Tag Archives: Yom Kippur

For The Sins of 5786…

Posted on by
2

Against the Jewish World and Israel:

  • For the sin of allowing the word “genocide” to become so casually attached to Israel that actual genocidal intentions against Jews became background noise;
  • For the sin of allowing people who celebrated, excused or contextualized October 7 to reinvent themselves as authorities on Jewish morality;
  • For the sin of allowing “Zionist” to become a socially acceptable substitute for things people would be embarrassed to say using the word “Jew”;
  • For the sin of advocating Jewish-Arab coexistence while objecting when Jews actually move next to Arabs in the Galilee;
  • For the sin of allowing the world to mark the 25th anniversary of Durban without forcing a reckoning with what Durban became for Jews;
  • For the sin of allowing the descendants of people who once lived in Israel to claim an unlimited right to enter it while treating Jewish return to the same land as colonialism;
  • For the sin of confusing being worried about the Jewish people with doing something for the Jewish people.

Terrorism, Jihadism and Language

  • For the sin of allowing September 11 to be taught without clearly teaching the jihadi ideology of the people who committed September 11;
  • For the sin of treating white supremacy as an ideology that must be named while treating jihadism as a subject requiring euphemisms;
  • For the sin of allowing “terrorist” to become a complicated word precisely when the terrorist is trying very hard to make his intentions uncomplicated.

United Nations / International Institutions

  • For the sin of accepting international descriptions of the Temple Mount that progressively erase the Jewish Temple from the Mount;
  • For the sin of reaching the United Nations’ 80th General Assembly without insisting on the basic distinction between a member state attacked on October 7 and the non-member entity whose governing terrorist organization launched the attack;
  • For the sin of watching countries recognize a state of “Palestine” without stating clearly that there is no “Right of Return” for Arabs into Israel.

America

  • For the sin of confusing an apology with repentance;
  • For the sin of believing that another statement, conference or task force constitutes a strategy against antisemitism;
  • For the sin of asking politicians to affirm our connection to Israel more loudly than we affirm it ourselves;
  • For the sin of performative protests rather then developing coherent strategies;
  • For the sin of assuming that because American Jewry has lived through a Golden Age, the wheel could never turn.

Media / Culture

  • For the sin of treating calls for violence against Jews as a debate over free speech rather than first acknowledging what was actually being said;
  • For the sin of watching the meaning of “terrorist” narrow while the meaning of “genocide” expanded;
  • For the sin of continuing to confuse greater sophistication of vocabulary with greater clarity of thought;
  • For the sin of listening to music of obvious antisemites.

Ourselves

  • For the sin of expecting others to understand Jewish history that we have not bothered to learn;
  • For the sin of spending more time reading about antisemitism than studying Judaism;
  • For the sin of arriving late to shul and being annoyed that someone is sitting in my seat;
  • For the sin of pretending to say any of the prayers in the morning right before Rabbi Yishamel says;
  • For the sin of praying at home at a speed that beats boiling a soft-boiled egg;
  • For the sin of assuming that the person davening too quickly is less sincere than I am;
  • For the sin of assuming that the person davening too slowly is showing off;
  • For the sin of taking another bencher from a simcha when I already have 250 sitting in a drawer;
  • For the sin of expecting my rabbi to speak like Lord Jonathan Sachs;
  • For the sin of opening the Chumash when the rabbi starts speaking and pretending I am looking up a source;
  • For the sin of looking around during the rabbi’s sermon to see who else thinks it is going too long;
  • For the sin of saying Shabbat Shalom to someone whose name I should know after twenty years;
  • For the sin of deciding whether I like a shul based on the kiddush;
  • For the sin of drinking scotch at 9:15 in the morning because apparently that is something Jews who go to early minyan do;
  • For the sin of believing calories consumed on Shabbat are somehow accounted for differently;
  • For the sin of dropping off fifty Jewish books at the door of the synagogue and running away like a cartoon of someone leaving a baby at a fire house;
  • For the sin of complaining there is too much food at a simcha and then asking if there is dessert;
  • For the sin of putting a bottle of wine aside because it is too good to open and then keeping it for eleven years;
  • For the sin of not knowing how to engage with friends who are going through difficult times;
  • For the sin of joining a Tehillim WhatsApp group and considering the work done even when never saying a single chapter;
  • For the sin of composing a response to a family WhatsApp, deleting it, and then sending it anyway;
  • For the sin of using a realtor for eighteen months, then buying a place with someone else, and not ever giving the first realtor a courtesy gift certificate for all the time spent;
  • For the sin of checking how many people read something I wrote while pretending I do not care;
  • For the sin of believing that because I did not post my good deed, I deserve additional credit for humility;
  • For the sin of apologizing for “anything I may have done” rather than remembering what I actually did;
  • For the sin of spending Al Chet thinking about everyone who should be saying Al Chet;
  • For the sin of reaching the end of Al Chet feeling considerably better about everyone else’s sins.

For all these things, please pardon us

Forgiven Isn’t Fixed

Posted on by
1

At the center of Achrei Mot, on Yom Kippur, two goats stand side by side. Both identical and indistinguishable. Then, a lottery is cast.

If all you wanted was forgiveness for sins, one goat would be enough. Yet the Torah insists on two.

Forgiveness is easy. Change is not.

We like to believe wrongdoing is a series of isolated acts. You did something wrong, you regret it, you fix it, you move on. Clean, contained, manageable. It is how legal systems work and how people prefer to understand themselves.

It is also incomplete.

Most failure is not a moment. It is a pattern. It accumulates, settles in, becomes familiar, then invisible.

The altar can address the act. It cannot address the drift.

Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik drew a distinction that cuts through the ritual with precision. There is kapparah, atonement, and there is taharah, purification. A person can be forgiven and still remain unchanged. The ledger is cleared, but the self is not.

The first goat is about repair. Something was broken and must be restored. There is acknowledgment, cost, and a return toward the center. Without that, nothing holds.

But even after the offering, something remains unresolved. What about the part of you that made the act possible in the first place? What about the force that will bring you back to the same place again?

The second goat answers without pretending to solve. It is not elevated nor transformed. It is taken and removed, sent beyond the camp into a space outside structure and control. The Torah does something more honest than erasure. It refuses to let that force sit at the center.

Rabbi Jonathan Sacks drew the line just as sharply. The Torah distinguishes between what you did and who you are. The act can be real, heavy, even defining in its moment, and still not be allowed to define you going forward.

That distinction is fragile. Without it, people fall into two familiar traps. One is denial, the instinct to send everything away, to blame, to project, to say the problem lives somewhere else. The other is paralysis, the belief that failure is permanent, that the stain cannot be lifted, that there is no meaningful way forward.

Two goats, not one, because one would allow the situation to settle in a bad place.

The first says you are responsible. The second says you are not reducible to what you did. Hold only the first and you collapse under your past. Hold only the second and you lose accountability.

Together they force something far less comfortable.

You are forgiven, but the forces that led you there still exist.

There is no promise here that the internal engine disappears. No claim that a single day resets human nature. The ritual does not erase memory or capacity. It offers something more restrained and more demanding. The sin is acknowledged, gathered, and pushed to the margins. No longer central, no longer defining, but not imaginary either.

You walk forward without it at your core. You do not pretend it was never there.

Two goats, identical at the start, divided by fate. One ascends, one disappears, and between them stands a person who has to live with both truths at once.

You can be restored. You are still capable of returning.

In a world where scapegoats have become the rage, let us all relearn and teach the world that the just path forward requires both atonement and purification of self.

The Sins That Sink

Posted on by
Reply

On Shabbat Shuva, the Sabbath between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, the haftarah proclaims:

“You will again have compassion on us;
    you will tread our sins underfoot
    and hurl all our iniquities into the depths of the sea..”
— Micah 7:19

That verse frames the season. At the start of the Ten Days of Repentance, we gather by a river or lake for Tashlich, casting crumbs into the current as a sign of casting off our wrongs.
It is not superstition but a declaration of hope: the sinner is not the sin; the two can be parted.

Jonah’s Descent

At the other end of the Ten Days, on Yom Kippur afternoon, we read the story of Jonah — the counter-story.

Jonah fled from God’s call aboard a ship. A storm raged over the ship until the sailors, reluctantly, cast him overboard, and suddenly the sea grew calm. By all natural expectation, Jonah should have floated. Instead, he sank. He recounts:

“The waters closed in over me;
the deep engulfed me;
weeds were wrapped around my head.”
— Jonah 2:5

Jonah could not separate from his defiance; he was dragged to the bottom with it.

Then God sent the great fish — not as a punishment but as a chamber of mercy, a hollow where Jonah could face his failing, pray, and be restored to life. The fish shows that even in the depths, repentance is still possible.

“Jonah Thrown to the Whale” by Johannes Sadeler I, circa 1582. In the background, another ship can be seen sailing in calm waters, showing that the boat with Jonah was targeted for punishment. Jonah’s head faces the roaring sea, accepting his fate.

Two Fish, One Lesson

Many have the custom to recite Tashlich at a stream that has living fish. Some suggest it is a symbol of good luck while others suggest that the fish “consume” the symbolic sins, carrying them away like a scapegoat.

Placed against the story of Jonah, the image deepens: the fish in the stream greet us at the gates of the Ten Days; the great fish of Jonah meets us at their close. The small fish beneath the ripples hint at an easy parting from our minor failings; the great fish is the last-chance refuge for those who waited too long.

The High Holiday season sets the choice before us:

At the opening, we can cast our sins away and watch them sink while we stand free on the shore. At the closing, if we still cling to them, we risk being dragged under — yet even then there is mercy, a chance to pray and rise again.

The waters of Micah and Jonah teach the same truth: our sins can drown without dragging us under — if we will let them go.

Let us all attempt to separate ourselves from sin, and cast them into the depths of the water and be blessed with a new year of health and opportunity.

“Jonah Spat up by the Whale” by Johannes Sadeler I, circa 1582, with the sun seemingly rising in the background to highlight Jonah living to see a new day. Jonah stares at the heavens seeing that the storm has passed.

For The Sins of 5784…

Posted on by
Reply

For the sin of donating to my antisemitic alma mater;

For the sin of laughing hysterically at the Hezbollah pagers explosions;

For the sin of not doing enough to get rid of antisemitic members of Congress;

For the sin of not doing all I could to get rid of an antisemitic “charity” in my backyard;

For the sin of not lobbying my government to label Hamas a terrorist group;

For the sin of not lobbying my government to defund the United Nations;

For the sin of failing to educate children that the oppressor/oppressed narrative does not excuse people to act immorally;

For the sin of allowing myself to get pulled by the empathy swamp regarding Gaza to condemn Israel’s defensive war;

For the sin of not clearly calling out ‘woke’ profound antisemitism;

For the sin of not signing petitions to defund and abolish UNRWA;

For the sin of allowing ‘Intifada’ to be normalized;

For the sin of not calling out the antisemitic genocidal intent of Gazans;

For the sin of rewriting history;

For the sin of not demanding the firing of United Nations Secretary General Antonio Guterres;

For the sin of watching Israel slowly get demonized and isolated without doing anything;

For the sin of not reporting antisemitic incidents;

For the sin of not believing people’s comments about Jews;

For the sin of pretending that Palestinian leadership does not want the destruction of Israel;

For the sin of excusing chants against Jews in ways I would never excuse similar chants against other groups;

For the sin of believing the whataboutery and red herrings of allies and preferred media;

For the sin of believing in the decency of my neighbors too much; for believing in them too little;

For the sin of seeking too few allies; for seeking too many allies;

For the sin of pardoning my government for not fighting enough for the Jewish people;

For the sin of talking about Israel at work too little; for talking about it too much;

For these things related to the Jewish world, please pardon us

For the sin of waiting for someone else to say Psalm 119 in Tehillim chat groups;

For the sin of doubling up my recitation of the same Tehillim chapter on different WhatsApp groups;

For the sin of taking two handfuls of mints at restaurants;

For the sin of not mentoring enough young people;

For the sin of not putting ‘AsAJew’ people who put Jews directly in harms way in herem;

For the sin of not defending AIPAC from ridiculous slander;

For the sin of claiming anti-Zionism is not antisemitism;

For the sin of dressing up extremist and divisive positions as merely “progressive”;

For the sin of believing that the Biden-Harris administration has been effective at controlling the nation’s borders;

For the sin of believing in Kamala Harris the moment she became the presidential nominee when I had believed her utterly incompetent for three and one-half years;

For the sin of not believing that Donald Trump is a megalomaniac;

For the sin of wasting time debating Trump-Harris for hours, when I live in a deeply blue or red state;

For the sin of not speaking to as many Holocaust survivors as possible;

For the sin of thinking about Israel too much; for thinking about it too little;

For the sin of not volunteering for community security service;

For the sin of not fighting to neuter harmful “Jewish” charities;

For the sin of obsessing about peace in a time of war;

For the sin of not thinking about the hostages in Gaza every day;

For these sins related to community, please pardon us

For the sin of giving away the Wordle answer to someone who hasn’t completed it;

For the sin of watching Instagram videos of dogs while in bed instead of paying attention to my spouse;

For the sin of using ChatGPT to make R-rated content;

For the sin of not writing to the media when they print something full of antisemitic lies;

For the sin of believing The New York Times;

For the sin of reading The New York Times and not writing to them about every article related to Israel;

For the sin of not contacting Marvel to ensure that antisemitism and anti-Israel narratives don’t flood the screen;

For these sins related to media and social media, please pardon us

For the sin of playing the lottery weekly without my spouse’s knowledge;

For the sin of letting dishes soak when it’s my turn to clean up;

For the sin of “borrowing” a Netflix account;

For the sin of believing in my children too little; for believing in them too much;

For the sin of not visiting parents enough;

For these sins related to family, please pardon us

For the sin of blogging instead of exercising;

For the sin of reading emails while driving;

For the sin of sneaking desserts at 5AM;

For these sins related to health, please pardon us

For the sin of not subscribing to blogs I enjoy;

For all these things, please pardon us

Related articles:

For The Sins Of 5783…

For The Sins Of 5782…

For the Sins of 5780…

For the Sins of 5777 of…

For The Sins Of 5782…

Posted on by
2

… for following directions from Waze with more obedience than any Torah commandments;

… for being upset that we don’t skip enough piyutim and selichot in synagogue;

… for coming to synagogue during the week wearing a Mickey Mouse shirt;

… for completing morning services at home in 360 seconds;

… for re-watching Key & Peele skits on my phone during breaks in davening;

for these sins and thoughts related to prayer services, please pardon us

… for the sin of cursing the gardener and coveting my neighbor’s lawn;

… for using COVID as an excuse for not going to shiva visits;

… for not killing lanterbugs on Shabbos;

… for sincerely asking for forgiveness and begrudgingly giving it;

… for taking the final aluminum tins from Amazing Savings right before the holidays;

… for not speaking up loudly against anti-Semites because they were Jews or from my political party;

… for embracing anti-Semites and their positions in the belief that I will be spared while fellow Jews are carted away;

… for not rallying behind institutions that fired anti-Zionist teachers;

… for not calling out anti-Semitism from other minorities, for fear of being called a racist;

… for not visiting the Temple Mount in Jerusalem;

… for believing that calls for violence are covered under free speech;

… for not doing enough to stop more anti-Semites from becoming members of Congress;

… for not protesting my government’s funding Palestinian agencies that still actively promote terrorism;

… for falsely believing that Tikkun Olam will stop the spread of anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism;

… for screaming at ignoramuses like Whoopi Goldberg rather than educating them;

… for continuing to subscribe to anti-Semitic media which peddles the ‘powerful Jew’ myth;

… for deliberately weakening Jewish institutions with lawsuits and public declarations, rather than finding a way to improve them from within the community;

for these sins and thoughts related to community, please pardon us

… for allowing my children to attend colleges with rampant anti-Semitism;

… for visiting countries on vacation that fund anti-Israel NGOs and condemn Israel at the United Nations;

… for not listening to kids’ recommendation to invest alongside Pelosi, and for listening to them about investing in crypto;

… for calling my uncle a crazy racist and my niece a lazy woke-tard;

… for still not having a proper name for my in-laws, after many years of being married;

… for not calling my parents enough, even when they remind me of that fact constantly;

… for pretending I’m preoccupied when my spouse asks for something I’m not interested in;

… for telling my spouse to change attire; for not listening to spouse’s recommendation on attire; for listening to spouse’s recommendation on dress; for being late to events because of attire;

for these sins and thoughts related to family, please pardon us

… for the arrogance of believing that people read my postings including annoying Wordle scores;

… for believing Shabbos calories don’t count;

… for thinking I’m younger than my age, and not living each day fully;

… for internalizing that living my best life means selfish overindulgence;

… for trying to do too much; for trying to do too little;

… for not spending more time with family, friends, community and You;

for all these things, please pardon us

Related articles:

For the Sins of 5780…

For the Sins of 5777 of…