press).

TWO THEMES run through his more than 20 chapters on Yom Kippur in Teshuvah, his sefer on Elul and the Yamim Noraim. First, the need for rigorous, even scorching self-examination prior to Yom Kippur and on the day itself; and second, despite the multitude of our failings, that we are capable of becoming transformed Jews, ever closer to HaKadosh Baruch Hu. Yom Kippur is a Divine gift to help us do so.

At the beginning of the Ashamnu confession we say, “We are not so brazen and obstinate as to say before You, Hashem, our G-d and G-d of our forefathers, that we are righteous and how not sinned — rather (aval) we have sinned.” Note, we freely admit the reason we do not claim to be without sin, for “we have sinned.” But we do not double down in the same way on the brazen claim that we are tzaddikim, by repeating that we are not tzaddikim. Because in essence we are tzaddikim and capable of becoming ones in actuality.

The aval, in its most common usage as “but,” seems awkward. Wouldn’t “because we have sinned” have been more straightforward? The “aval,” however, hints to the nature of the necessary self-examination. Cut out all the “buts” — the rationalizations, excuses, and justifications — and just admit that we have sinned.

The greatest barrier to changing ourselves is desensitization to our aveiros. As the Gemara (Moed Katan 27b) puts it, “Once a person has sinned, it is in his eyes as something permitted.” At the end of Ashamnu, we recite, “We have swerved from Your good mitzvos, v’lo shaveh lanu. The second clause is usually translated “and it has not proven worthwhile for us.” But the Vilna Gaon understands it as explanatory. We have swerved from Your mitzvos because we did not adequately value the mitzvos, as designed for our ultimate good. In short, they were devalued in our eyes.

The nation of Amalek, the archenemy of the Jewish People, who must be destroyed before Hashem’s Kingship is firmly established, represents the same sort of devaluation of the mitzvos. The name Amalek can be divided into two parts. The last two letters, lamed-kuf, refer to the manner in which a herd of cattle denude a pasture by licking the grass. The animal reference captures Amalek’s hedonism, its refusal to recognize any higher authority or limits upon its appetites. A world without morality.

Though the other two letters forming Amalek — am — usually refer to a nation, the two letters can also form the root of the verb “to dim.” And that is what Amalek has always done — dimmed our sensibilities. Chazal compare Amalek to one who jumps into a boiling bath: Even though he is badly scalded, he cools down the bath. When Klal Yisrael left Egypt and crossed the Sea, the whole world was filled with fear of Hashem. But that fear dissipated after Amalek attacked the Jewish People.

Successful self-examination on Yom Kippur depends on shaking us from our complacency. Though all eating and drinking is forbidden, the minimal forbidden shiur for eating and drinking is determined by what is sufficient to settle the mind of the one fasting (in contrast to the normal measures for eating and drinking).

Not wearing leather shoes is another one of the inuyim (afflictions) of the day. Though less difficult than the fasting, it too helps us focus on the necessary soul-searching. The Gemara (Brachos 60a) says that the blessing “Who has provided me with my every need” should be recited over putting on one’s shoes in the morning. The Vilna Gaon explains that the wearing of shoes made of leather from the hide of an animal reflects the dominion granted us over the animals and the rest of creation. But that dominion is conditional: We must exercise it for G-d’s purposes. The absence of shoes bids us to contemplate whether, and to what degree, we have done so.

YET NO MATTER how dismal the results of our self-examination, we should not despair. The very name of the day, Yom Hakippurim, hints at the key to radical change. Kapparah, according to Rashi, refers to wiping something away. Only that which is external to a person, and has not entered into him, can be wiped away. A tattoo, for instance, cannot be wiped away, for the ink has become part of the bearer’s skin.

Our sins remain extrinsic to us, not intrinsic: Every Jew possesses a pure, unsullied core.

We have already seen that the purpose of the five inuyim of the day is to put us into a state of agitation. And yet, Yom Kippur is called “Shabbos Shabbason,” a day of rest on which, in the language of the Rambam, we not only rest from any creative melachah but also “rest” from eating and drinking.

Which is it: a day of agitation and searching out one’s failures, or a day of rest and repose? Rabbi Bernstein answers: The agitation is designed to break our bad habits; the rest is a reminder that our essence is good, and there is no need to break ourselves.

He brings an insight of his late father, Rabbi Isaac Bernstein ztz”l. Belief in free will (bechirah) is one of the essentials of Torah. As such, we would have expected the Rambam to discuss free will at the beginning of Sefer Hamada, in Yesodei HaTorah. But the Rambam does not do so until Hilchos Teshuvah — i.e., after the sin. The ability to choose a different course always remains.

According to the Vilna Gaon, the shir shel yom of Yom Kippur is Psalm 32, which reads, “Happy is the man whose sins have been borne [by Hashem].” On that verse (32:2), the Midrash comments, “Happy is the man who is higher than his sin, and not that his sin is higher than him.” In other words, happy is one who has a perspective from which he can declare that the sin is beneath him, an action unworthy of him because of his exalted state. That, the Gaon implies, should be the perspective of every Jew as he surveys his sins, and it will lead to Hashem bearing those sins.

THOUGH THE TWO THEMES under discussion appear to be in tension with one another, they are actually two parts of a whole. The Shelah Hakadosh writes, quoting an earlier Kabbalistic work, that “Yom Kippur is a day when there is a revelation of the Higher Light, which emanates from the World to Come, a place where there is no eating or drinking.” That effulgence of supernal light constitutes as it were a “mikveh in time,” in which we can immerse ourselves and come out pure.

The Mishnah in Yoma (8:6) explicitly describes Hashem as the mikveh of the Jewish People: “Just as a mikveh renders those who are impure pure, so, too, the Holy One, Blessed is He, purifies Israel.”

But there is a condition inherent in the purification of any mikveh. There must be no chatzitzos separating between the person or object being immersed and the water of the mikveh. On Yom Kippur, sin is the chatzitzah between us and the Divine mikveh, and if we want to purify ourselves, we must first identify our sins, express our regret, and resolve not to repeat them in order to remove the chatzitzah through teshuvah.

That does not mean we will never sin again. But the choice is ours — now. At the outset of the Yovel year (which bears many connections to Yom Kippur) every servant, even one who has voluntarily remained in servitude, regains his freedom, and the land of those forced to sell their property returns to its ancestral owners. The former servant may once again sell himself into servitude and a poor man sell his land holdings after the Yovel. But he need not.

Similarly, one who immerses in the mikveh may once again incur tumah, but for now he is tahor (pure). So too, we will almost certainly transgress again, often in the same ways we have in the past. But if, on Yom Kippur, we have succeeded in dissociating ourselves from our sins in the eyes of “the One Who knows that which is concealed” — not the One Who knows the future, Rabbi Bernstein points out — then the Divine mikveh of Yom Kippur purifies us.

May we all be zocheh.

(Originally featured in Mishpacha, Issue 1080. Yonoson Rosenblum may be contacted directly at rosenblum@mishpacha.com)