Rabbi Harold M. Schulweis Sermons

Yom Kippur, 1996

by Harold M. Schulweis

They are linked together but they are not the same. Rosh Hashanah is not Yom Kippur and Yom Kippur is not Rosh Hashanah. They each speak with different voices, express different attitudes and teach different lessons. Bracketed by the same term, "Days of Awe", Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur are not only different but even contradictory.

How does Rosh Hashanah start at home? With kiddush, with the sanctification of the wine that is associated with joy, and with a challah in the shape of a ladder on which we do not place salt, as on the Sabbath, but dip in honey.

Yom Kippur begins around a bare table -- no wine, no challah, no honey; a bare table with two candles and a yahrzeit light of the soul. Yom Kippur is a day of abstentions from food, drink, conjugal relations, bathing and cosmetics.

We dress differently. On Rosh Hashanah we wear our finest clothes, suits, dresses, well polished shoes. But on Yom Kippur there are no leather shoes. At best we are to wear straw slippers or stocking feet in the same manner that you sit shoeless during shivah the seven days of mourning.No shoes on Yom Kippur. With shoes we can tread the earth, stomp, stamp and grind down whatever is in your way. On Yom Kippur you walk the earth less confidently.

Rosh Hashanah is to remember life. Yom Kippur is to remember death. On Yom Kippur the ritual clothing worn is a tallith and kittel, a prayer shawl and a white garment like a shroud. On Yom Kippur we fall upon our faces, lie motionless, still as a corpse.

Notice the biblical choice the rabbis made for the reading of the Torah.The opening lines from the Bible read on Rosh Hashanah speaks of the Lord remembering Sarah as He had said. "And the Lord did for Sarah as He has spoken and a child was born and his name was laughter -- Yitzchak."

On Yom Kippur the first sentence for the Torah reading deals with the death of children, the death of the sons of Aaron, Nadav and Abihu who were struck down for bringing strange fire onto the altar. Aaron, their father is dumbstruck and remains silent.

Rosh Hashanah is not Yom Kippur. On Rosh Hashanah the shofar is blown, the symbol of triumph, the coronation of the king, the revelation at Sinai, the coming of the Messiah. On Yom Kippur the shofar is muted. There is nothing to shout about.

Rosh Hashanah deals with the creation of the universe, more properly the creation of Adam and Eve. The creation of the universe took place on the 25th of Elul but the creation of the human being took place on the first of Tishri, our Rosh Hashanah. Rosh Hashanah is the creation of the crown of creation, the exaltation of the human being, the power, the potentiality, the will of the human spirit. Rosh Hashanah recognizes the assertive, energetic, activistic, powerful human being. Adam and Eve are ordained "To multiply, fill the earth and subdue it. You shall have dominion over the fish of the sea, over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that creeps upon the earth."

Rosh Hashanah captures the heroic, activistic character of the human being who is elevated as partner with God in creation. In the Hymn of Glory we declare "His glory is on me, and mine on Him." The human being needs God and God needs the human being. (Genesis Rabbah 30:10) When the prophet Isaiah declared "You are My witnesses and I am the Lord" the rabbis put these thoughts into God's Mind: "If you are My witnesses I am God. But if you are not My witnesses, I am, as it were, not God. If you exercise your free will on behalf of My glory then you strengthen My left hand and it becomes like My right hand. But if you do not exercise your free will on my behalf, you make My right hand like my left hand. If you exercise your free will on My behalf, then God neither sleeps nor slumbers. But if not, God as it were, is asleep." (Mechilta: Shirata, B'shalach) What greater paean to man than that in the Midrash (Deuteronomy Rabbah, Re'ch 44) "When a human being goes on his road, a troop of angels proceed in front of him and proclaim: 'Make way for the image of the Holy One, blessed be He.'"

This is the spirit of Rosh Hashanah that extols human will, human competence and power. I have loved that heroic feature of the day. Further, as an American Jew, I found that ancient Jewish spirit of optimism and activism echoed in Emerson, Thoreau, Mark Twain, and William James. I found it embedded in the American story we were told as children and repeat to our children: The Little Engine That Could. It is the supreme confidence of self-will. "I know I can. I know I can. I know I can." And then upon reaching the top of the mountain, the lesson learned, "I knew I could, I knew I could, I knew I could."

That potency of the human spirit I found in Rosh Hashanah.It is why in earlier years I always favored Rosh Hashanah over Yom Kippur. Yom Kippur was alien to me. Yom Kippur confesses human weakness and reminds me of my finiteness and frailty. There at the heart of its melancholy liturgy, replete with metaphors that put me in my place.

"Man's origin is dust and he returns to dust. He obtains his bread at the peril of his life. He is like a fragile potsherd, like the grass that withers, like the flower that fades, like a fleeting shadow, like a passing cloud, like a wind that blows, like the floating dust, like a dream that vanishes."

I felt distant from Yom Kippur. It seemed to do little for my self-esteem or the majesty of man.Still, Yom Kippur was not to be denied.

As I grow older, cling to my powers, and confront serious times more frequently than before, Yom Kippur speaks to me. I am more familiar with sickness, dying, and death, with hospitals and mortuaries. The words of T.S. Elliot resonates in my inner world. "I have seen the moment of my greatness flicker and I have seen the eternal footman hold my coat and snicker and in short I was afraid."

More often now I stand before the open grave and call to mind the terrible truths of Ecclesiastes: "There is no one who has power over the spirit to hold back the wind...there is no authority over the day of death."I grow more aware of shadow sides of failure, bankruptcy, the pink slip, the weightlessness of my vocation, the disappointment with my dreams, I have come to appreciate the depth of Yom Kippur.

The bravado of the little engine collapses. I smile at the bravado voice, "Pull yourself up by your bootstraps." In the gloom that crowds into my life, I hear another voice. "I can't. I cannot will to hope. I cannot will to feel. I cannot will to laugh. Say cheese" says the photographer. He flashes his camera and thinks he has captured on the negative my affirmation. But he has only caught the teeth revealed or the lips part, the open mouth, a poor simulation of happiness.

The Little Engine That Could is for children. There are many things I can't.

As I have grown older, I have come to understand through Yom Kippur revelations a different part of myself and of the tradition.I come to Yom Kippur services not as I do to the Rosh Hashanah services. I enter Kol Nidre not as a success, not as victor nor as conqueror. I enter with the sting of defeat, my own and those who know despair, with the memory of those who have had their wills broken. I come with those who have shared with me their compulsions, things over which they could exercise no control, addictions against which "will" has failed. Theirs are not my addictions but I know their struggles. Am I not possessed by similar addictions weakness, only in different places and in different degrees?

Their Yom Kippur confessions echo my own soul. I cannot isolate their struggles, keep out of my study or out of my awareness. I have seen and heard the face and voice of the statistics. One out of ten American are addicted to some substance, haunted by compulsions to gamble, to drink, to smoke, to overeat, to over-work. I have faced them. Are we immune from similar excesses, compulsions that mock our will and taunt our noblest resolutions? Can I call upon resolutions to will them all away?

Who are those we call addicts? Who are we? Why do we hurt ourselves? Oblivious to the consequences, why do we rip our flesh, ingest poisons, inhale the dust of despair? Who are we who remain alone behind the marble doors bored, empty, worthless in our own eyes? Families unravel, children grow apart, anger deepens, the will is exhausted.

Surely these compulsions to overcome the pain and fear are not derived from perversity or mindless hedonism. They come out of heaviness of heart and strong feelings of helplessness. They mock the exaggeration of the will and the fantasies of The Little Engine That Could. There is another story to be told, another tale to be read.

I am given a book on the Twelve Steps to recovery. This one is published by Jewish auspices and is endorsed by JACS, an abbreviation for "Jewish Alcoholics Chemically Dependent Persons and Significant Others". It is a book that has helped many. It is based on the Twelve Steps of AA founded in 1939, arguably the most powerful model of psychological healing in our society. For me, it offers insight into the tensions between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur. It helps me enter the mind of the defeated.

I read and re-read the first few steps, and I want you to think of it in terms of our discussion of Rosh Hashanah assertiveness and the powerlessness which Yom Kippur confesses. The first three steps declare (1) "We admitted we were powerless over alcohol, that our lives have become unmanageable. (2) We came to believe that a power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity. (3) We made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood Him." What is stated here?

It is a confession of defeat, of powerlessness, of shortcomings, and an expression of the need to find help, guidance and direction from elsewhere, to have "God remove all the defects of our character".

I hear in the Twelve Steps the Yom Kippur footsteps of those who walk shoeless. Here I do not stand before God as victor, triumphant, successful but as finite, fragile, frail. The voice of the Twelve Steps helps me understand the different tones of Yom Kippur, the sounds of those who have tried repeatedly to rise on their own two feet and have repeatedly fallen.

Am I cut off from God in my failure?Is the way to find God only through my independence or autonomy or self-sufficiency? What is sought to emulate is not the majestis dei, the majesty of God, the God who is Judge, Ruler and King but humilitas dei, the God of humility. I hunger for God as Comforter, Consoler, Forgiver. It is a sentiment is echoed in the Talmud Megillah 31a, "Whenever you find the power of God you will also find His humility." Can I find the helping, forgiving God through my own humility, through the brokenness of my heart, and the admission of my helplessness? It is a different mood and a different dimension of God I discover.

God, not as Sovereign Judge but as Lover who knows the frailty of His children and knows my suffering. The verses in the Machzor are lifted from the Book of Jeremiah 31:20: "God hears the lament of Rachel's weeping for her estranged children. God hears Ephraim bemoaning his lot and God is moved. "Is not Ephraim my beloved son, my beloved child, for even when I speak against him, I remember him with affection. With love my heart yearns for him. I will surely have compassion upon him."

Yom Kippur prayers help me acknowledge my limitations. "What are we? What is our life? What is our strength, our might, our power? What can we say before Thee?" I throw myself on Thy will, Thy power, Thy strength. The prayers of Yom Kippur cry out, "Shaddai, we are clay in Thine hand." It is a cry for help, for another voice and hand to shape me, mold me, form me, to tell me what to do and to set matters right.

Yom Kippur is the Sabbath of Sabbaths. The tried and tried soul cries out for "a moral holiday", a time to relax the clenched jaw of will, the drivenness to overcome, and find the tranquility which comes from placing my life in His hands. "The Lord is nigh to the broken hearted." (Psalm 34:18)

In contrast to the assertiveness of the Rosh Hashanah self, the Yom Kippur self comes closest to what Chasidism called "bittul hayesh" -- the nullification of the self. It is a notion I have not paid much attention to before Yom Kippur.

"Bittul hayesh" -- self-nullification, offers a paradoxical wisdom. Lose yourself in order to find yourself, forget yourself in order to remember yourself. The nullification of the self is a form of liberation. It means to rid oneself of the debris that buries my real self. It means to remove the rubble of power, property, prestige and pettiness, the rocks of competitiveness, the dust of greed, the arrogance of the small self that weighs suffocates my real self. What is my small self and what is my real self? Consider an analogy: The human eye that doesn't see anything of itself is a healthy eye. With a cataract, it perceives reflected what looks like a cloud, and afflicted with glaucoma, it sees a rainbow halo around the light. But the eye that truly is healthy does not see itself. The unhealthy ego sees clouds and halos and mistakes them for the real self. It is alienated from the self. The healthy ego sees clearer and, not being focused on the egotistical, narrow self it may discover the larger self.

Yom Kippur is not Rosh Hashanah. They are different. Each of them is needed to correct the other. And they have instructed me. Rosh Hashanah alone without Yom Kippur places the whole world on my shoulders and tells me "you can't". But success, willfulness, and triumphalism are tempted by hubris, pride, and arrogance. There is a danger here. We need Yom Kippur to humble us, to remind us of the limitations of our self-will; to overcome the narcissism of our infancy.

Yet with Yom Kippur alone, without Rosh Hashanah, our humility tends to reduce our will, our courage, our competence. The laudable humility expressed in the pious notion, "With God's help" bends the knee, lays me prostrate, discourages me from my stature as co-mender of the tattered world. Over-dependence on His will paralyzes my moral will. The need for some power higher than myself must be watched lest it lead too readily to a dependence upon guru, imam, priest, rebbe, tzadik. The Yom Kippur reminder that our mind is limited, must not allow the disappointment with the limitations of our intellect to cause us to blow out the candle of reason altogether. The God who created us in His own image does not call for the sacrifice of our moral intelligence.

Still, with all these precautions, we must not deny the real feeling of hopelessness and the desperate need for intercession by another, someone who will take me out of my despair, someone who will tell me: "Rise from your melancholy, cast the ashes from your head, change your clothes, light the candles, lift the cup of wine." The wisdom of defeat urges me: "Be strong in your weakness. Be victorious in your defeat". I need to care and I need to be cared for.

Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur possess different gestures, different moods. A creative tension between triumph and resignation, between transformation and acceptance. It is captured in the posture of prayer, before the Amidah. We bow down reciting the first two words of the benediction "Baruch ata" -- "Blessed art Thou". Bow down low, cast your eyes downward. You are not self-sufficient. You are not God. But do not bow too low or remain stooped too long. Rise up when you say "Adonai". Rise from your melancholy, cast the ashes from your head; change your clothes, light the candles, lift the cup of wine.

Note the body language of the Korim -- we fall on our knees in the Yom Kippur recitation of the Aleynu: "V'anachnu korim u'mishtachauh u'morim" -- "We bend low and submit and give thanks" and then we spring up and sing "Lifnay melech malchau hamlachim" -- before the King of all, the Holy One" There is a minhag, a folk custom, that one who stands beside another who has fallen, helps the other to his feet.

Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur are complementary. They are needed to correct the polar extremes of independence and dependence, of will and submission. Their end is the last prayer of the Neilah, the oneness that embraces both High Holyday attributes and ends in the crescendo repeated seven times and concludes with Tekiah Gedolah, the long blast of the shofar. The shofar that has been muted for twenty-four hours is finally heard. That sound of the shofar is blown through us, through our own breath. That breath in us is God given. (Genesis 2:7) "The Lord breathed into his nostrils the breath of life."

Listen to the breath of life within us. That breath is our strength, our comfort, our consolation, our help. That breath is innate, it is inborn. That breath enables us to fill our lungs with hope.

Where shall we look to strengthen our will? Above or below, His will or ours? Rosh Hashanah joined to Yom Kippur informs me. The choice is not between doing God's will and thereby extinguishing our own, or not doing God's will and thereby blowing our own horn. Humility and self-regard are not opposites. God's will and our own capacity must become one.

Where are we to find that support? I need transcendent power to flow into my own, to make God's will my own, and my own will His. There is a divinity within me larger than my egotistical self.We have to learn to look for help above and within: not the within that points to the narrow, greedy, manipulative ego; not the above that leaves all to God, but to the above that dwells below; within the larger self.

Yom Kippur reminds us to forget our smaller self. Rosh Hashanah reminds us to remember our larger self. Yom Kippur reminds us to fall on our knees. Rosh Hashanah reminds us to rise up. I need both Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur wisdom: how to conquer and how to lose, how to seize initiative and how to wait. Above and within are synonyms. (Emerson)

A Chasidic rabbi suggested the two verses that every wise man and woman should keep in their pockets. In one pocket "For My sake the world was created." And in the other pocket: "Dust art thou and unto dust thou shalt return."

Rosh Hashanah is not Yom Kippur. But they are both one.

* This document, or any portion thereof, may not be reproduced without the written permission of the author.