ESSAY: Day of Love, Not Judgment (Yom Kippur)

We think of Yom Kippur as a time of judgment, but it is actually a time of great love and compassion.  

The First Yom Kippur

On the original Yom Kippur, after the sin of the Golden Calf, what happened was not judgment but forgiveness; on this day, God forgave the people and gave Moshe the second set of tablets to deliver to them, letting them know the relationship was not over.   

This is a day of second and third and fourth and infinite chances, a day of finding out that no matter what we do, God is still there, as solid as a rock, not leaving us.  

Al Het’s – Testing God

Maybe that’s why we list all these many al het’s, all these sins, many of which we have surely not done.  We are like a small child testing a parent’s allegiance.  If we are disrespectful, will you still be there?  How about if we lie?  Or how about if we live our lives in a rushed way that does not honor the earth and each other and our food and our speech?  Do you see that, God?  What about that?  Are you still with us?  Do you still love us?  How about now?  

God tested Avraham with 10 trials, but we test God with our double-alphabet-long list of al het’s.  We are insecure about God’s love.  We want to know how far it extends, whether it will break under pressure, whether, if we don’t perform, if we do it wrong, we will be abandoned.  And so we find all the places of shame inside us, all the things we regret and wish were not true, all the mistakes and imperfections, and we throw them all up for God to see and examine, saying – what about now?  Still with me now?

Still With Us

And we receive back a resounding YES.  All that chatter and nervousness of the thousand al het’s is met by a smooth steady triumphant response:  Vayomer Hashem, salahti kidevarekha!  God says:  I forgive as you requested!   Everything you say, everything you did  – I hear it all, says God, and I am still steady, still with you.  Ki le’olam hasdo.   God’s love is forever.  

Hashem, Hashem – Unchanging

This steadiness is a core aspect of God.  In that moment of forgiveness on Mount Sinai on the first Yom Kippur, God revealed to Moshe God’s 13 attributes, which we recite again and again on Yom Kippur.  The list begins by repeating God’s name twice: Hashem Hashem, and the rabbis explain that the repetition indicates that God is the same God before a sin and after a sin.  The same.  No change.  Like the rock that Moshe was tucked into when he heard these attributes, steady as that rock, unchanging.  Hashem, Hashem.  No matter what you do, I am the same loving God.  

Like a Tantruming Child

We are like a tantruming child, kicking and screaming, held by the loving container of God’s rock, taking in that steadiness, slowly co-regulating with its calm rhythm so that gradually all the frenzied energy of the al het’s, the doubts, the mistakes, maybe even some anger, so that gradually all of that comes to some greater stillness.  God is right here, still holding you.  

God’s Steadiness With Yonah

It’s like Yonah.  No matter what he did, God stayed with him.  Running away in a ship, hiding down in its bowels, getting thrown into the sea, and there God is to catch him, to literally fish him out of trouble.  God could have found someone else to do the mission, but no, there is a steadfastness to God’s attachment to Yonah.  God does not give up on Nineveh and God does not give up on Yonah.  We may give up on ourselves, but God catches us again and again and holds steady for us, still believing in us.  We push God  away, like Yonah, or like that young tantruming child, and still, God holds us.  Hashem, Hashem, unchanging, unperturbed, still with us.

Essence Revealed Through Rupture

These thirteen attributes that God revealed to Moshe on that first Yom Kippur – it makes sense that they were revealed then, after a rupture.  Ruptures unearth the truth about a relationship.  Now, knowing that God stayed with us through it all, we can see God’s essence revealed. We have been through something together and we are strengthened.  We can see that the core of the relationship, the essence of God, is love and kindness and compassion.   This is the rock that holds us steady, the hesed, the love which continually creates and sustains the world.  It’s like we pushed and pushed, screamed and kicked and would not calm down until finally God offers us a special view over the edge of the universe, a view that shows a vast green meadow of infinite love. We stand, perched above, looking down, until gradually, our flailing begins to die down as we sense the calm, the steadiness, the endlessness of God’s care.   We relax into the field, maybe we even lie down in it.  We are quieted by God’s steady love.    

13 Attributes Like A Blanket

And so on Yom Kippur we repeat this truth about God again and again: Hashem, Hashem, God, the same before and after, at the beginning and the end, always steady, a God compassionate and gracious, slow to anger, abounding in love and faithfulness, preserving kindness . . .  Hashem, Hashem, Kel rahum vehanun . . .   Let the words wash over you like they passed over Moshe in the rock, let them be for you like a blanket of love, like the top of a sukkah, a sukat shalom, a canopy of peace that slowly descends upon you.  Hashem, Hashem kel rahum vehanun.  We are wrapped in God’s compassionate loving essence.  

This is the truth about God.  We thought it was judgment, which surely also exists and needs to exist, but turns out not to be the core, the essence.  We thought this was the day of judgment, but it turns out to be the day of compassion and love.  Like Avraham at the akedah (Binding), we thought we heard a harsh command, but when we get a little closer, we hear only love on the very inside.  

Our Resistance To God’s Love

This can be strangely hard to bear, this message of divine compassion and love.  We are at times much like Yonah, resistant to this message, closing our ears, running away from it.  We want it so much, more than anything, and yet at the same time we don’t fully trust or believe it.  Maybe we are scared of it.  It is so unfamiliar. We live in a world of tit for tat conditionality, a transactional world, so that it requires a great leap to really feel into what God is offering us, the steadiness, the unconditionality, the endlessness of this kindness, this love.  We are used to earning our keep, knowing where we stand, so we are not sure if we can trust this love that comes unbidden and unearned.  We brace against it in some way because it opens us, makes us feel vulnerable and unguarded.  

God’s Patience With Our Process

We resist, and yet God remains patient with us and our process.  Touchingly, God continues to tend to us in this uncertainty, as God tended to Yonah, like a good teacher, with patience, continually offering other ways of learning this message.  The storm didn’t fully work.  And preaching to the people of Nineveh didn’t fully work either. Ok.  Let’s try the gourd.   God is like a dedicated teacher who will not give up on her student, patiently waiting for understanding to dawn.   We are each given such lessons, shown the way, a thousand times and in a thousand different ways.  God waits patiently for us to realize how much we are loved.  

Erekh apaim, one of the 13 attributes, means “slow to anger,” and it also has the implication of this incredible patience with us, erekh, long, through apaim, through the nose, like a long deep breath (Em LaMikra on Exodus 34:6) — that’s how God is with us.   We can take our own long deep breath and sense that quality of patience, how God waits for us patiently, and maybe also how we could adopt that stance towards ourselves.  Erekh apayim, the slow deep breath of eternity. It’s ok if it takes time. Ad yom moto tekhakeh lo, until the day of death, God waits for us.  

Person Matters More Than Project

What we are learning, ever so slowly, is how much we matter to God, how precious we are.  If what mattered was the project, then the book of Yonah would have ended after the mission to Nineveh was completed.  But strangely, the book of Yonah does not end there, but ends with God’s continued tending to Yonah and to Yonah’s growth.  It is Yonah that occupies primary attention, not for his ability to perform and produce and accomplish, which he also does, but just for Yonah’s own sake, because Yonah matters to God.  That is the truth for each of us.  What we do is great, and God is glad for us to accomplish things in the world, but in the end of the day, what matters to God is just us and our growth. 

Photo by Arzella BEKTAŞ at Pexels