Kol Nidre Sermon, 5771

Posted on by

0

So much has been said this evening, so much has taken place here, among us. What more can I say?

I hope that for each of us tonight there have been some moments of beauty, of sadness, of exaltation, of warmth, of thoughtfulness, of recognition.

I am so grateful to have helped some of our community members give birth to their new prayers, their new S’lichot – prayers of forgiveness – prayers that we offered tonight.

This night we have gathered to begin a long day’s journey to atonement. We reach deep down into ourselves to confront our sins and failings. And we ask God to forgive us. We pray and recite and proclaim and chant words, words, words of petition and appeals for forgiveness.

Yet, as the evening of Yom Kippur falls, as we embark on this filibuster on behalf of our atonement, we acknowledge, up front, that our words cannot be trusted – Kol Nidrei – all that we undertake to speak cannot be trusted. We know that we will betray those words; we will not stand by them; we will fail to live up to them – “Not only will we fail to live up to Your words, God. We will fail our own words; we will fail ourselves.”

We say that right at the start. We begin Kol Nidrei by promising that we will never keep our promises. And we pray that our vows and commitments be taken as nothing. Don’t judge us by what we say. Don’t hold us to what we declare because we cannot be trusted.

But forgive us. We really don’t make it easy for God, do we? We ask that God accept us and forgive us. We chant again and again –

ועל כלם א-לוה סליחות

סלח לנו, מחל לנו, כפר לנו.

For all our transgressions, we ask you – Almighty of Forgiveness,

Forgive us, Pardon us, Grant us Atonement

“Kaper lanu” – grant us atonement. This word gives us the name of the day – Yom Kippur. We can revisit that term at another time. Tonight I wish to look at the other words – סלח לנו, מחל לנו –

“Forgive us, Pardon us.” We beg for forgiveness – for s’lihah u-m’hilah.

But, given our solemn Kol Nidrei intonations, why should God take us seriously? What do we think we’re doing?

We need to appreciate more deeply what we are hoping to achieve through our prayers for forgiveness.

What are we asking God to do when we ask for s’lihah u-m’hilah?

Are we merely trying to get another pass for another year? You bet! We’ll take it! Any opportunity to prolong our lives, to gain another moment, another chance, another breath. We pray that God will grant us  that much. Whatever our shortcomings, whatever our failings, surely we deserve that much. As was alluded to in our new piyyutim, in a sense all our pleas – our asking God  for forgiveness – are implicit  expressions of our cutting ourselves a little slack, of averting the severe decree that we might, by all rights, apply to ourselves.

What can we learn for ourselves from contemplating what we ask of God?

What happens when one forgives or when pardons a wrongdoing?

As reflections of God, created in the Divine Image, what can we aspire to move ourselves to become, as we immerse ourselves in prayers of  s’lihah u-m’hilah?

The word “s’lihah” – is used in modern Hebrew as an expression of apology. As such it can be said with various intonations that carry many implied meanings, whether of genuine contrition, or perfunctory warning – “watch out, I am about to push you over as I cut ahead to the front of the line!”

This word for forgiveness gives us the term “S’lichot,” the name we give to the penitential prayers recited the Saturday night before Rosh Ha-Shanah. In fact, these prayers are also an integral part of the Yom Kippur services. We recited them this evening. Our newly created prayers were brand-new “s’lihot.” I want to return to consider a central element of the S’lichot prayers in a moment.

But first let us turn to the other term for forgiveness  – “m’hilah.” This term is used in the blessing we recite in every Amidah prayer during Yom Kippur –

א-להינו וא-לוהי אבותינו

מחל לעוונותינו ביום הכפורים הזה

Our Almighty God, Source of Strength for our ancestors,

Pardon our iniquities on this Day of Atonement

At the end of Yom Kippur, at the end of Ne`ilah, we will say –

ותתן לנו ה’ א-להינו באהבה

את יום הכפורים הזה

קץ ומחילה וסליחה

על כל עוונותינו

And You gave us, with love,

this Day of Atonement,

a culmination, a pardoning, a forgiveness,

for all our sins

Slihah u-m’hilah –  What is the difference between these two synonyms? In our workshop I suggested that “Slichah” means complete forgiveness, a forgiveness so total that it has the power to erase the affront or the sin committed, as if it never happened. Clearly, this can be hard to achieve.

“M’hilah” would seem to mean something less extreme. It can be understood as “pardon,” which means that the sin is being set aside, let go. Unlike complete forgiveness – s’lihah – which connotes a change of feeling, that the hurt is dispelled, “pardon” refers to the power to let go of one’s pain, even though the pain still exists. While m’hilah is, thus, not as absolute an erasure of the sin as is s’lihah,  it may be just as difficult to achieve.

So our new s’lihot prayers ask – Even if we can ask God to achieve these difficult states of pardon and forgiveness, can we expect the same of ourselves?

Now let us return to the core of the S’lihot prayers. It is the revelation of the 13 Attributes of God’s Mercy. This revelation was granted to Moses after he begged God to show God’s true essence in the spirit of reconciliation and forgiveness. Aside from the precious words –

ה‘ ה‘ א–ל רחום וחנון

that we echo over and over on Yom Kippur, there is another fundamental aspect of this crucial revelation. God tells Moses to stand in the cleft of the rock as God will pass over him. God says –

הנה מקום אתי

Look there is room here, with Me (Ex. 33:21)

The essential pre-requisite of granting foregiveness is to make room next to one’s self for the other person who desires to stand there. It requires the affirmation that there is plenty of room, room to spare. This act of making room for the other is not an act that follows upon the granting of forgiveness. No! It precedes and is independent of forgiveness. It is the precondition of forgiveness. First God says, הנה מקום אתי – Look there is room here, with Me – and then God reveals the 13 attributes of Mercy.

Indeed, this is the mystery of Creation itself, as our mystical tradition teaches. This is the mystery of Tzimtzum – of the apparent contraction of the Infinite Divine – so as to “make room,” as it were, for existence itself.

מן המצר קראתי י–ה

ענני במרחב י–ה

I called out to God from the cramped place of trouble

And God answered me from God’s spaciousness (Ps. 118:5)

“M’hilah” requires such a creative and generous gesture of opening up space for the other. It is no coincidence that this word recalls the Hebrew word that means “dancing” – מחול. Dance is the exuberant, creative and living appropriation of space, of “making room.” Yom Kippur is a day for m’hilah – it is a day for making room for the other, for dancing.  This is one of the most ancient ways that Yom Kippur was observed, as the mishnah reports –

לא היו ימים טובים לישראל

כט“ו באב וכיום הכפורים

שבהן בנות ישראל יוצאות

וחולותבכרמים   (תענית כו ע“ב)

There were no happier days in Israel

than the 15th of Av and Yom Kippur,

for then the daughters of Israel would

go out into the vineyards

and dance

What we ask of God – when we ask for m’hilah –  is for God to make room for us, even as we have messed up the dance, not knowing our left from our right, not knowing when to lead and when to follow, stepping on God’s toes and our own.

What we ask of God – when we ask for m’hilah, even though we have sinned and have thereby caused hurt and pain – is to allow us to live in a world in which space is allowed for us, and in which we allow space for others.

Understood in this way, m’hilah is even more radical than s’lihah! For, while complete forgiveness dissolves the sin and takes its place, the radical, space-making nature of m’hilah lies in the fact that it means giving space for the pain and the hurt that are caused by a sin one has suffered at the same time that one makes room for forgiveness. How does one do that? How can the hurt caused by the sin co-exist side-by-side with forgiveness? How is such a space carved out?

M’hilah can carve out this space because it puts the pain and hurt in its place. Left unchecked, or, worse, if it is nursed and tended, one’s pain can spread out and take up more and more space. Until it makes claims against any and all who might wish for a little bit a room close by. By softly and humbly holding the pain in  its space, expressing m’hilah  means that, in a deep way, one lets go of one’s right to make a claim on others based on the pain that one still feels. The pain is still there, but the claim is relinquished. When we pray for m’hilah we pray that we, too, may construct a world in which we may become strong enough, fearless enough, to endure our pain and hurt while giving up the desire to make a claim based on that suffering.

Letting go of such pain-based claims is  fundamental to the ability of individuals and groups to proceed to grow and flourish.  While no one can tell a person who has been hurt not to feel pain, it is to be hoped that the person will come to the point where they will not insist that their pain trumps all other considerations.

Women come to the Western Wall, a place sacred to many Jews who pray there day and night. Those Jews find the actions of the women offensive. The women come to pray and to read from the Torah. They say that they simply wish to perform an act of devotion and affirmation. They come once a month, on Rosh Chodesh, while the Jews they offend are there all the time. This place is their life, their heart and soul. For the pious Jews the women’s act constitutes a desecration of all that is holy and is an arrogant provocation. At best the women and their supporters (- that’s us) are guilty of totally insensitive disregard for the deeply held feelings of this simple, traditional community. Why must they come here? How dare they insist that this is their right? Have they no decency? Don’t they care about the real pain and anguish they are causing? Why can’t they move farther away? Why do they insist on flaunting their offensive behavior right in front of loyal, authentic Jews? And especially why here, on holy ground!

When we hear of such sentiments most of us, I believe, see clearly that the pious traditionalists are lacking in the fundamental ability to allow others to live their lives despite the offense such behavior might give. In liberal democracies this is called “respecting the rights of others.” We do not have to like what the others do. But we do need to share our world with them. The spiritual perspective of Yom Kippur, takes us one step further, toward m’hilah – to the generous relinquishing of one’s claim upon the other to stop what they wish to do because of one’s own very real sense of pain and offense. It calls upon us to make room for the other who seeks to stand next to us. Yet, when one refuses to engage in m’hilah one becomes incapable of recognizing any possibility that the other may deserve some breathing room of their own. The stated values and aims of the women can be categorically dismissed as lies and dissimulations. Their opponents know better. From the perspective of the charedim who oppose the Women of the Wall, those women cannot possibly be decent human beings. They deserve no space to stand.

But, when we pray to God for m’hilah, the urgency of our prayer is founded on the recognition that we are all in need of pardon if we are to exist at all. We must overcome our own sense of hurt in response to an appeal for forgiveness. We are duty-bound to make room for the possibility of goodness.

There is an almost identical debate raging today regarding the proposal to erect an Islamic community center, inter-faith project and mosque two blocks from Ground Zero. I do not wish to dignify the positions of outright bigots with debate. I do wish to argue against the oft-heard viewpoint that the pain of the family members of those who perished on 9/11 establishes a supreme claim on their behalf that does not need to answer to rationality or to the possibilty of goodness and healing that might emerge from the development of this project. That possibility is categorically denied because it is presently too  offensive and hurtful. It does not matter that the declared aim of the project is the amelioration of the very realities that cause the fear and pain to fester. The claim based on one’s pain becomes a claim to the right to retain one’s pain and hurt forever.

To make such an argument is to destroy the meaning of Yom Kippur. It is to argue against any chance of creating a world of m’hilah – of making room for others.  In the words of our prophetic reading, tomorrow –

הלא זה צום אבחריהו

פתח חרצובות רשע

התר אגודות מוטה

This is the fast I desire:

to open up the fetters of wickedness,

to loosen the cords of the yoke (Isa. 58:6)

I pray this year that we can at least reach a point of “m’hilah,” that we can dance past the temptation to hold onto our hurts, however genuine, and let go of the “right” to feel hurt, so that we may attain a life that truly fulfills our needs and hopes.

Then we may hope to see the fulfillment of the vision of the End of Days, as imagined in the Talmud (Taanit 31a):

עתיד הקב“ה לעשות מחול לצדיקים

והוא יושב ביניהם בגן עדן

וכלאחדמראהבאצבעושנאמר

ואמר ביום ההוא

הנהא–להינו זה קוינו לו ויושיענו

זה ה‘ קוינו לו נגילה ונשמחה בישועתו (ישעיהו כה:ט)

In the Future the Holy Blessed One

will make a dance-circle for the righteous,

with God sitting in the middle, in the Garden of Eden.

And each one will point with his finger, as it says:

And he will say on that day, “This is our Almighty, for Whom we have waited,

He has saved us. This is our Almighty for Whom we have waited.

Let us celebrate and rejoice in His salvation.

Latest posts by Rabbi David Greenstein (see all)

What do you think?