There are always more questions that a rabbi gets at this period. The formal answer that one gives is called a teshuva, a response.
Some of the questions are logistical. Do we need tickets? Membership? Prayerbooks? What time is Kol Nidre? Why does it have to start so early? What time is break-the-fast? Why is it so late? Where are the bathrooms?
Perhaps you have questions, too.
One question asked was about this very parsha. How could Moses write down the whole Torah, given by G-d and then have the Torah still go on for another chapter and even describe Moses death. Since he believes that the Bible is divine, how is this possible; who wrote the Bible? That was a very big question and one that deserves its own discussion, adult class, or sermon. I did suggest reading Richard Elliott Friedman’s excellent book, Who Wrote the Bible.
The next question was what time is Kol Nidre. 5:30. Yes, that early.
This is the Shabbat for questions and answers. This is the Shabbat for return.
Some of the questions deserve full answers.
A student in the Torah School asked, “If we eat something that isn’t kosher, how do we return to being kosher?” It is a really good question. Is stumped several rabbis. One rabbi decided to do all of his high holy day sermons around this question.
So how would you answer our student?
Answers included, stopping what he is doing, not doing it again, saying you are sorry. As I pointed out the very steps of teshuvah that we will talk about shortly.
It is a really interesting question. And surprisingly the rabbis don’t talk about it much. Oh sure, there are answers about how to rekasher counters or plates or knives. There are answers about what happens if a drop of milk falls into a meat soup. But what if we take something into our bodies that isn’t kosher. How do we make ourselves kosher again if we have eaten something traif?
Here is our linguistic lesson for the day. Kosher really means fit or proper. It is something we are allowed to eat. But it can also apply to the Torah scroll we read from. It is kosher, fit for reading or pasul, unfit. Traif means something that is torn, or unfit. So something that isn’t kosher is torn, separated. It is separated in some way from being holy.
I think therefore, in puzzling it out with that other rabbi.
If you eat something that isn’t kosher, you can brush your teeth and wait some number of hours…and you are kosher again. That’s the simple answer. If we apply the idea that like that pot of soup, what he consumed is less that 1/60th, a shishim of his body weight, then the kid wasn’t “not kosher” at all.
But maybe the question is a bigger question. How do we return? How do we return to being holy, set apart? How do we be good? Kedusha is being set apart. Keeping kosher, even metaphorically, is one of the things that set apart Jews from the rest of society. Just try to find a kosher restaurant here in Elgin. (Although Spirals, the frozen yogurt shop comes close—all of their product is hechshered).
We are to be a kingdom of priests and a holy nation. We are to lead by example, as a light to the nations. You’ll hear more about that on Yom Kippur. So how do we lead by example by what we eat? Here at CKI, I have set the policy that we use fair trade, organic kosher coffee. We are trying to use less bottled water and single use plastics. We are using more real table clothes and real dishes.
How else can we return to a holy state with our eating? I am trying to eat less processed foods, more foods that are sourced locally, less meat and more veggies. Our bodies are our temple as Rabbi Sami Barth said in talking about Psalm 30, a psalm for the dedication of the Temple. If our body is our temple and we are supposed to care for it and dedicate ourselves to it, how do we treat it?
All this from this student’s question about returning our bodies to a kosher state after eating something not kosher.
But perhaps the question is really about how do we make our actions kosher, fit or proper again. How do we return to a state of kedusha, holiness? Then I would look at Yom Kippur’s Torah reading and haftarah readings. Are we living out the words of the holiness code. Is this the fast G-d desires or are we feeding the hungry, housing the homeless? Clothing the naked? As Isaiah demands. Not holding a grudge? Honoring our parents? Not putting a stumbling block before the blind or curing the deaf? Paying our workers on a timely basis? Leaving the corners of the field? Feeding the widow, the orphan, the stranger? In short are we loving our neighbors as ourselves?
The other question that may apply is how do I reconcile if the other person isn’t open to it. This came as a Facebook text message: I don’t see myself apologizing to him or asking forgiveness any time soon. I recognize I have some responsibility for us growing apart, but he’s been lying and cheating, and I’m feeling wronged. So I’m looking for prayers and strength to get through this.
Perhaps you are wondering this too. If you have asked for forgiveness and the person has said no, what next? If you have been wronged and the person hasn’t tried to make it right, what next? Sometimes it is impossible to reconcile.
From my next book, which is coming out later this month:
“Repentance is not forgiveness. That may be the other side of a coin and also one of the major themes of Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur. Well ahead of Alcoholics Anonymous, Maimonides a leading Jewish commentator, scholar and physician of the 12th century, outlined 12 steps to repentance in his code, the Mishneh Torah. The basic four are:
- Leaving the Sin
- Regret
- Confession Before G-d
- Acceptance for the Future
Those may work for sins against G-d. As the Talmud tells us in Yoma 87b, “For sins against G-d, Yom Kippur atones. But for sins against another person, Yom Kippur does not atone until we appease our fellow.”
That means that we need to not only regret our mistakes but actually ask for forgiveness, promise to never do it again, make restitution and if confronted with the same scenario not repeat the mistake.
Teshuvah which often gets translated as repentance, is more like turning back around, turning towards G-d. G-d will take us back in love if we return.
Hauntingly, haltingly, we beg God during the Torah service “Hashiveinu Adonai, elohecha v’nashuva. Chadesh, chadesh yameinu, chadesh yameinu kekedem. Return to us Adonai, and we shall return. Renew our days as of days of old.” (Lamentations 5:21)
Are you capable of forgiving and loving the people around you, even if they have hurt you and let you down by not being perfect? Can you forgive them and love them, because there aren’t any perfect people around, and because the penalty for not being able to love imperfect people is condemning oneself to loneliness?
Are you capable of forgiving and loving God even when you have found out that He is not prefect, even when He has let you down and disappointed you by permitting bad luck and sickness and cruelty in His world, and permitting some of those things to happen to you? Can you learn to love and forgive Him despite His limitations, as Job does, and as you once learned to forgive and love your parents even though they were not as wise, as strong, or as perfect as you needed them to be?
And if you can do these things, will you be able to recognize that the ability to forgive and the ability to love are the weapons God has given us to enable us to live fully, bravely and meaningfully in this less-than-perfect world?”
Rabbi Harold Kushner in When Bad Things Happen to Good People
You don’t have to forgive as a gift to the perpetrators. You may choose to forgive as a gift to yourself. When you are ready. On your own timetable. And maybe not even once and done. Maybe more like the layers of an onion at different stages in different ways or maybe not at all.
In thinking about deeply about this topic over many years, I have come to the conclusion that until a person feels safe, truly really safe, forgiveness may not be possible.”
Let me be clear here. If you are being abused, I am not saying you should reconcile or you should forgive. Forgiveness is not forgetting and forgiveness can only come once someone is safe.
Yesterday I “prayed” at the Community Crisis Center’s annual Partner in Peace breakfast. October is National Domestic Violence Awareness months. This simple breakfast is one of my favorite events of the year. This year in particular they were honoring four leaders in loving our neighbors, in looking out for the widow, the orphan, the stranger, the marginalized. Four people all of whom retired on June 30, 2019. Gretchen Vapner the founding executive director of the Crisis Center, Ed Hunter, who worked for St. Joe’s for 31 years, Karen Beyer, the executive director of the Ecker Center and the Rev. Karen Schlack, retiring minister at First Presbyterian in Elgin and the wife of our own Daniel Schlack. There was no were else I would have been on Friday morning, except honoring these four. My prayer follows this sermon.
And then finally, one of my colleagues, Rabbi Irwin Huberman, was asked at Tashlich last year, by a kid named Micah, about a verse from Micah, from today’s haftarah portion and the basis for the ceremony called Tashlich, You will cast (Tashlich) all your sins into the depths of the sea.” (7:19)
This modern day Micah wants to know: “Why all this emphasis on sin.”
This, too, is a good question. Most of us haven’t done even any of the alphabetical list of sins, the Ashamnu, that we will recite in the plural multiple times on Tuesday and Wednesday. We don’t want fire and brimstone. We don’t want to be made to feel bad. So what do we do with it?
Rabbi Huberman answers that Archie Gottesman, the co-founder of an organization called JewBelong, dedicated to bringing spirituality and meaning back to Judaism:
“Everyone craves meaning, and if Jews are not going to get it from Jewish practice, then they are going to find it, with Yoga or somewhere else.
Rabbi Huberman’s cousin, Rabbi Yisroel Roll, has an important take on this. As a former pulpit rabbi and a therapist, he encourages us, as the long list of ancient sins is recited in synagogue, to tap our hearts with our fists and recite the words, “I can do better.”
“I can do better, by using words to build rather than destroy.”
“I can do better, by gossiping less.”
“I can do better by softening my heart.”
“I can do better by being less stubborn.”
“I can do better by letting go of grudges and resentments.”
“I can do better by seeking less pleasure and more purpose.”
Maybe this prayer, I can better…would help our first student. The one worried about what happens if he eats non-Kosher food. The answer, don’t beat yourself up…you can do better. Sin in Judaism, Cheyt, is an archery term meaning to miss the mark. He missed the mark. Next time, he can do better. We all can.
Or as Rabbi Sid Schwarz, the founder of PANIM on Jewish leadership, once suggested to me personally at a retreat, rather than doing a negative hesbon hanefesh an accounting of the soul, how about creating a positive one. Rather than hearing the negative voices of ages past, try something like this:
I am articulate, beautiful, courageous, determined.
This takes the emphasis off of sin…
Perhaps we should do one for the congregation:
We are zealous (in a good way), yearning, welcoming and wise, valued and valuable, understanding, Torah based, service oriented, respectful, quiet, peaceful….
May this be a year of reconciliation and return, hope and renewal. A year of teshuvah, of asking and answering questions, of returning to a place where we can each do better.
Here is the prayer I offered from Jewish Women International:
“May the One who blessed our ancestors Sarah, Rebecca, Leah and Rachel, and Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, provide protection, compassion, care and healing for all those who have known violence and abuse within their families. May those who have been harmed find pathways to understanding and wholeness and those who have caused harm find their way to repentance and peace. May our community be a source of support for those who have suffered in silence or shame. May those whose homes have become places of danger find their way to a sukkat shalom, a shelter of safety.
Amen.—Jewish Women International
There are also prayers that can be said during Yizkor if you had a parent who hurt or for victims of abuse because life is really complicated and messy.
A Yizkor Meditation in Memory of a Parent Who Hurt
By Rabbi Robert Saks
Dear God,
You know my heart.
Indeed, You know me better than I know myself, so I turn to You before I rise for Kaddish.
My emotions swirl as I say this prayer. The parent I remember was not kind to me. His/her death left me with a legacy of unhealed wounds, of anger and of dismay that a parent could hurt a child as I was hurt.
I do not want to pretend to love, or to grief that I do not feel, but I do want to do what is right as a Jew and as a child.
Help me, O God, to subdue my bitter emotions that do me no good, and to find that place in myself where happier memories may lie hidden, and where grief for all that could have been, all that should have been, may be calmed by forgiveness, or at least soothed by the passage of time.
I pray that You, who raise up slaves to freedom, will liberate me from the oppression of my hurt and anger, and that You will lead me from this desert to Your holy place.
A Yizkor Prayer For Victims of Abuse
by Rabbi Ira F. Stone
May God remember my (father) (mother)
_____________________ben/bat________________
who has gone to his/her eternal home.
May he/she be granted an opportunity
to expiate the sins of his/her
terrible acts against me.
May the loving fire of God’s justice
relieve him/her of the pain which corrupted
the natural love of a parent for a child.
May God help me remember
that my mother/father joined
with God in giving me the gift of life
and for that gift, despite the pain
that has at times accompanied it,
I am grateful.
Mindful of that gratitude
and as an offering on behalf of my
father’s/mother’s penitence, I pledge
to do acts of loving kindness and charity.
May my father/mother at last fine peace
in the eternal bond with God.
May I find peace in this world
and salvation in the world to come