Rosh Hashanah/Yom Kippur
A Spiritual Strategic Plan
The process of creating a strategic plan involves two basic stages.
First we “brainstorm” a solution to a problem; and secondly we identify the action steps required in order to achieve the plan. During the brainstorming we’re open-minded; we expand our sense of possibilities. During the action stage we focus on the concrete details and what we need to do to achieve our goal. These two stages represent the basic interplay between the days of Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur.
On Rosh Hashanah we pray for humanity to become fully conscious that we were created by a Creator – for a purpose. Hence we say in the Amidah prayer:
Therefore: Place fear of You, Lord our God, on all that You have made, and awe of You on all that you have created…let them become unified to do Your will with a full heart….
In essence we ask for a perfected world wherein war, famine, poverty and all suffering are eliminated. We desire for humanity to become unified in harmony, with God fully “present” in our minds. We blow the shofar which announces the arrival of “the King,” as the shofar presages revelation, just at it did at Sinai before the giving of Torah, and as it will with the arrival of moshiach.
We do not discuss our sins on Rosh Hashanah.
Our focus is not on what needs to change in order to achieve our goal, but on the goal itself.
Our effort is to clarify in our minds and our hearts what a perfected world would look like, and how much we truly want it.
God did not create the world for us to suffer, and the first step towards perfecting it is to want it so.
We should want it so badly that we can’t stand waiting for it. We should want it so badly it hurts.
One might ask – what does this have to do with a day of judgment?
But what is judgment after all but a measure of how something has either fulfilled or not fulfilled its expected potential?
Rosh Hashanah is the anniversary of God’s creation of humanity, and is therefore the time wherein God judges how humanity is (or is not) succeeding.
Being judged for our lives on Rosh Hashanah presents us with the obligation to consider – what is our purpose in life? What do we consider to be a successful life? Do we live as if we truly deeply want to succeed in life? The more strongly we feel about this, and the more clearly we are able to envision what it means for us to succeed in life, the greater our chances of actually achieving our life’s potential.
On Yom Kippur we set about healing the bad patterns of behavior which damage us.
Although we speak of sin, framing sin as a moral issue can be a distraction from a more simple truth.
Think of sin as something which destroys our potential, rather than being simply “bad.” A productive Yom Kippur sharpens our focus on what we need to repair; it does not conjure up generalized (and unproductive) feelings of guilt.
The relationship between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur can be compared to that of conception and gestation within the womb. (It’s no coincidence that the Torah and haftorah readings of Rosh Hashanah are about Sarah conceiving Isaac and Hannah conceiving Samuel.)
The “thing” we’re building is our own lives, which as we will see means relating conscientiously to our power of choice.
On Rosh Hashanah we conceive of a world awake with the idea of building our planet together, and not as competing cells in an organism each seeking to devour the other.
However, just as a newly formed zygote needs nine months of protection and nourishment in its mother’s womb to become viable, so too we need time in order to build our spiritual selves.
The Hebrew word for mercy is rachamim, related to the word rechem (womb). On Yom Kippur we beseech God’s attribute of mercy time and time again, as we are aware that in order to succeed we need God’s mercy to protect and nurture us throughout the year.
Rosh Hashanah: Human Potential and Exercising Freewill
Our lives are the result of millions of decisions.
We make these choices everyday, either consciously or unconsciously.
Each of these decisions rests on beliefs we have either determined ourselves or absorbed from society.
Taking responsibility for our choices begins when we test our assumptions, rejecting false beliefs and doing our best to discover the truth.
We must become seekers of truth, hence the high value in Judaism on the study of Torah. But our decisions are also the result of learned patterns of behavior, which requires us to train ourselves to act according to the truth we learn. Therefore in Judaism our lives are also filled with action via the mitzvos.
Rambam begins his code of Jewish law by establishing the most basic truth upon which the Torah world-view rests: “The foundation of foundations and the pillar of wisdoms is to know that there exists a First Cause, and He causes all of existence.”
The Torah framework for living according to this awareness is “kabalat ol malchut shamayim” (receiving the yoke of the Kingdom of Heaven).
This phrase contains in short form the entire work of Rosh Hashanah. This is because desiring life with all of our heart requires recognizing that life is meaningful.
Life is not random, but rather God created humanity at large and each individual life for a purpose, just as a farmer plants particular seeds to produce a particular fruit. Calling this recognition “receiving a yoke” relates to the idea that the farmer puts a yoke on the ox to guide its plow, and so too God’s mitzvot guide our lives toward our purpose.
God in His essence is beyond human comprehension, and yet every human, from the greatest believer to the most avowed atheist has some conception of God.
Our concept of God is affected by many things, but foremost is the question of how we feel about spiritual accountability, i.e. receiving our “yoke.”
As the Chassidic Rebbe of Kotsk famously asked his students: “Where is God?” After rejecting their deeply philosophical answers, he said simply: “Wherever we let Him in.”
Judaism requires us to develop a moral/spiritual consciousness within which our daily choices express a purposeful existence. We don’t eat whatever our bodies crave, but also with our soul in mind, hence the laws of Kashrut. We give tzedaka because we recognize that having wealth gives us a responsibility towards those less fortunate than us. We avoid lashon hara (derogatory speech) because we are aware that words have power – that if used the wrong way they can destroy people. These are but a few examples; there are obviously many more.
The unique human ability to exercise freewill is often misunderstood.
Many people think of freewill as the freedom to choose a preference of one thing over another. But all animals exercise preference, there is nothing divine or spiritual about it. I know for example that my Dog Osky greatly prefers moist meaty dog food over the dry kibble kind.
He does not make that choice because he considers the impact on his health, he goes for taste.
People who confuse freewill with preference choose their spirituality (or lack of it) the same way.
Choosing according to what feels good, instead of what is good.
Maturity recognizes that what is good will also bring us the most happiness, just as a healthy diet will in the end bring us more happiness than a bag of potato chips.
When we choose a career, a mate, a synagogue, a lifestyle and most basically – what we believe about our reason for being - we need to ask ourselves: Am I making a freewill choice – or am I just giving into what is easiest?
Freewill takes accountability for the consequences of our actions.
To the extent that we make choices that matter, to that extent we are able to choose life.
Freewill is like a muscle, if we work it, our strength of will grows, but if we are lazy, it atrophies.
If we spend our lives preoccupied with things that satisfy our preferences at the expense of seeing the big picture, we trivialize our own existence. We have little clarity about why our lives matter even as we feel instinctively that they should.
Such a life skates on existentially thin ice, because a person without a sense of personal purpose has little in reserve with which to cope with the difficulties and challenges that life brings.
Living in modern times it is easy to become distracted by things that stimulate the senses but leave the mind blank. Rosh Hashanah is here to wake us up to what life is all about.
Listen to how Rambam describes the shofar of Rosh Hashanah:
Even though tekiyat shofar on Rosh Hashanah is a Biblical decree, it contains a hint, as if to say: “Awaken you sleepers from sleeping…and explore your actions, repent and remember your Creator.
These (people) who forget the truth (by being distracted) by things that waste time…should look to their souls and better their paths….
Any and all of our choices can be summed up as choices for life or not-life, which is really what the judgment of Rosh Hashanah is all about. The Torah itself beseeches us to make the good choice when it says:
See – I have placed before you today the life and the good, and the death and the evil, that which I command you today, to love the Lord your God, to walk in His ways….
I have placed life and death before you, blessing and curse, and you shall choose life….
Choosing life – really desiring life in the fullest – not just so we can drive our SUV’s to the mall, but to be deeply, truly, madly in love with life, is our work on Rosh Hashanah.
Yom Kippur: Putting Vision into Action
The mitzvah of the day on Yom Kippur is of course repentance, teshuva, a return to God. The mitzvah of teshuva has four distinct stages, as codified by Rambam:
What is teshuva? That he abandon his sin and remove it from his thoughts, and resolve in his heart not to repeat it…and he regrets the past (sin)…(so much so that) the One who knows secrets will testify that he won’t repeat this sin ever. And he must verbally confess these things he has resolved in his heart.
(1) Changing behaviour;
(2) resolve for the future;
(3) regret for having sinned;
(4) and viduy (verbal confession).
On Yom Kippur we say a lengthy viduy a total of ten times, and frankly we need to consider how to use this viduy beforehand if it is to be constructive and effective. If we don’t we’re likely to feel overwhelmed, or else to turn off and feel little at all.
The viduy list contains broad categories of sin and the character traits that bring sin about.
For example, “hardness of heart” is listed, as well as “lacking thought.”
Our behaviors run in patterns, and so our character repair needs to focus on those patterns. For example, “hardness of heart” (insensitivity towards others) is one root from which many negative choices will result.
To have an effective viduy, we must identify ahead of time which areas are the core issues we want to repent from.
Practically speaking, most people will find their issues are represented by a number of “sins” in the viduy which can be grouped together – these are the ones to highlight.
As a preparation for Yom Kippur, go through the viduy and pick out your sins, write notes to yourself about insights you have around those issues, or particular situations when they happen, or events in the past where you made poor choices because of these sins.
Write your notes on something you can have with you in shul.
Now - let’s differentiate between the public saying of viduy and the private one during the silent Amidah.
During the public viduy we sing it along with everyone.
But during your own private prayer, you can quickly read through the sins that aren’t problem areas for you, but take as much time as you need with your real issues. There is no rush – you do not have to keep up with the congregation. The more important value is that you use the opportunity to do real, deep teshuva to the upmost.
What you’re doing during your private confession is the true essence of Yom Kippur, don’t miss the opportunity.
Let’s appreciate what the experience of viduy is meant to be.
Clearly we are confessing to God – but it is just as clear that the purpose isn’t to “let God know” we’ve sinned.
God knows anyway.
We are the ones who forget.
We forget when we become preoccupied with our negative emotions and desires. We block out the idea of choosing well precisely when we don’t feel like acting responsibly. We hide behind walls of denial and defensiveness, figuratively pulling the covers over our head, saying: “I don’t want to go to school.”
Viduy is the process of reversing that forgetfulness and surrendering that denial. We say for each sin: “For the sin that we sinned before You…” juxtaposing the recollection of our misdeed with our current (hopefully heightened) awareness of God.
Saying viduy is meant to arouse deep feelings of regret which can be a powerful motivation to change. However – exactly because we focus so much on our mistakes it is absolutely critical to understand the difference between shame which is constructive, and shame which is utterly destructive.
The first kind of shame is essential to being Jewish according to the Talmud, but the other is emotional and spiritual poison.
The difference is the same one the famous scholar Beruria told her husband Rebbe Meir, differentiate between the sin and the sinner. If we feel shame because of something we've done - it is constructive and can help us know how to repair what we've done. But if our actions or anything causes us to hate ourselves as people, all it will motivate within us is the desire for self-destruction, the opposite of teshuva and repair.
When we say “hate the sin, not the sinner” we mean to remain aware that the person, in this case ourselves, are essentially good, and having problems, even big ones, does not contradict that.
Healthy shame says: “I should have known better! Why did I give into that!? I must fix this situation; I cannot bear to let it go unresolved.”
This kind of shame motivates us to take responsibility for our mistakes and correct them.
But unhealthy shame says: “I hate myself! I’m so stupid for doing that! I wish I just didn’t exist.”
Sick shame is a generalized feeling of self-loathing, which if left untreated will destroy a person.
Whatever the original cause for this kind of shame, whether childhood abuse or neglect, negative body image, feelings of inadequacy, etc. etc., the shame it produces is an emotional black hole, swallowing up our entire life and giving back nothing.
Detailing inadequacies and failures on Yom Kippur is not a good idea for one suffering from low self-esteem, because the viduy speaks of the shame a person feels when they have not lived up to their divine potential, not the shame of a person who hates themselves.
We’re trying to increase our desire for life, not the opposite.
A person suffering from shame is pre-occupied with self-judgment, and therefore on Yom Kippur they must use the viduy at its most powerful level, which is to stop being the judge of themselves and surrender Judgement only to God, who happens to love them very much, more than they know.
When we stop trying to judge ourselves we can also stop trying to defend ourselves, the result is a feeling tremendous relief, a lifting of a burden.
This feeling of a burden being lifted, is what viduy is all about. It is the burden of our mistakes, and the limitations those mistakes have put upon us. Of course God knows what we’ve done – it is we who need to get it off our chest. Once we do, we can let down our guard and let God in, which is the path to bettering ourselves, and toward achieving the perfect world we asked for on Rosh Hashanah.
First we “brainstorm” a solution to a problem; and secondly we identify the action steps required in order to achieve the plan. During the brainstorming we’re open-minded; we expand our sense of possibilities. During the action stage we focus on the concrete details and what we need to do to achieve our goal. These two stages represent the basic interplay between the days of Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur.
On Rosh Hashanah we pray for humanity to become fully conscious that we were created by a Creator – for a purpose. Hence we say in the Amidah prayer:
Therefore: Place fear of You, Lord our God, on all that You have made, and awe of You on all that you have created…let them become unified to do Your will with a full heart….
In essence we ask for a perfected world wherein war, famine, poverty and all suffering are eliminated. We desire for humanity to become unified in harmony, with God fully “present” in our minds. We blow the shofar which announces the arrival of “the King,” as the shofar presages revelation, just at it did at Sinai before the giving of Torah, and as it will with the arrival of moshiach.
We do not discuss our sins on Rosh Hashanah.
Our focus is not on what needs to change in order to achieve our goal, but on the goal itself.
Our effort is to clarify in our minds and our hearts what a perfected world would look like, and how much we truly want it.
God did not create the world for us to suffer, and the first step towards perfecting it is to want it so.
We should want it so badly that we can’t stand waiting for it. We should want it so badly it hurts.
One might ask – what does this have to do with a day of judgment?
But what is judgment after all but a measure of how something has either fulfilled or not fulfilled its expected potential?
Rosh Hashanah is the anniversary of God’s creation of humanity, and is therefore the time wherein God judges how humanity is (or is not) succeeding.
Being judged for our lives on Rosh Hashanah presents us with the obligation to consider – what is our purpose in life? What do we consider to be a successful life? Do we live as if we truly deeply want to succeed in life? The more strongly we feel about this, and the more clearly we are able to envision what it means for us to succeed in life, the greater our chances of actually achieving our life’s potential.
On Yom Kippur we set about healing the bad patterns of behavior which damage us.
Although we speak of sin, framing sin as a moral issue can be a distraction from a more simple truth.
Think of sin as something which destroys our potential, rather than being simply “bad.” A productive Yom Kippur sharpens our focus on what we need to repair; it does not conjure up generalized (and unproductive) feelings of guilt.
The relationship between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur can be compared to that of conception and gestation within the womb. (It’s no coincidence that the Torah and haftorah readings of Rosh Hashanah are about Sarah conceiving Isaac and Hannah conceiving Samuel.)
The “thing” we’re building is our own lives, which as we will see means relating conscientiously to our power of choice.
On Rosh Hashanah we conceive of a world awake with the idea of building our planet together, and not as competing cells in an organism each seeking to devour the other.
However, just as a newly formed zygote needs nine months of protection and nourishment in its mother’s womb to become viable, so too we need time in order to build our spiritual selves.
The Hebrew word for mercy is rachamim, related to the word rechem (womb). On Yom Kippur we beseech God’s attribute of mercy time and time again, as we are aware that in order to succeed we need God’s mercy to protect and nurture us throughout the year.
Rosh Hashanah: Human Potential and Exercising Freewill
Our lives are the result of millions of decisions.
We make these choices everyday, either consciously or unconsciously.
Each of these decisions rests on beliefs we have either determined ourselves or absorbed from society.
Taking responsibility for our choices begins when we test our assumptions, rejecting false beliefs and doing our best to discover the truth.
We must become seekers of truth, hence the high value in Judaism on the study of Torah. But our decisions are also the result of learned patterns of behavior, which requires us to train ourselves to act according to the truth we learn. Therefore in Judaism our lives are also filled with action via the mitzvos.
Rambam begins his code of Jewish law by establishing the most basic truth upon which the Torah world-view rests: “The foundation of foundations and the pillar of wisdoms is to know that there exists a First Cause, and He causes all of existence.”
The Torah framework for living according to this awareness is “kabalat ol malchut shamayim” (receiving the yoke of the Kingdom of Heaven).
This phrase contains in short form the entire work of Rosh Hashanah. This is because desiring life with all of our heart requires recognizing that life is meaningful.
Life is not random, but rather God created humanity at large and each individual life for a purpose, just as a farmer plants particular seeds to produce a particular fruit. Calling this recognition “receiving a yoke” relates to the idea that the farmer puts a yoke on the ox to guide its plow, and so too God’s mitzvot guide our lives toward our purpose.
God in His essence is beyond human comprehension, and yet every human, from the greatest believer to the most avowed atheist has some conception of God.
Our concept of God is affected by many things, but foremost is the question of how we feel about spiritual accountability, i.e. receiving our “yoke.”
As the Chassidic Rebbe of Kotsk famously asked his students: “Where is God?” After rejecting their deeply philosophical answers, he said simply: “Wherever we let Him in.”
Judaism requires us to develop a moral/spiritual consciousness within which our daily choices express a purposeful existence. We don’t eat whatever our bodies crave, but also with our soul in mind, hence the laws of Kashrut. We give tzedaka because we recognize that having wealth gives us a responsibility towards those less fortunate than us. We avoid lashon hara (derogatory speech) because we are aware that words have power – that if used the wrong way they can destroy people. These are but a few examples; there are obviously many more.
The unique human ability to exercise freewill is often misunderstood.
Many people think of freewill as the freedom to choose a preference of one thing over another. But all animals exercise preference, there is nothing divine or spiritual about it. I know for example that my Dog Osky greatly prefers moist meaty dog food over the dry kibble kind.
He does not make that choice because he considers the impact on his health, he goes for taste.
People who confuse freewill with preference choose their spirituality (or lack of it) the same way.
Choosing according to what feels good, instead of what is good.
Maturity recognizes that what is good will also bring us the most happiness, just as a healthy diet will in the end bring us more happiness than a bag of potato chips.
When we choose a career, a mate, a synagogue, a lifestyle and most basically – what we believe about our reason for being - we need to ask ourselves: Am I making a freewill choice – or am I just giving into what is easiest?
Freewill takes accountability for the consequences of our actions.
To the extent that we make choices that matter, to that extent we are able to choose life.
Freewill is like a muscle, if we work it, our strength of will grows, but if we are lazy, it atrophies.
If we spend our lives preoccupied with things that satisfy our preferences at the expense of seeing the big picture, we trivialize our own existence. We have little clarity about why our lives matter even as we feel instinctively that they should.
Such a life skates on existentially thin ice, because a person without a sense of personal purpose has little in reserve with which to cope with the difficulties and challenges that life brings.
Living in modern times it is easy to become distracted by things that stimulate the senses but leave the mind blank. Rosh Hashanah is here to wake us up to what life is all about.
Listen to how Rambam describes the shofar of Rosh Hashanah:
Even though tekiyat shofar on Rosh Hashanah is a Biblical decree, it contains a hint, as if to say: “Awaken you sleepers from sleeping…and explore your actions, repent and remember your Creator.
These (people) who forget the truth (by being distracted) by things that waste time…should look to their souls and better their paths….
Any and all of our choices can be summed up as choices for life or not-life, which is really what the judgment of Rosh Hashanah is all about. The Torah itself beseeches us to make the good choice when it says:
See – I have placed before you today the life and the good, and the death and the evil, that which I command you today, to love the Lord your God, to walk in His ways….
I have placed life and death before you, blessing and curse, and you shall choose life….
Choosing life – really desiring life in the fullest – not just so we can drive our SUV’s to the mall, but to be deeply, truly, madly in love with life, is our work on Rosh Hashanah.
Yom Kippur: Putting Vision into Action
The mitzvah of the day on Yom Kippur is of course repentance, teshuva, a return to God. The mitzvah of teshuva has four distinct stages, as codified by Rambam:
What is teshuva? That he abandon his sin and remove it from his thoughts, and resolve in his heart not to repeat it…and he regrets the past (sin)…(so much so that) the One who knows secrets will testify that he won’t repeat this sin ever. And he must verbally confess these things he has resolved in his heart.
(1) Changing behaviour;
(2) resolve for the future;
(3) regret for having sinned;
(4) and viduy (verbal confession).
On Yom Kippur we say a lengthy viduy a total of ten times, and frankly we need to consider how to use this viduy beforehand if it is to be constructive and effective. If we don’t we’re likely to feel overwhelmed, or else to turn off and feel little at all.
The viduy list contains broad categories of sin and the character traits that bring sin about.
For example, “hardness of heart” is listed, as well as “lacking thought.”
Our behaviors run in patterns, and so our character repair needs to focus on those patterns. For example, “hardness of heart” (insensitivity towards others) is one root from which many negative choices will result.
To have an effective viduy, we must identify ahead of time which areas are the core issues we want to repent from.
Practically speaking, most people will find their issues are represented by a number of “sins” in the viduy which can be grouped together – these are the ones to highlight.
As a preparation for Yom Kippur, go through the viduy and pick out your sins, write notes to yourself about insights you have around those issues, or particular situations when they happen, or events in the past where you made poor choices because of these sins.
Write your notes on something you can have with you in shul.
Now - let’s differentiate between the public saying of viduy and the private one during the silent Amidah.
During the public viduy we sing it along with everyone.
But during your own private prayer, you can quickly read through the sins that aren’t problem areas for you, but take as much time as you need with your real issues. There is no rush – you do not have to keep up with the congregation. The more important value is that you use the opportunity to do real, deep teshuva to the upmost.
What you’re doing during your private confession is the true essence of Yom Kippur, don’t miss the opportunity.
Let’s appreciate what the experience of viduy is meant to be.
Clearly we are confessing to God – but it is just as clear that the purpose isn’t to “let God know” we’ve sinned.
God knows anyway.
We are the ones who forget.
We forget when we become preoccupied with our negative emotions and desires. We block out the idea of choosing well precisely when we don’t feel like acting responsibly. We hide behind walls of denial and defensiveness, figuratively pulling the covers over our head, saying: “I don’t want to go to school.”
Viduy is the process of reversing that forgetfulness and surrendering that denial. We say for each sin: “For the sin that we sinned before You…” juxtaposing the recollection of our misdeed with our current (hopefully heightened) awareness of God.
Saying viduy is meant to arouse deep feelings of regret which can be a powerful motivation to change. However – exactly because we focus so much on our mistakes it is absolutely critical to understand the difference between shame which is constructive, and shame which is utterly destructive.
The first kind of shame is essential to being Jewish according to the Talmud, but the other is emotional and spiritual poison.
The difference is the same one the famous scholar Beruria told her husband Rebbe Meir, differentiate between the sin and the sinner. If we feel shame because of something we've done - it is constructive and can help us know how to repair what we've done. But if our actions or anything causes us to hate ourselves as people, all it will motivate within us is the desire for self-destruction, the opposite of teshuva and repair.
When we say “hate the sin, not the sinner” we mean to remain aware that the person, in this case ourselves, are essentially good, and having problems, even big ones, does not contradict that.
Healthy shame says: “I should have known better! Why did I give into that!? I must fix this situation; I cannot bear to let it go unresolved.”
This kind of shame motivates us to take responsibility for our mistakes and correct them.
But unhealthy shame says: “I hate myself! I’m so stupid for doing that! I wish I just didn’t exist.”
Sick shame is a generalized feeling of self-loathing, which if left untreated will destroy a person.
Whatever the original cause for this kind of shame, whether childhood abuse or neglect, negative body image, feelings of inadequacy, etc. etc., the shame it produces is an emotional black hole, swallowing up our entire life and giving back nothing.
Detailing inadequacies and failures on Yom Kippur is not a good idea for one suffering from low self-esteem, because the viduy speaks of the shame a person feels when they have not lived up to their divine potential, not the shame of a person who hates themselves.
We’re trying to increase our desire for life, not the opposite.
A person suffering from shame is pre-occupied with self-judgment, and therefore on Yom Kippur they must use the viduy at its most powerful level, which is to stop being the judge of themselves and surrender Judgement only to God, who happens to love them very much, more than they know.
When we stop trying to judge ourselves we can also stop trying to defend ourselves, the result is a feeling tremendous relief, a lifting of a burden.
This feeling of a burden being lifted, is what viduy is all about. It is the burden of our mistakes, and the limitations those mistakes have put upon us. Of course God knows what we’ve done – it is we who need to get it off our chest. Once we do, we can let down our guard and let God in, which is the path to bettering ourselves, and toward achieving the perfect world we asked for on Rosh Hashanah.