Yom Kippur – Day of Purging

We have survived a year full of emotional demands, hills and valleys of national and political tension, and Israel’s turmoil, abandoned hostages, and thousands of civilians, on both sides, taken from this world. The resilience demanded of us has been a mighty feat and most of us have met the threshold. We should be proud of ourselves.

But who doesn’t need a purge or cleansing at this moment? Who doesn’t need to bend the knee in humility and supplication as Moshe, Aaron, or even Hannah, when they prayed to G-d? Who doesn’t need to find a way to influence the Holy One, as Kabbalah teaches, that “our prayers in this world move the world above?” As humans we feel inept and crippled to impact decisions for peace and truth. 

Yom Kippur comes, as it does every year, to help us rid ourselves of the ‘shmutz’ that surrounds us, and perhaps even within us. 

Standing before our King/Queen, Father/Mother, we pray for forgiveness, grace, and forbearance for our foibles, errors, and omissions; all the many trespasses that have filled the world, and which we have played a part. Our prayers are in the plural and we share together in this spiritual exposure, knowing none of us has come close to doing all of the many things listed in our prayerbook. But we know we have a part, even small, as the liturgy reminds us, “We are neither so arrogant nor so stubborn as to declare that we are righteous and have not sinned; for indeed, we have sinned.” 

We are human, we make mistakes. G-d understood this when Midrash teaches G-d created the world with ‘Din,’ judging. It was clear from the beginning, as humans, we needed compassion, so Gd shifts gears and creates the world with Rachamim, a way to show empathy for our flaws. The same word for compassion is the word for the ‘womb,’ the place that holds us pre-birth, to support, nurture, and protect us. That moment in our development is so precious that we often have a deep desire, sometimes unconsciously, to revert back to the safest place we all knew before we were born.

Yom Kippur is our womb, our day of prayers and contemplation, that holds us just as our mothers did before we came into this world.

Yom Kippur is our womb, our day of prayers and contemplation, that holds us just as our mothers did before we came into this world.

Yom Kippur, the Day of Purging, the day that some call a “near-death experience,” a day when we  feel small and feeble because we enter in our white shrouds, empty of belly, weak of body, and fragile of spirit. Each cathartic moment on Yom Kippur is a salve for our souls. We enter the Divine space, for hours and hours, hoping we can come to the end of the day purer, simpler, and resolved to move into our lives and the world dedicated to be better, feeling G-d’s acceptance, and the confidence to live with more peace and love in our hearts.

It’s only within a few days that we stand in our fragile buildings, the sukkahs of our tradition, reminded that truly there is only faith, truth, and authenticity that we can count on. Materiality is temporary and security is what comes from within and not without.

The shock since October 7 lives with us continually, just as the Shoah has for so many in this world. These events live on in our kishkes, our guts and our hearts. Remembrance is our only way to rededicate empathy and care and keep alive those who have left this world. Yom Kippur is another day for remembrance, for Yizkor, joining in spirit with those who have left this world, those we love deeply and those we embrace, despite the fact that they are strangers. 

This Yom Kippur, only a few days after Oct 7, 2023, we know will be memorialized throughout the world, shared by so many. It creates a tradition that will both re-ignite our PTSD as Jews, in a world sometimes hostile to our existence, truly a new American experience we have been sheltered from for so many years. 

The wall has come down, our vulnerability an ongoing reality for so many. But let us move with hope into the future that we can make things better, we can lift the ugly particles of life to a place of goodness, empathic care, and sincere expanded possibilities.

Eva Robbins is a rabbi, cantor, artist and the author of “Spiritual Surgery: A Journey of Healing Mind, Body and Spirit.”