DAY 37
Friday, September 25, 2020
Seventh Day of Tishrei 5781

The second confessional prayer on Yom Kippur is called, “Vidui Rabbah,” Aramaic for “The Long Confession.” This prayer is commonly referred to as the “Al Cheit” for its first two words.

The Al Cheit is really just an elongated version of Ashamnu. Instead of just one word for each sin, there is a full sentence in which we say, “For the sin we have sinned against You by…” At three points through the list of sins, there is an interlude in which we pray, “For all these, God of Forgiveness, forgive us, pardon us, grant us atonement.”

The Al Cheit is recited at all the services of Yom Kippur except for Ne’ilah, the closing service. During that service, our prayers become more urgent and compressed. At Ne’ilah, we recite only the short confession, Ashamnu.

You may have noticed that many people hold their hand over their chest while reciting Ashamnu and the Al Cheit, tapping or thumping on their heart as they name each sin. Sometimes, people think of this as a form of self-flagellation, as if we are punishing ourselves for our sins. But this is not the best way to think about the gesture. Judaism does not teach us to punish ourselves for our misdeeds. In fact, we believe the opposite – we believe in the need for self-forgiveness.

Rather, you can think of the gesture as a way of “knocking on the door” of your heart. Each tap is a wake-up call to your conscience, stirring yourself to feel remorse for your misdeeds. Reciting the confession should be an experience that encourages and motivates you to think deeply about the things you have done that have hurt others and yourself, and to resolve to change your behavior. As we have seen, we are required to say out loud the remorse we feel and our determination to change. Ashamnu and Al Cheit are prayers that are intended to motivate us in that process.

Practice for this day:
The tapping or thumping that we make on our hearts during the confessional prayers may help us to feel remorse and the need to change, but it is not the only thing we can do to elicit that feeling. What other things do you want to try to do to help you remember and to stay motivated to change for the better

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DAY 36
Thursday, September 24, 2020
Sixth Day of Tishrei 5781

At each of the services of Yom Kippur, we recite confessional prayers called Selichot. In these prayers we admit that we are arrogant and stubborn people who spend much our lives thinking that all of our mistakes and misdeeds are somehow justified or unimportant. In the Selichot prayers, we back down from this position and admit that we have done wrong and that we have to reconcile ourselves with the people we have hurt and we have to reconcile ourselves with God. We admit that without such reconciliation, we will lead futile and meaningless lives in which we will just continue to make the same mistakes over and over again.

The focal point of the Selichot prayers are the two confessional prayers. Today, we will consider the first of these prayers, called Vidui Zuta, Aramaic for “The Short Confession.” It is also called “Ashamnu” for the first word of the prayer.

Ashamnu is recited by the entire congregation while standing. The prayer is really a list of words that begin with each letter of the Hebrew alphabet in order. We begin with the letter aleph and say, “Ashamnu,” meaning, “We have been guilty.” We continue with the letter bet and say, “Bagadnu,” meaning, “We have betrayed.” Next, we say, “Gazalnu,” which begins with the letter gimmel and means, “We have have robbed,” and so on through the entire Hebrew alphabet.

Now, you will notice that not everyone in the congregation will have committed each of these sins. Some person might say, “Why should I say ‘Gazalnu’ if I never robbed anyone in my entire life?” It’s a good question. The point of the prayer, though, is not that we have all done all of the sins listed. It’s not even that the list of twenty-four sins (three for the letter tav) is comprehensive and exhaustive. Rather, with this prayer we stand together in solidarity with all the other members of the congregation in confessing our communal responsibility.

Think of it this way. You may not have robbed anyone, but somebody has. In reciting the prayer, you accept that person, accept their confession, support them in their striving for t’shuvah, and accept your responsibility for making sure that it doesn’t happen again. None of that is easy, but it is a necessary part of t’shuvah. It is a way of recognizing that none of us can make t’shuvah without the strength and support of everyone else to help us.

Practice for this day:
Is there a misdeed or mistake for which you feel particularly guilty or ashamed? Can you identify why that one hurts you more than others? Does it help to know that other people support you in your quest for forgiveness, even if they don’t know specifically what you did? Do you feel that your support helps others?

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This is the sermon that I delivered at Temple Sinai in Cranston, Rhode Island, on the first day of Rosh Hashanah 5781.

I am sad today, and there is no way for me to deny it. I’m sad that we are meeting like this, of all days, on Rosh Hashanah. We should be in our comfortable and homey Sanctuary. We should be listening to the Cantor in-person, singing beautifully alongside our wonderful octet choir. We should be greeting each other with warmth and tenderness, exchanging hugs and kisses.

We should be standing before the open ark on Rosh Hashanah and feeling God’s presence, because the Sanctuary at Temple Sinai is the place where so many of us have felt that presence before – at bar and bat mitzvahs, at weddings, and at funerals, too. When we see the Torah scrolls in the open ark with their white mantles on Rosh Hashanah, it means something to us. It makes a take a deeper breath and feel that we are experiencing holiness in a holy place. It means something that no video conferencing application can replace. It makes me feel sad not to be experiencing that with you right now.

And it is all because of a deadly virus that has turned our world upside-down. And it is all because of a law – not a law of the state of Rhode Island or an executive order from the Governor, but our law – our Jewish law – demands that there be no commitment higher than saving a life. We cannot have the Jewish experience we crave this year, because Judaism itself says that there is something else that must come first. We must love life even more than we love being together on Rosh Hashanah. It’s tough love that we are practicing today. And it hurts.

Pikuach HaNefesh. That’s the name of the law in Jewish tradition. Literally it means “The Saving of a Life,” and it is one of the highest values of Jewish tradition. According to the Talmud, one may override or temporarily cancel almost any other commandment in order to save a life.

There is a famous story about this in the Talmud about Hillel, the man who grew up to be the greatest rabbi of the first century B.C.E. According to tradition, Hillel moved from his birthplace in Babylon at age 40 to Jerusalem in order to study Torah with the two greatest sages of his time, Shemaya and Avtalyon. Hillel was a poor woodcutter, chopping tree trunks into logs with an ax to feed people’s fires. He could barely afford the half dinar that was charged every day to attend the house of study. The Talmud says that Hillel worked every day to earn that half dinar to attend. One day, he could find no work and was unable to afford even the small amount to enter. So, what did he do?

In ancient times, it was common to build houses in the Middle East with a large circular opening in the roof, called an oculus, to let in the sunlight. There was such an open roof on the house of study. Hillel, determined to learn as much Torah as he could, climbed up the side of the building onto the roof, and sat at the edge of the oculus to hear words of Torah taught by Shemaya and Avtalyon. You can imagine him perched on the edge, some twenty feet above the floor, straining to hear the words of his teachers.

Maybe that is why the story tells us that he didn’t notice when it started snowing. Maybe that is why, when he started to shiver from the cold, he didn’t move from his perch. So, let me ask you:  today, what would motivate you to sit outside on a cold, snowy day? Watching your children play in a sporting event? Going hunting or ice-fishing? Teaching your grandchildren how to make a snowman? For Hillel, it was Torah that kept him on that roof.

Down below Hillel’s perch, in the house of study, it was Friday evening, Shabbat was beginning. As they Shemaya and Avalyon taught their students, Shemaya turned to Avtalyon and said, “Avtalyon, my brother, at this time of day, the study hall is usually bright from the sunlight, but today it is dark. Is it such a cloudy day?” They both looked up and saw the image of a man on the oculus, partially blocking the light. The two sages went up onto the roof to get Hillel. According to the Talmud, he was buried in four and a half feet of snow.

They dug him out and brought him down into the study hall. He was shivering, confused, and had difficulty even speaking. But what could they do for him? It was Shabbat and the Torah forbade any work that might save him. Shemaya and Avalyon directed their students to build a large fire in the fireplace to warm Hillel, despite the Torah’s explicit prohibition against kindling fire on Shabbat. Avtalyon said to Shemaya, “This man is worthy for us to override Shabbat for him” (B. Yoma 35b).

Certainly Shemaya and Avtalyon admired Hillel for his determination to learn Torah. However, the Talmud goes on to explain that the same would have been done for any human being. When a life is at stake, almost any law can be overruled to save that life.

You may know another famous story that seems even more pertinent to our current situation. This story is of Rabbi Israel Salanter, the founder of the 19th century Mussar movement, an approach to Jewish character development. When a deadly cholera epidemic broke out in his city of Vilna, Lithuania, reaching its peak just before Yom Kippur of 1848, Rabbi Salanter recruited his students to travel through the city to care for the ill.

On the eve of Yom Kippur, he went himself to all the synagogues in the city to announce that people should not fast in order to preserve their strength to survive the epidemic. He urged that Yom Kippur services be shortened to reduce people’s exposure to the disease. The next morning,, he went even further. He stood at the front of the synagogue with wine and bread. He made kiddush and ate in front of the entire congregation - on Yom Kippur. He asked everyone to eat and he taught a lesson on the talmudic principle of Pikuach haNefesh, the saving of a life.

Today, we are taking the ancient principles of Hillel, Shemaya and Avtalyon, we are taking the early modern teachings of Rabbi Israel Salanter, and we are applying them to our own situation. It is not something we do easily, but we do it meaningfully.

We should be gathering at Temple Sinai today to welcome in the new year of 5781, but we cannot. Instead of doing what our hearts yearn to do, we will do what our minds and our morality command us to do. We will act to save lives.

And we should note that this imperative to save lives goes far beyond abstaining from in-person services on Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur. The same principle asks us to take courageous action to save lives in many other ways. This certainly includes wearing masks in public and maintaining social distancing. But it also means even more than that.

In order to save lives, we all have to be willing to go the extra mile to speak up and take action against life-threatening situations. We need to be mindful of the dangers facing medical providers, health and public safety professionals, custodians and sanitation workers, teachers, and others who are on the front-line of this public health crisis. When they are pressured to work in unsafe conditions, it is up to all of us to do something about it.

For example, that is the situation of workers in Rhode Island nursing homes – the place in our state where most COVID deaths have originated and occurred. Nursing home workers have been asking for years for regulations to provide minimum standards for safe staffing levels, as exist in every other state in New England. A new Harvard study shows that they are right. It demonstrates that the higher the staffing in nursing homes, the lower the number of cases of COVID-19. The lower the staffing levels, the more COVD – both for healthcare workers and for residents. By being forced to work in stressful conditions with inadequate staff, they and their patients are at heightened risk for failures in infection control that can lead to (and have led to) more death. As Jews, we have an obligation of pikuach nefesh, saving lives, to take action. It’s what our tradition expects of us. It’s a matter of our morality and of character.

But the epidemic we are now facing does not just test our character. It also reveals our character. Over the last six months I have heard so many stories, and I have seen so many times with my own eyes, how members of this community have stepped up to do what is right. It’s the person who checks in regularly on an elderly neighbor who is isolated and frightened. It is the hospital nurse who is working extra shifts in an unfamiliar unit to do her or his part in the fight to contain COVID. It’s the parents who are spending extra time with their kids to help them manage the anxiety and the challenges that come with distance learning. It’s the person who is taking extra time to be with a friend who is grieving the loss a family member in the midst of this plague. That is character.

As a community, we may be sad today about not being where we ought to be on what should be one of the sweetest days of the year. We can be hurting over the losses and loneliness we are feeling. But we can also know that we have the moral courage, the strength and the character, to turn this dark moment into an opportunity to shine our light and to find sweetness amid the bitterness.

L’shanah tovah umtukah tikateivu.
​May you be written for a good and sweet new year.

DAY 35
Wednesday, September 23, 2020
Fifth Day of Tishrei 5781

As we explored yesterday, the prayer Untaneh Tokef is meant as an inspirational poem to move us toward t’shuvah with images of our mortality and our dependence on God who loves us, cares for us, and wishes us to be the best people we can be. All of this is very much in keeping with the themes of t’shuvah we have explored over the past thirty-four days.

However, the difficulty that most people today have with Untaneh Tokef is the suggestion that God pre-determines the time and means of each person’s death. That is not the way most of us think about God today. Worse, the poem implies that death is a punishment that God brings on people for their sins. Taken to an extreme, this implies that people who die – especially those who die a cruel or untimely death – have been judged by God to be wicked. Especially in this time of pandemic, we must be clear that this is not the intent or the theology behind the poem.

One key to understanding the poem’s meaning is to notice how the author changed the talmudic story upon which it is based. There is no book of the “completely righteous” or of the “completely wicked” in this poem, only a Book of Memory that includes all of us. The poem does not accept that there is such a thing as a completely good or completely bad person; we’re all “in between,” and we all have to work to become better by changing ourselves, by praying, and by acting righteously. Death is not a punishment for being wicked; death is the common fate of us all.

There is also another way of answering the difficult questions raised by the poem. When Untaneh Tokef speaks of death, we don’t have to understand it as meaning literal death – the end of our bodily life. There is ample precedent in Jewish tradition to read this as a figurative, spiritual death.

For example, the psalms proclaim, “The dead cannot praise Adonai” (Psalms 115:17). This verse has been interpreted to refer to those who are “spiritually dead,” people who are physically alive but who have no feeling for or connection to life’s meaning. If we read Untaneh Tokef this way, all of those descriptions of different kinds of death take on new meaning. We can understand the poem to be asking, “Who shall drown in their selfishness? Who shall burn with unchecked anger? Who shall be devoured by their own envy?”

Practice for this day:
What does it mean to you to be “spiritually alive”? When do you feel most alive? What are the things you can do to live your life that way more deeply and consistently

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DAY 34
Tuesday, September 22, 2020
Fourth Day of Tishrei 5781

One of the most famous prayers of the High Holy Days – and one of the most difficult – is Untaneh Tokef. Today, we will consider the origins and content of the prayer. Tomorrow we will look at how we understand it in our lives today.

Untaneh Tokef is a piyyut, a liturgical poem. Like other poems in the prayerbook, it is not meant as a precise statement of Jewish belief. Rather, it is intended to move us to faithful devotion and spiritual awakening. You do not have to literally believe the words in order to pray it.

There is a legend that the prayer was written by an 11th century German rabbi, Amnon of Mainz, after he was tortured for his refusal to convert to Christianity. In fact, the prayer is much older. Most scholars believe that it was written in the land of Israel around the 6th century.

The poem begins with a retelling of a story from the Talmud in which God writes in three books on Rosh Hashanah, one with the names of the completely righteous, one with the names of the completely wicked, and one with the names of everyone in between. The righteous are rewarded and the wicked are punished immediately. Everyone else has ten days to tip the scales in their favor by Yom Kippur (B. Rosh Hashanah 16b). In Unetaneh Tokef, the three books are combined into one “Book of Memories,” and it is not God, but we ourselves, who write our names into it.

The poem then describes how God decides who will die in various ways – who by fire, who by water, who by war, who by beast, and so on. This section concludes by stating that each of us can soften God’s judgment through t’shuvah, prayer, and acts of righteousness.

The poem states that God does not wish to punish us, but hopes for us to live by returning to God. It concludes by recalling that our lives are temporary and fragile – “a cloud passing by, mere dust on the wind, a dream that flies away” – but that God is limitless and infinite, “a glorious mystery none can decipher.”

The popularity of Untaneh Tokef is undoubtedly related to the beauty of the language and to the powerful image of God ruling over life and death. It is a poem intended to move us toward t’shuvah by making us mindful of our mortality and our need to change our ways to escape death.

Practice for this day:
Recall how Untaneh Tokef has struck you in the past. What is moving? What is disquieting?

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DAY 33
Monday, September 21, 2020
Third Day of Tishrei 5781
The Fast of Gedaliah

Today is the Fast of Gedaliah. It is a minor fast day, observed only from dawn to dusk, mostly by Orthodox Jews. The fast is to lament the assassination of Gedaliah, a righteous Jewish leader who was appointed governor of Judah by the Babylonian King Nebuchadnezzar after he conquered the land of Israel. Gedaliah was murdered by fellow Jews who resented his collaboration with the Babylonians. As a result of his assassination, the Jews lost all autonomy in the land of Israel. Some Jews today see the story of Gedaliah as a warning against extremism.

Yom Kippur is one of only two full-day fasts in Jewish tradition. (The other is Tisha B’Av, which recalls the destruction of the First and Second Temples). On Yom Kippur, from sunset until after sunset on the next day, we abstain from eating, drinking, bathing and anointing (wearing perfume or makeup), wearing leather shoes, and sexual relations. This is in response to the verse from Torah that says, “In the seventh month, on the tenth day of the month, you shall practice self-denial…for on this day, atonement shall be made for you to cleanse you of all your sins. You shall be clean before Adonai” (Leviticus 16:29-30).

People sometimes ask why they should fast on Yom Kippur, since fasting makes it harder to focus on remembering our sins and asking for forgiveness. There certainly are people who are exempt from fasting: anyone under the age thirteen (some say girls under twelve) and anyone who is sick or whose health would be imperiled by fasting.

For the rest of us, though, fasting is not a distraction, it is intended to be part of the process of Yom Kippur. We ignore our physical needs on Yom Kippur to confront our mortality. The idea is that, in order to truly feel renewed by t’shuvah, we need to be willing to let our old self die a little. By fasting, we experience a small foretaste of our own deaths so we can be reborn.

Here’s another way to understand it. Yom Kippur is intended to wear us down. We start Yom Kippur by speaking words of repentance. But do we really believe them? By fasting on Yom Kippur, we push ourselves to the brink until we realize that our very lives are at stake. We fast to help ourselves feel down to our bones that without repentance we are on a path to spiritual death. We fast to convince ourselves to change.

Practice for this day:
Decide how you wish to fast on Yom Kippur. Write down your plan now so you remain committed to your choice on Yom Kippur.

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DAY 32
Sunday, September 20, 2020
Second Day of Tishrei 5781
Second Day of Rosh Hashanah

Today is the second day of Rosh Hashanah. In Orthodox and Conservative communities this year, the sounding of the shofar and the reciting of Avinu Malkeinu are postponed until today because the first day of Rosh Hashanah fell on Shabbat.

We are now in the final stretch of the journey toward t’shuvah. Yom Kippur is our deadline. It is now just nine days away. We have just nine days to ask the people we have hurt to forgive us. We have just nine days to ask God for forgiveness, too. In the days before Rosh Hashanah, we discussed in detail how we apologize to the people we have hurt. That step is indispensable. God is not interested in hearing our pleas for forgiveness until we have asked forgiveness from the people we have hurt.

But, once we have apologized to those people, how are we supposed to apologize to God? In the twelfth century, Rabbi Moses ben Maimon, known as the Rambam, offered this suggested prayer to ask for God’s forgiveness:

Please, God, I have sinned, I have erred, I have transgressed before You. I have done thus-and-such [state the specific things for which you seek forgiveness]. I am remorseful and ashamed of my actions and I will never do this again. (Hilchot T’shuvah 1:1)

The Rambam says that this is the essence of confession to God. While it is good to expand upon these words, saying this is sufficient as long as it is said out loud and with sincerity. You do not need to wait until Yom Kippur to say it. You do not need to say it in a synagogue. You can make your apologies to God any time and anywhere you wish. Yom Kippur services are just the deadline, the last chance to get it done.

Why not do it now?

Practice for this day:
Recite the Rambam’s prayer for forgiveness from God. Be as specific as you can in stating the things for which you seek forgiveness. You can do this as often as you wish. It does not need to be perfect. Each time, you may find that you have a clearer sense of the actions you regret and a clearer sense of the forgiveness you want to achieve. Write down some thoughts about what you find out from doing this.

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DAY 31
Saturday, September 19, 2020
First Day of Tishrei 5781
First Day of Rosh Hashanah

Today is Shabbat, the most holy day in Jewish tradition. It is our day of rest and our day of joyfully feeling God’s presence all around us. Today is Rosh Hashanah, the day of re-experiencing the world’s creation.

Once again, this is a day to review the work you have done to get to this point and to set your sights on where you wish to go.

Practice for this day:
Review the teachings and your responses to the practices from the first thirty days. If you have not read or completed the practices for some of the days up to this point, or for any of them, do not become discouraged. T’shuvah is a lifelong process. There are many opportunities to begin again. There is no better time to start than right now.

As you look over the teachings, are there any ideas or responses that seem particularly powerful to you? Are there any ideas or feelings you particularly want to remember? Are there any thoughts you have written that you now wish to revise?

Jot down your thoughts here:

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As we continue the journey toward t’shuvah, do you wish to make any commitments to goals you would like to achieve by Yom Kippur or beyond?

Jot down your thoughts here:

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DAY 30
Friday, September 18, 2020
Twenty-Ninth Day of Elul 5780
Erev Rosh Hashanah

This is the last day of the month of Elul, the last day to prepare for the Days of Awe. Rosh Hashanah begins at sunset.

Today we consider the third section of the shofar service, the section called Shofarot, meaning “Shofars.” In this section, we hear the shofar as an echo of the shofar that sounded at Mount Sinai during God’s revelation of the Torah and the Ten Commandments. We also hear the shofar as a symbol of hope for the great shofar that announces the redemption of the world.

In the book of Exodus, the day of the revelation of the Torah at Mount Sinai is described: “On the third day as morning broke, there was thunder and lightening. A dense cloud was upon the mountain and there was the very loud sound of a shofar. All the people in the camp trembled” (Exodus 19:16).

The sounding of the shofar is our symbol of experiencing God. It announces the moment when we feel God palpably all around us. It also is the moment in which we see ourselves as we truly are. All at once, we know that we are a speck within a universe that is vast beyond our comprehension. At the same time, paradoxically, it is also the moment when we know ourselves to be a part of God, part of that which gives the universe purpose and meaning. With the sound of the shofar we experience deep humility and inexpressible joy all at the same time. We experience the revelation that all is One, and that we are included in it.

Practice for this day:
When in your life have you heard the metaphoric sound of the shofar? What have been your moments of feeling deeply that you are part of something far beyond yourself that gives your life meaning and hope? Was it while experiencing the beauty of the natural world? Was it while being close to the people you love? Was it a moment of deep insight or of personal transformation? Write about your shofar moments. Hold onto those moments in your life to help you find the strength in the task of t’shuvah, the task of returning yourself to the sound of the shofar.

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DAY 29
Thursday, September 17, 2020
Twenty-Eighth Day of Elul 5780

Today, we are going to consider the second section of the shofar service, the section called Zichronot, usually translated as “Remembrance.” The word in Hebrew has the added meaning of “calling attention” or “making note of.” In this section, the sound of the shofar calls our attention to God and, just as significantly, marks the ways that God takes note of us.

The very first use of the verb “remember” in the Torah comes in the story of Noah. After Noah had spent one hundred and fifty days on the ark with all the animals he had collected, the Torah tells us that “God remembered Noah” (Genesis 8:1). The ancient rabbis wondered about this phrase. Certainly it is not possible that God had forgotten Noah before this. The rabbis interpreted it to mean that this was a turning point in the relationship between God and humanity (Rashi on Genesis 8:1).

The rabbis believed that God threatened to destroy the world with the flood because God was acting according to justice alone, and saw that human beings were wicked and deserved to be punished. It was not until God saw Noah in the ark, alone in the world, that God’s sense of compassion was aroused. In that moment, God chose forgiveness and caring over strict law and justice.

This is the sense in which we blow the shofar on Rosh Hashanah to ask God to remember us. We ask God to turn away from strict justice, by which we all must be found guilty, and to view us instead through the divine attributes of love and compassion.

At the same time that the sound of the shofar reminds God to have compassion on us, it should also awaken us to remember God. It should call us to the task of t’shuvah. The Rambam wrote in the 12th century that we should hear the shofar blasts as a wake up call that says, “Awake, awake, O sleeper, from your sleep. Arouse yourselves, slumberer, from your slumbers. Examine your deeds, return in repentance, and remember your Creator!” (Hilchot T’shuvah 3:1).

Practice for this day:
What have you forgotten? As you think about your behavior – the ways you treat people and the ways you expect others to treat you – do you find that you sometimes forget to give people the benefit of the doubt, or to forgive other people’s faults (as you see them)? Remember that we are all fallible and we all depend on others to forgive us. Think of specific scenarios in which you wish to be more forgiving. Think also of specific ways in which you need the forgiveness of other people and the forgiveness of God.

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