Remember, Yom Kippur Comes Every Year!

It is our tradition, beginning on the second day of Rosh Chodesh Elul, to hear the shofar being sounded. The rabbis suggest that when Moses went up on Sinai for the second time, our people blew the shofar in their camp for 40 days until he returned. This was to remind them that they should not again make the mistake of falling into idol worship as they did on his first sojourn on the mountain.

Our people are reminded, on those 40 days from the second day of Elul till the 10th of the month of Tishrei, that we have done wrong, we have missed the mark; we can repent, and God will forgive us. And on the 10th day of Tishrei, on Yom Kippur, we ask for God’s forgiveness.

Maimonides calls the shofar our Jewish alarm clock. It is that sound that wakes us to a deep search into our very bring. We do “chesbon haNefesh”, an accounting, a tabulation of our deeds. This self-assessment is of our soul, our essence. We are so focused on this soul searching ,on our spiritual nature that, for some 24 hours (as long as it’s not harmful to our health) we fast; we may not smoke or shave, or perhaps not even wear leather, and maybe wear a white garment to signify purity and a “clean slate”. In the Mishnah Torah, laws of repentance 3:4, it states: “Sleepers, wake up from your slumber, examine your ways and repent, and remember your Creator”. The word for repentance, for turning our behaviour about, for atonement, is teshuvah. Before we can repent, we have to recognize what we did was wrong. We have to go to the person whom we’ve wronged, if it all possible, to admit how we missed the mark (Chet). We have to vow never to commit that wrongdoing again and then we can talk to God, pray to God. None of these steps are easy.

The stages of teshuvah are six in number. 1. Introspection and recognition. 2. Confession and rebuke. 3. Repentance and atonement. 4. Rejection of repeated sin. 5. Forgiveness. 6.Renewal and transformation.

At the end of Yom Kippur, as the gates begin to close. (the service called Neilah), we need to believe that the gates of repentance are never permanently closed. Yom Kippur will come again next year, and we will have yet again the chance to do better. The book of life is always a book we can try to sign in on. Each day of our lives, we should be doing some self-assessment. The goal is to make each year, each day, each moment, a little bit better. The goal is to make ourselves a little bit better, to make the world each year a little bit better; thus, when we end Yom Kippur and the gates close, our job is not over yet. Our responsibility is not over yet. The book is sealed, but I believe God leaves us a chance always to make it better! We can keep trying to sign into the book of Life

Let us make life, a good, peaceful, life our goal for all humanity. We can pray that, what we asked for a Rosh Hashanah, a sweet and fruitful new year, will become a reality. As a Jewish community, as a kehillah, it is our responsibility to take personal and collective responsibility for wrongdoings, and each one of us has to take just one step to make the world better, safer, more peaceful, kinder. In the 40 days leading up to Yom Kippur, we prepare for atonement. We prepare to admit things are wrong, and some of those wrong things are our responsibility personally and communally to fix, and we’re going to keep working on that until we reach the next Elul and keep going after that! That is our challenge. That is our responsibility. That is our opportunity.

May you be inscribed in the book of life. Shanah Tovah Tikatevu! May it be God’s will.

Filed under: Educator's Message

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