Today’s musing minute – Yom Kippur and the meaning of
atonement and repentance.
This Yom Kippur, like all those before, I fasted for 24
hours. I am not sure why I do it. Its just that it is such a powerful tradition
among Jews everywhere – even for non-believers (in the usual sense) like me.
It is a powerful day, going back centuries. The fasting is
almost incidental. It serves to focus the mind on our mortality (always a preoccupation
of all humans), to face it, and to try to come to terms with it. In addition,
it is a day of remembrance. Remembrance of catastrophe and death, from the time
of the first temple, through the inquisition, the holocaust until, now added,
the horror of October 7, 2023 to the present. Some of it recited in detail. It
is a sad, sad day. But we must not forget.
We also acknowledge that the future is unknowable and that
the next year will decide “who shall live and who shall die” and how.
And then there is the question of atonement and repentance
for our sins. (Yom Kippur means Day of Attonement). It is an exploration in introspective
morality. Couched in collective terms, “we”, perhaps to remind us we are not
alone in our transgressions.
But the most interesting thing for me on this particular
day, came from one part of our rabbi’s sermon, near the beginning. I have known
him fondly for many years and we share a common interest in political economy
broadly understood.
The Torah portion for the day was “after the death” (acharei
mot) – this refers to the death of Aaron’s two sons, for apparently violating a
vital restriction in the ritual sacrifice in the temple. The portion deals in
great detail about the animal sacrifices in the days of the first temple, circa
996 BCE. It has a distinctly ancient (primitive) feel to it – the idea of
expiating our sins via the sacrifice of an innocent animal. It is,
incidentally, the origin of the idea of the scapegoat. One of two goats is
sacrificed and the other is sent away, the scapegoat.
Now my rabbi points out that this portion is in stark
contrast to the Haftorah, the accompanying reading from the Prophets, in this
case from the book of Isiah. It is written at least three centuries after the
Torah portion, during which time the ancient Israelites had live in the old
kingdom (or possibly in the returned kingdon after the Babylonian exile).
Typical of the prophetic writings, it does not address ritual whorship, but,
rather, it addresses social (implying individual) behavior. Isiah provides a
strident attack on the hypocrisy of the ritualisitc self righteous.
“Is this the fast I desire,
a day for people to starve their bodies?
Is it bowing the head like a bulrush
and lying in sackcloth and ashes?
Do you call that a fast,
a day when the LORD is favorable?
No, this is the fast I desire:
to unlock the fetters of wickedness,
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 them,
and not to ignore your own kin.”
It is from these types of pronouncements that we move from magical
ritual enactment to the concreteness of human actions. Judaism is nothing if
not a deeply ethical religion, concerned with appropriate behavior toward
others, all others. But one can also see how the Prophets can provide support
for notions of social engineering – for socialists and theocrats.
For me it is important to notice that Isiah and the prophets are not recommending top down social design, but rather appealling to the individual consciences of people. Repentance is not so much about God’s forgiveness, but about the forgiveness between ourselve and the resolve to do better.
