Yom Kippur Morning 2022
Of all the days in the Jewish year, you would think that Yom Kippur is the one where we put on display all the examples of repentance and forgiveness, teshuva and heshbon ha-nefesh. I mean, what better way to illustrate to us all not the just whys of repentance, but also the hows? And yet, we immerse ourselves in the machzor and only see the what and almost never the how. It is almost like the tradition is telling us by not telling us. Well, not ‘almost.’ That is exactly what is going on.
For example, you might think that someone like King David would be a perfect example of repentance. If you don’t know why, you are not alone. King David is surrounded by mythology. He beat up Goliath. He had this amazing ability to unite Israel. He did amazing things as a king. And, not insignificantly, he was a callous murderer. As Facebook status would say about our relationship with David, ‘It’s complicated.’
You see, King David had what can only be called a healthy libido. And since he was the king he was certain he could get away with anything to feed his libido. And he did. One evening, after winning a battle against the Ammonites and Rabbahites he sees Bathsheva, the wife of Uriah the Hittite, taking a bath on her roof. (By the way, this is where Leonard Cohen got the inspiration for his song ‘Hallelujah’). Anyway, he is aroused and commits adultery with her, getting her pregnant. It gets worse: After he finds out she’s pregnant, he recalls Batsheva’s soldier-husband Uriah the Hittite from the front lines and tells him to go home. This way, it would look like Uriah’s baby. But instead of going into his home, Uriah sleeps at the entrance of the palace doing guard duty with the other soldiers. David was pretty frustrated. And so he tried to get him drunk to go back into his house. Still Uriah, the dedicated soldier refused to abandon his outfit. And then David did the unthinkable.
David tells Joab, his general, take Uriah to the front lines and abandon him there and, in David’s words, ‘so that he may be struck down and die’[1] Of course, that is exactly what happened. David lost Uriah the Hittite and some servants but this way, Uriah would never have a claim against David or Bathsheva. David thought we was in the clear. And yet, his tzoris was just beginning, and let me share the story where his tzoris begins.
A minor prophet named Nathan who used to hang around the palace came to David. They have an interesting conversation that goes something like this: A rich man and a poor man lived in the same town. 2 The rich man owned a lot of sheep and cattle, 3 but the poor man had only one little lamb that he had bought and raised. The lamb became a pet for him and his children. He even let it eat from his plate and drink from his cup and sleep on his lap. The lamb was like one of his own children.
4 One day someone came to visit the rich man, but the rich man didn’t want to kill any of his own sheep or cattle and serve it to the visitor. So he stole the poor man’s little lamb and served it instead.
5 David was furious with the rich man and said to Nathan, “I swear by the living Lord that the man who did this deserves to die! 6 And because he didn’t have any pity on the poor man, he will have to pay four times what the lamb was worth.”
7 Then Nathan told David:
You are that man![2]
So where is the tzoris? When David heard this allegory he knew that Uriah was the the lamb and that he, David, was the thief. That is the moment David knew he was responsible.
Of course, the Tanach tells us that David repented and was forgiven of his terrible sin. But even though he was allowed to write the Psalms, as the tradition says, he was not allowed to build the Temple and his reputation was never forgotten. Forgiven, yes, but still never forgotten.
David seems like the perfect person to include in the machzor. And yet, he is never even mentioned. How come? Really, why not tell us hows of repentance? Just tell us the magic words to make all of our sins go away. In this, the machzor is silent.
I have a theory: I think it is because if we see it simply modeled, we would copy the model, say the perfunctory repentance words and think that we are in the clear, forgiven, and have fully repented.
But you know as well as I do that that is not how Jewish tradition works. What is involved, rather, is a struggle and a personal struggle, at that. And the personal struggle is hard, often embarrassing and usually public. And when it happens, everyone walks away with a black eye and it takes a long time to heal from that.
And that is exactly what happened in our Reform Movement this past year. And when the Nathan moment came, it hit like a ton of bricks.
After one of the professors at Hebrew Union College died, it was announced on Facebook simply as a passing. Yet, it would be much more than that.
Right after it went up, one of my female colleagues told her story of harassment and abuse at his hands. She related that she complained to the college but to no avail. And then the floodgates opened. Other rabbis, mostly women and people of color started telling their stories about this and other faculty at the College. This was a disaster for the College, and rightly so.
The College could do what most corporations do: simply say this was in isolated incident. Ask for repentance and then hope it all goes away. But the College, to its credit, is not a corporation. It is a Jewish institution where we expect every decision to be based on Jewish thought and practice.
To make a much longer story shorter, the College hired a firm to investigate everything. In a nutshell, they verified that two Presidents of the College engaged in inappropriate sexual behaviour. Several teachers, many of them my instructors, were credibly accused of racism, misogyny, and sexual inappropriate behaviour. The details are ugly. Just like King David’s details. And from that point on, every one of us who learned with our teachers is asking ‘just what did they know?’
But, the Nathan moments didn’t stop there for our movement. No, the Union for Reform Judaism had its own moments of reckoning as did the Central Conference of American Rabbis and our summer camps. Each one of these organizations were accused of some pretty awful things ranging from camp directors having inappropriate relationships with counselors to ethics complaints of every color. In fact, if you can list an -ism, it is probably in at least half of the complaints: ageism, sexism, homophobia, racism. It was an astonishing year for us but it needed to happen because real repentance demands it before anything else can happen.
But now looking at this whole year of revelation, I ask myself, how did it ever get like this? The answer can once again be found in King David. As King David tried to hide it, so did all of our institutions. Those who complained were ignored or threatened. And so when that first teacher died and it all came out, the fear fell away. The brutal truth of this though is that if he hadn’t died, the abuse would still be going on and everyone would go on as they always had.
But like Nathan, it was exposed and like David, the real work began to happen. Maimonides tells us what repentance needs to look like. First is confession. Full confession. Not holding anything back confession. Using names confession. This is, obviously, the most embarrassing part of the whole process. But all David had to do was confess that he was, indeed, that rich man. That was his confession. But remember I said that the reason no one is modelled in the machzor is because each of us has a different road to repentance? The Reform movement could not simply say, ‘Okay. Thanks for letting us know. We’ll take care of it and we’re sorry.’ That’s what corporations do, not authentic institutions or people. We ought to be striving to be authentic people and it’s really challenging.
So Maimonides tells us to confess fully and then the next step is telling us how we are going to fix it. I am happy that the College, the camps, the URJ and the CCAR are all not just telling us how they are going to fix it, but are actually fixing it. The only way to heal is to confront the illness. This we have done.
It is like the story in the Talmud. There we find the amazing story of Elazar ben Durdaya. After a life of extreme and reckless extravagance, a passing comment from a prostitute forced Elazar ben Durdaya to confront the unfortunate trajectory of his life. As the story goes, he beseeched a series of unusual agents to intercede to on his behalf: the mountains and valleys, heaven and earth, the sun and the moon, stars and the constellations, yet each refused in turn, claiming “before we ask for you, we must ask for ourselves.”
Finally, Elazar ben Durdaya came to a monumental realization and pronounced a fundamental axiom of self-improvement: “the matter depends on me alone.” He lowered his head and uttered a piercing cry of such agony that his soul departed on the spot. His efforts were rewarded with a Heavenly voice that proclaimed, “Rabbi Elazar ben Durdaya has earned a place in the World to Come.”
So, the end of this story is bizarre. Okay, he earned a place in heaven because of his repentance. But that has nothing to do with now. There are too many of us who are holy on Yom Kippur on the 10th of Tishri but our repentance means nothing on 11th of Tishre.
And since ours is not a religion where the whole purpose of repentance is not about getting into heaven, what is going on here? Maybe it is this: yes the repentance earned him a place in heaven but not because the repentance accepted this or that doctrine. Rather his repentance changed his life and it was his change of life that made his name be a blessing. His struggle, his confession and his honesty to confront who he was, what he had said and what he had done made his name be bound up on the bonds of life. His trysts won’t be forgotten. Rather, they will be remembered. But they won’t be what defines him.
This is like the story of Ryann Milligan. You may not know her but her story is compelling and worth telling. She is a young woman who was photographed in her teen years with some friends during a summer night of drinking. She and her friends posed provocatively and with smiles on their faces sported swastikas on their backs and shoulders.
A couple of summers ago, this picture was posted on social media, which predictably, went viral. The community was quick to condemn her. A petition quickly began circulating calling for her to be expelled from her college, Penn State. So far, 154,000 people have signed the petition.
Like Elazar ben Durdaya she said that she was just a drunk high school kid who didn’t really understand what she was doing. But that was not her repentance. That was just an excuse. To make her repentance real, she reach out to a Rabbi to more fully understand the significance of this to the Jewish community and how she can reach out and make amends.”
Even before the world turned its attention to George Floyd, the community was in an uproar about this young woman. Should she be allowed to return to college? Should she be allowed to continue her internships? Would you hire a young woman who either was a Nazi or was so callous that she would sport this symbol of death and hate on her shoulder?
And she did exactly this. She met with the Rabbi and apologized. Through her tears of regret she said had no idea what the symbol meant or that it would be so offensive. She, like most people her age, knew so little about the Holocaust and classic anti-Semitism that it was a profound shock underscoring how our schools have failed in educating our children. She knew little about the 6 million.
My colleague shared that he found her to be contrite, sincere and most of all willing to make amends and learn from her mistakes. After meeting with her and helping her to understand the error of her behavior, she wrote this statement:
‘My name is Ryann Milligan. I am a student at the Pennsylvania State University, enrolled in the Rehabilitation and Human Services program. Recently, an old photo of me appeared on social media, depicting me in a horrible light. The photo was taken five years ago, when I was sixteen years old. In this photo, I am posing with some friends, smiling with a swastika on my shoulder. I have felt nothing but remorse about this photo and its being published. This photo does not express who I am. I do not endorse and have never intended to express hatred or anti-Semitism. I wish the symbol was never drawn on my shoulder, and I deeply regret that the photo was taken.
Without hesitation, I apologize for the photo and the tone it suggests. Hatred is not a laughing matter and should never be treated in such a callous and insensitive way. I sincerely apologize.
Please know that I am sickened that I have added to the pain of others. My intent is to live a life of purpose; one in which I am able to help others and have a positive impact on my world. My education has provided me the tools to be empathetic and sensitive to others and I have learned the importance of cultural competence.
Over the past month, I have been working on educating myself on Jewish culture. I have met with two student leaders of Jewish organizations at Penn State.
Please know that I am not a fascist, or a hater of anyone, nor do I support hate. Images of hatred, like swastikas, do not reflect who I am. I am sincerely sorry for the hurt this photo has caused to people, and the unintended consequence of spreading hate and fear especially during these difficult times. Please find it in your hearts to accept my heartfelt apology.’[3]
Rabbi Hama ben Hanina wrote in the Talmud, true repentance brings healing to the world. Some have said that Yom Kippur is a serious somber day. This is true, but, for me at least, I like this somber day because its emphasis is on hope, not despair. We can be better tomorrow. We do not need to be prisoners of the past. We can move forward from all the pain and disappointment, if we will it. Nations can turn their swords into plowshare, we can change our ways, repent and move forward with hope. Our tradition teaches that God waits for us, even until the last moment, to repent, for it is not the death of sinners that God wants, but that we repent and live. God will wait for us until the last minute. We have all seen what real repentance can do.
Our Reform institutions have confessed and made everything public and available at the expense of embarrassment and the Schadenfreude of those who love to see Reform Jews in the hot seat. But it was what we did. But we need to remember that that is not who we are.
I am proud of my movement. And we can extend the honesty of our movement to this very bima with exactly the same questions. How are we protecting our own students? Are they safe at camp? Are we really listening to what they are saying? What are we at home teaching with our remarks when we think no one is listening? Or to use a word that seems to be so vogue today, what are we grooming our children to be? I see lots of grooming to be racist. To be sexist. To be homophobic. I would love to see more grooming of children to be tolerant, embracing, and respectful. Our tradition expects it and it expects each of us, each of us as individuals and each of us as leadership of this temple to constantly keep our eyes and hearts open.
The new year begins with the sweetness of the apple and honey on our tongue. And yet somehow that sweetness disappears as the year goes on and what comes out of us is anything but sweet. We groom for hatred too often. We ignore the pleas of the vulnerable. We judge and close our ears off to repentance. Too often the only teshuvah we do, is to return to who we were before Yom Kippur. But it need not be that way. As a colleague so poetically said, “Hearts of stone sink the hater and drown the troubled. Hearts that beat anew, can bring new life to those who are troubled.”[4]
All of us have made choices, some good and some not. It was once told that after a long, hard climb up the mountain, some spiritual seekers finally found themselves in front of a great teacher. Bowing deeply, they asked the question that had been burning inside them for so long: “How do we become wise?”
There was a long pause until the teacher emerged from meditation. Finally the reply came: “Good choices.”
“But, teacher, how do we make good choices?”
“From experience,” responded the wise one.
“And how do we get experience?”
“Bad choices,” smiled the teacher.
We know we have all made some bad choices this past year. But, once again, remember that our choices are not always who we are. Our choices are what we have done. The once choice this year is now that we know, what do we do? Our machzor does not guide us to look to what others have done and simply repeat their words. The question before us all, the question that the machzor asks us on every page is simple: what will you do?
God is waiting for us. The person sitting next to you waiting for us. The prophet Ezekiel assures us of one thing and it is the go-to verse for this day of awe:
וְנָתַתִּ֤י לָכֶם֙ לֵ֣ב חָדָ֔שׁ וְר֥וּחַ חֲדָשָׁ֖ה אֶתֵּ֣ן בְּקִרְבְּכֶ֑ם וַהֲסִ֨רֹתִ֜י אֶת־לֵ֤ב הָאֶ֙בֶן֙ מִבְּשַׂרְכֶ֔ם וְנָתַתִּ֥י לָכֶ֖ם לֵ֥ב בָּשָֽׂר׃[5]
And I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit into you: I will remove the heart of stone from your body and give you a heart of flesh.
Today we get our heart transplant. And, in doing so, we, like our Reform movement, like Ryann Milligan, and like Elazar ben Durdaya can begin to turn our lives around and be a builder of a broken and desperate world.
Shanna Tova
[1] II Samuel 11:17
[2] The Holy Bible: The Contemporary English Version (Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 1995), 2 Sa 12:1–7.
[3] I am indebted to Rabbi Greg Marx https://americanrabbi.com/the-repentance-of-ryann-milligan-by-gregory-s-marx/ from whose sermon I am taking this story
[4] https://americanrabbi.com/the-repentance-of-ryann-milligan-by-gregory-s-marx/
[5] Ezekiel 11:19
