SPIRIT

Yom Kippur: The Happiest Day of the Year 
H

ow would you describe 
Yom Kippur? A solemn 
day? A day of prayer 
and supplication? A day of absti-
nence? The Mishnah has a dif-
ferent description. 
It says Yom Kippur 
is a day of joy — in 
fact, one of the 
two happiest days 
of the year. This 
seems surprising to 
say the least. Yom 
Kippur is a day 
spent praying and fasting and 
generally putting aside the things 
that bring us physical enjoyment.
The Talmud explains the 
happiness and joy of the day is 
because it’s a day of forgiveness 
for our misdeeds, the opportuni-
ty to begin our lives afresh, free 
from the mistakes and wrongdo-
ings of the past. It’s the miracu-
lous opportunity to go back and 
change history … our history.
The Hebrew word for repen-
tance is teshuvah, which literally 
means “return.
” Through teshu-
vah, we return to that pristine 
state in which there was no dis-
tance or disconnect in our rela-

tionship with our Creator and 
with our fellow human beings.
Of course, it doesn’t just 
happen. Real repentance takes 
heart-rending effort and appli-
cation. The Rambam, in his 
Laws of Repentance (Laws of 
Teshuvah, 2:2), defines the pro-
cess of repentance and sets out 
its various components: regret-
ting the mistakes of the past, 
desisting from that wrongdoing 
in the present, resolving not to 
return to this course of action in 
the future and, finally, confes-
sion, an explicit verbal admission 
of all of our misdeeds.
The process of teshuvah leads 
to forgiveness at any time, but 
it has special power on Yom 
Kippur. As the Rambam writes: 
“Yom Kippur is a time of teshu-
vah for every individual and 
for the multitudes, and it is the 
climax of forgiveness … there-
fore everyone is obligated to do 
teshuvah and to confess on Yom 
Kippur.
” (Laws of Teshuvah, 2:7). 
On Yom Kippur, the force of 
Divine forgiveness is at its apex. 
Our heartfelt pleas for forgive-
ness are more readily accepted.

AN EXTRA STEP IS NEEDED
The Rambam points out that the 
process of teshuvah is sufficient 
when it comes to misdeeds that 
have damaged our relationship 
with God, but words and actions 
that cause harm to other people 
require an extra step. To rectify 
the harm done to others, we 
need to personally ask their 
forgiveness, as well as make any 
monetary restitution if we have 
caused them financial loss.
Indeed, the Rambam says, 
based on the Talmud, that Yom 
Kippur does not atone for sins 
between one person and anoth-
er unless personal forgiveness 
has been granted. It is for this 
reason that in the days leading 
up to Yom Kippur,we ask for 
forgiveness from whoever we 
have wronged in the past year, so 
as to be able to access the gift of 
Divine forgiveness.
The Rambam writes that it’s 
important for the person who 
has been wronged to act with 
compassion and graciously grant 
forgiveness. In this way, relation-
ships damaged by our wrongdo-
ing can be fully restored.

The bottom line is that the 
redemptive, purifying powers 
of Yom Kippur can only be 
accessed through real action and 
sincere intention — through a 
deep and meaningful teshuvah 
process. This also explains why 
an important part of our Yom 
Kippur prayers is devoted to 
viduy — “confession.
” In each of 
the Yom Kippur Amidahs, there 
is a section devoted to confes-
sion. The fact that the confes-
sions formula is embedded in 
the most intimate and personal 
of our prayers — the Amidah 
— indicates our confession is 
meant to be a direct encounter 
with God, a moment of truth as 
we stand before our Creator, our 
defenses down, without any pre-
tensions of innocence.
The relationship between 
confession and the other com-
ponents of the teshuvah process 
is important to understand. The 
teshuvah process is largely an 
internal process of transforma-
tion, buried in the heart, mind 
and soul of a person. Regret 
for the past and resolve for the 
future are a state of mind. It is 

TORAH EXPANDED

Rabbi 
Warren 
Goldstein

40 | SEPTEMBER 9 • 2021 

