Above: Making the sound of a shofar, a horn (usually of a ram) used for Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur services.
Current Events
How And Why Jews Celebrate
Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur
DOW MARMUR
My Judaism teaches me to look after my own soul and another’s body, not just my own body and another’s soul.
Responding to the call of God by reaching into myself reflectively and reaching out to others practically are two manifestations of my faith. It’s also the guiding principle of the Ten Days of Repentance, the holiest period in the Jewish calendar that began this year on Sunday, September 13 with Rosh Hashanah, the New Year, and will culminate in Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement next week.
Most Jewish festivals mark epoch-making events from biblical times to our own era, but this ten-day period is beyond history. Apart from celebrating our rich heritage or commemorating the painful losses we’ve sustained through the ages, we’re now bidden to look deeply and honestly into ourselves, identify our shortcomings and ask God and fellow humans for forgiveness.
The liturgy for this period is to help us to own up to our sins. We are to acknowledge our failures as a prelude to trying to do better in the future.
Most of the confessional prayers are in the first person plural: not only “I have sinned” but “we have sinned.” We’re part of a family, a community, a tradition, a people and thus have a share in their failures no less than in their achievements. Even if we aren’t personally guilty, we must seek atonement for the evils committed in their name.
To repent isn’t only to confess my own sins but also the wrongs committed by the collectives to which I belong. Repentance is thus consistent with championing social justice; it always challenges us to work for a better world.
That’s why totalitarian regimes view religion as subversive. Ironically, some of them, not least in our time, describe themselves as champions of God. It’s easy to see how other faiths are being distorted by “true believers,” but this should in no way absolve us from identifying corresponding failures in our own midst.
The Ten Days of Repentance challenge me to admit that the distortion of religion in the guise of pious zeal is, alas, also to be found among Jews. Three tragic incidents in Israel last summer come particularly to mind: the torching of a famous church in the Galilee, the arson in an Arab village that destroyed a family, and the stabbing of a 16-year-old student marching in the Gay Pride parade in Tel Aviv.
The “pious” murderer of the girl has now been charged and the “pious” suspects in the other crimes will, we hope, also be tried. As I will be reciting the confessions of sins in synagogue I’ll have these and similar incidents in mind. Though I had nothing to do with any of them in any shape or form, as a fellow Jew I must nevertheless bear my share of responsibility.
In praying for forgiveness I hope to be given the imagination and the courage to help purge my religion of hatred of those who are different. Cynics may tell me that in view of what’s happening elsewhere in the world every day, the isolated crimes listed here, horrendous though they are, are minor in comparison to the unspeakable evils perpetrated by others. However, the acts listed were committed by my own people and that compels me to share in the responsibility for them.
To blame others, however justified, would mean to try to look after their souls in the guise of righteous indignation while feeling smug about my own. It’s not what these Ten Days are about.
The author is rabbi emeritus at Toronto's Holy Blossom Temple.
[Courtesy: The Toronto Star. Edited for sikhchic.com]
September 15, 2015