Lech Lecha: Reflections on Judaism and Israel

So…Sunday night to Monday night is Yom Kippur.

Perhaps the most (in)famous day in the Jewish calendar.

Why so?

This is that day when soooo many Jews, even those who regard themselves as entirely secular, will still, for some strange reason, take the day off work, and spend a good part of it in synagogue.

Weird!

I mean – who would want to spend their day-off struggling to understand the incomprehensible whining of a (often quite large, middle aged) man in a white dress?

Really?!

For many, salvation lies only with the happy co-incidence that there are enough other people in the same boat to get some good socialising going –

Here’s where I would usually chime in with “but of course, Yom Kippur is so much more than that! Blah blah blah.”

But the truth is, it’s whatever you make it. If having a good chin-wag with your friends is your aim for the day, then please, be sure to go and make the most of it! Enjoy!

And if you’re into something else, enjoy that too…despite the widespread misunderstanding and fetishism surrounding ‘sin’ and ‘guilt’, it is supposed to be a deeply happy day!

A day of forgiveness and At-One-Ment…just imagine how joyful! Three joy-inducing alternatives (or perhaps, supplements) to the day-long gossip are:

1) A chance to reflect on who you are, what you’re doing, where you’re going and what you could be doing better. I know – it sounds so trite and easy and commonplace – In theory, we all do this, all the time.

In practice, we’re mostly FAR too busy with a zillion URGENT things to really stop and make time for this process, until Life absolutely forces us to.

Yes, this might be challenging, and perhaps not instantly gratifying, but if you come out of Y’K with a LITTLE bit more perspective, and/or a resolve to ONE thing a bit better, you’ve had an amazingly life-changing day!

2) Think about some things you might regret, that you might need to ask forgiveness for, or make up for in some other way.

Yom Kippur is a day given to us to take a huge step towards making peace with ourselves, our fellow humans, and Life itself.

If you come out of Y’K having furthered your understanding of ONE mistake/wrong-doing, and/or having forgiven yourself, others or Life for something, then you’ve also had an incredibly life-changing day, and opened up to that much more love and joy.

3) Think about what has happened in our calendar over the last half of the year: Six months ago, on Pesach (Passover), we leave slavery in Egypt.

On Shavuot (Pentecost), we are married to the Divine, as we receive the Torah at Mount Sinai. But, then we do the golden-calf thing – idolatrous revelry and the whole shebang!

Next thing we know, an (apparently) rather irate Moses shatters the (first) Tablets of Stone – instant divorce! – and so we’re spending the best part of the summer break in-and-out of fast days, periods of mourning, yadayadayada.

After that 3 weeks of mourning ends, things start to look up – from that place of divorce, mourning and broken-ness, we begin to ascend through days and weeks of comfort, consolation, re-turning, and re-newing our love-affair with Life.

All this yummyness is culminating now in Yom Kippur, the day of most intense Kedusha – sanctity – in our calendar – the day when we are closest to the Divine.

On this day, G!d announces to us that we are forgiven, and we are given a second pair of tablets, which contain the extra dimensions we need to negotiate the more complex reality of our second marriage to Life.

This is a day when the Creator is waiting, aching, to forgive us, if we can only face up to, and forgive ourselves.

A day when the maidens would traditionally dress in white, dance in front of the men-folk, and say – ‘Look at this! Isn’t this what you want! Make the right choices!’

A day that leads us directly into the unspeakably beautiful festival of Sukkot (Tabernacles – aka ‘The Time of Our Rejoicing’) – an 8-day love-fest with the Divine (that I will probably write more about next week!)

So, whatever you do, please, please, please, try to enjoy it!

Love

Daniel