T
o those who fully open
themselves to it, Yom
Kippur is a life-transforming
experience. It tells us that God, who
created the universe in love and
forgiveness, reaches out to us in love
and forgiveness, asking
us to love and forgive
others. God never
asked us not to make
mistakes. All He asks
is that we acknowledge
our mistakes, learn from
them, grow through
them and make amends
where we can.
No religion has held such a high
view of human possibility. The God
who created us in His image gave us
freedom. We are not tainted by original
sin, destined to fail, caught in the grip
of an evil only Divine grace can defeat.
To the contrary, we have within us the
power to choose life. Together we have
the power to change the world.
Nor are we, as some scientific
materialists claim, mere concatenations
of chemicals, a bundle of selfish genes
blindly replicating themselves into the
future. Our souls are more than our
minds, our minds are more than our
brains, and our brains are more than
mere chemical impulses responding
to stimuli. Human freedom — the
freedom to choose to be better than
we were — remains a mystery but it
is not a mere given. Freedom is like a
muscle, and the more we exercise it, the
stronger and healthier it becomes.
Judaism constantly asks us to
exercise our freedom. To be a Jew
is not to go with the flow, to be like
everyone else, to follow the path of least
resistance, to worship the conventional
wisdom of the age. To the contrary, to
be a Jew is to have the courage to live in
a way that is not the way of everyone.
Each time we eat, drink, pray or go to
work, we are conscious of the demands
our faith makes on us to live God’s
will and be one of His ambassadors to
the world. Judaism always has been,
perhaps always will be, countercultural.
In ages of collectivism, Jews
emphasized the value of the individual.
In ages of individualism, Jews built
strong communities. When most of
humanity was consigned to ignorance,
Jews were highly literate. When
others were building monuments and
amphitheaters, Jews were building
schools. In materialistic times, they
kept faith with the spiritual. In ages
of poverty, they practiced tzedakah
so that none would lack the essentials
of a dignified life. The Sages said that
Abraham was called ha-ivri, “the
Hebrew,
” because all the world was on
one side (ever echad) and Abraham
on the other. To be a Jew is to swim
against the current, challenging the
idols of the age whatever the idol,
whatever the age.
So, as our ancestors used to say,
“’Zis schver zu zein a Yid,
” It is not
easy to be a Jew. But if Jews have
contributed to the human heritage out
of all proportion to our numbers, the
explanation lies here. Those of whom
great things are asked, become great —
not because they are inherently better
or more gifted than others but because
they feel themselves challenged,
summoned, to greatness.
Few religions have asked more
of their followers. There are 613
commandments in the Torah. Jewish
law applies to every aspect of our being,
from the highest aspirations to the
most prosaic details of quotidian life.
Our library of sacred texts — Tanach,
Mishnah, Gemara, Midrash, codes
and commentaries — is so vast that
no lifetime is long enough to master
it. Theophrastus, a pupil of Aristotle,
sought for a description that would
explain to his fellow Greeks what Jews
are. The answer he came up with was,
“a nation of philosophers.
”
So high does Judaism set the bar
that it is inevitable that we should fall
short time and again. Which means
that forgiveness was written into the
script from the beginning. God, said
the Sages, sought to create the world
under the attribute of strict justice, but
He saw that it could not stand. What
did He do? He added mercy to justice,
compassion to retribution, forbearance
to the strict rule of law. God forgives.
Judaism is a religion, the world’s first,
of forgiveness.
Not every civilization is as forgiving
as Judaism. There were religions that
never forgave Jews for refusing to
convert. Many of the greatest European
intellectuals — among them Voltaire,
Fichte, Kant, Hegel, Schopenhauer,
Nietzsche, Frege and Heidegger —
never quite forgave Jews for staying
Jews, different, angular, countercultural,
iconoclastic. Yet despite the tragedies
of more than 20 centuries, Jews and
Judaism still flourish, refusing to grant
victory to cultures of contempt or the
angel of death.
The majesty and mystery of Judaism
is that though, at best, Jews were a
small people in a small land, no match
for the circumambient empires that
periodically assaulted them, Jews did
not give way to self-hate, self-disesteem
or despair. Beneath the awe and
solemnity of Yom Kippur, one fact
shines radiant throughout: that God
loves us more than we love ourselves.
He believes in us more than we believe
in ourselves. He never gives up on us,
however many times we slip and fall.
The story of Judaism from beginning
to end is the tale of a love of God for
a people who rarely fully reciprocated
that love, yet never altogether failed to
be moved by it.
Rabbi Akiva put it best in a mere two
words: Avinu malkeinu. Yes, You are
our sovereign, God almighty, maker
of the cosmos, king of kings. But You
are also our father. You told Moses
to say to Pharaoh in Your name: “My
child, my firstborn, Israel.
” That love
continues to make Jews a symbol of
hope to humanity, testifying that a
nation does not need to be large to be
great, nor powerful to have influence.
Each of us can, by a single act of
kindness or generosity of spirit, cause
a ray of the Divine light to shine in
the human darkness, allowing the
Shechinah, at least for a moment, to be
at home in our world.
More than Yom Kippur expresses
our faith in God, it is the expression of
God’s faith in us.
This is an extract from the Koren Sacks Yom
Kippur machzor.
Yom Kippur: How
It Changes Us
Rabbi Lord
Jonathan
Sacks
SPIRIT
A WORD OF TORAH
34 | OCTOBER 10 • 2024