The things that cause us shame on a regular basis are not the “sins” that we are repenting for on Yom Kippur.
When do we generally feel self-critical? What types of actions make us feel shame and embarrassment? Such moments of inner discomfort often come from a social situation in which we have behaved in a manner that we feel makes us look bad in some way, awkward or stupid or ungrateful or ungraceful or uncouth or boring or self-engrossed. We suffer from having said the “wrong” thing in a certain situation or made a faux pas or dressed in a way that wasn’t commensurate with the social setting or perhaps talked too much or in too revealing a way or too lightly or too seriously or sounded too knowledgeable or not knowledgeable enough. The list could go on and on in multiple contradictory directions because we can really feel ashamed in social situations about pretty much any way of acting.
So here we are on Yom Kippur saying the viduy, admitting all the “sins” we have committed, and none of those ways of being that cause us so much shame on a regular basis are listed. Yes, there is much mention of how we speak to and treat other people, but – and here is the important point – such treatment only qualifies as a “sin” if it is a sin that we have committed lefanekha, “before You,” in the eyes of God, not “before other people,” in the eyes of those around us, in the eyes of society. The question is not whether other people thought we looked stupid, but whether, in God’s eyes, we spoke or acted in a way that harmed or denigrated or desecrated in any way the divinity of the people and of the beautiful world that God created. The question “before God” is not how it “looked” to other people, but what was going on inside our heart and how that purity and truth manifested or didn’t manifest in the world.
Yes, there may be some overlap between the two categories, the social and the divine. There may be times when society’s norms as we have internalized them overlap with God’s desires and expectations of us. But there are surely many instances where the two systems diverge greatly, and one of our tasks during this season is to tease those out, to realign with our sense of what God wants of us, not to get confused or muddled by what society wants, by what might make us “look good,” but to really check inside our hearts and find the place of purity and sincerity and return to it, return to the place inside us that always resides lefanekha, “before You,” that knows what really matters and cares not what the world says, that stays true to that shining pure light inside each of us and strives to act and speak to others from that place, always.
Peace comes to replace shame when we realign in this way. We have strayed, perhaps, but we find our way home. And there is no shame when we know we are home.
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