Yom Kippur 2017

The name of the day, Yom Kippur, is known to all. The yom part is simple enough: yom means “day” in Hebrew, so yom kippur simply means “the day of kippur.” But that second word is quite a bit more challenging to explain. Usually translated, just a bit opaquely for most, as “atonement,” the term is clearly at the crux of the matter. But what exactly does it mean?

When the author of our most famous holiday hymn, the Unetaneh Tokef, finally gets to the point, he has the cantor proclaim to the community in dramatic, extremely moving terms that we are not necessarily doomed to the verdicts we deserve in the heavenly court because there are, after all, three means of expiation available to us…if we choose to take them up and if we are successful at doing so. And, indeed, the air in the sanctuary could not be more alive with electric energy when the ḥazzan finally sings out that t’shuvah, t’fillah, and tz’dakah—repentance, prayer, and giving gifts of charity—have the collective power to annul the severity of the heavenly decree that we might otherwise be facing. That line is so famous—and so deeply imprinted in all who attend services on the High Holidays annually—that it is easy to forget to ask the obvious question: given the fact that we are in shul for the “Day of Kippur,” shouldn’t the poet have summoned us to kapparah rather than to any of the above, or at least in addition to them? (I realize I’m using two different words for almost the same thing but without having explained myself. The word kippur in the name of the day is best understood as a kind of a gerund intended to denote not “atonement” precisely, but the act of attaining atonement, of seeking and achieving kapparah. Translating literally, Yom Kippur really means “The Day of Seeking Atonement”) But that poet—traditionally identified as Rabbi Amnon of Mainz, an otherwise unknown medieval—specifically does not go in that direction. If anything, in fact, he sounds as though he wishes to make a different point: that t’shuvah, t’fillah, and tz’dakah can serve as effective conduits to this thing called kapparah that is clearly at the heart of the matter. But he gives no clear hint in his hymn what that thing actually is. Apparently, you’re supposed just to know!

Some light can come from considering the matter from the perspective of the biblical text. In the passage from Parashat Acharei Mot that we read in shul on Yom Kippur morning, the elaborate, complicated ritual the Torah ordains for Yom Kippur leads only to kapparah: kapparah for the High Priest and his fellow priests and their families, kapparah for the whole House of Israel, and kapparah for the Temple itself and all its ritual appurtenances.  In fact, the whole point of calling the day Yom Kippur in the first place is because its ritual is the conduit that leads the nation and its holiest shrine forward to a state of kapparah. And yet, for all that, the Torah does not define the term precisely or say why exactly it is so crucial that it be attained at all.

To understand kapparah, you need to understand the concept of “reification,” a ten-dollar word that historians of religious like to use to describe the technique of taking something that does not have physical existence, something like beauty or patience or hope, and speaking of it—usually in a myth or a poem—as though it did. (The word derives from the Latin res, which means “thing.” Reification is thus talking about something that lacks physical existence as though it were a “thing” that exists in the world. The word is pronounced in five syllables, by the way, with the first two pronounced “ray-if.”) And the particular instance of reification around which Yom Kippur revolves is the notion that sin can be imagined not merely as poor behavior or as unethical wrongdoing or as disobedience to the word of God, but actually as grime, as dirt, as some physically real overlay that literally, not figurately, pollutes the world and actually renders it unclean. In other words, at the core of the holiday is the poetic notion that transgression can best be considered as the kind of dirt that can be washed away…with enough soap, enough hot water…and enough elbow-power.

And the corollary of that thought is also profound: just as no sane defendant would ever dream of showing up in court covered in filth or dressed in a slovenly or unkempt manner, so too must we make ourselves worthy of being judged in the heavenly tribunal during these High Holydays. And so are we bidden to use the tools available to us, the ones the cantor declaims from the bimah, to scrape away the grime that we ourselves have used to layer over our finer selves, thus purifying and cleansing ourselves and preparing to enter the heavenly tribunal where, as the Machzor says, the celestial court convenes on Rosh Hashanah and remains in session until Yom Kippur.

In other words, it is not quite correct—just a bit self-serving—to imagine that we can avert an evil decree through prayer, repentance, and charity.  Those elements are crucial…but they cannot guarantee a good outcome any more than wearing an expensive suit to court can really affect the eventual verdict. What those things can do, particularly if undertaken seriously and wholeheartedly, is make us worthy of entering the tribunal in the first place…and, possibly, impressing the Judge with our sincere desire to live better lives, to do better and to be better if given the chance. And so, as we cleanse ourselves of the negative, base elements in our character that have prevented us from being the fine people we wish to be, we increase the chances that we will be judged mercifully and kindly by Judge God seated not on the throne of strict judgment but on the throne of mercy. And so do we follow the ancient advice of Pirkei Avot and prepare—or attempt to prepare—ourselves in the lobby before daring step into the ballroom. The goal is to use the tools available to achieve kapparah and then, at least ideally, to face Judge God with hopeful equanimity born of emotional catharsis. Nothing more…but also nothing less.

To attain kapparah is to be deemed worthy of engaging with God, of struggling with the words in the Machzor that invite us all to judgment. And that is what I wish for all of you as we enter this holiest day and prepare to pray that we are, all of us, written up for good in the Book of Life, and that God looks upon us and our families with mercy, with compassion, and with kindness.