Celebrating the Jewish Holidays

By STEVEN J. RUBIN

Yom Kippur: Introduction

And this shall be to you a law of all time: In the seventh month, on the tenth day of the month, you shall practice self-denial; and you shall do no manner of work. . . . For on this day atonement shall be made for you to cleanse you of all your sins; you shall be clean before the LORD.
—Leviticus 16.29–30

“Yom Kippur,” as Golda Meir states in her autobiography, “is a day unlike any other.” And for many Jews, both observant and secular, it is the most solemn day of the year. Occurring on the tenth day of the Hebrew month of Tishri, Yom Kippur concludes the ten days of penitence, the “Days of Awe,” which begin with Rosh Hashanah. Often, it is the only time of the year when synagogues are filled to capacity. The reason for the importance of Yom Kippur is partly historical, partly psychological, and partly theological.

The concept of expiating the sins of the past year so as to begin the new year cleansed and purified dates back to at least biblical times. The Torah (Leviticus 16) describes a series of rituals by which the ancients were to purge themselves of their transgressions of the past year, culminating in the transference of human sins to a goat which was then banished into the desert (Leviticus 16.20–22). This ritual and its attendant belief in the ability to consign the trespasses of humans to animals seem to have persisted for many centuries. Known in Hebrew as kapparot, it was later practiced with a fowl rather than a goat. The ceremony was also transformed by some into one in which coins were twirled in a sack while enumerating one’s transgressions. The coins were then given to the poor. Today, it is customary to contribute to charity on Yom Kippur, a practice some trace to the ceremony of kapparot.

What has clearly survived for centuries is the mood and spirit of atonement, confession, and forgiveness that mark Yom Kippur observance. The holiday is a time for personal reflection—a final, year-end retrospective on the wrongs one may have committed (“knowingly or unknowingly”) against friends, neighbors, and family. There is also something distinctly communal in the observance of the holiday. Traditional prayers are recited in the plural (“The sin we have committed against You by our arrogance; The sin we have committed against You by our insolence”), so that restitution is attempted collectively, as a community of like-minded (and equally culpable) individuals.

Like Rosh Hashanah, Yom Kippur is a mostly synagogue-based holiday, with prescribed prayers and rituals throughout the evening before and the day itself. The major themes of the holiday—repentance, renewal, introspection—are reflected in the prayers composed specifically for the holiday. As Yom Kippur is a day of remembrance, a special memorial service (or yizkor) is held during the day. The holiday, often referred to as “The Sabbath of Sabbaths” (Shabbat Shabbaton), is also a day of fasting. Self denial has always been a part of the Yom Kippur observance: one is told to abstain from sex, cosmetics, bathing for pleasure, and from wearing leather shoes. A complete fast (no food or drink from sunset to sunset), however, is the principal mode of abstinence and one that serves several purposes. For some, fasting is a religious obligation. For others, it is a form of self-discipline as well. In a day that emphasizes the spiritual over the physical and the expiation of sins, fasting is a visible demonstration of the ability to control one’s desires and urges. Fasting is also a means of awakening compassion, a reminder of those who are hungry and in need. For whatever reason, fasting is an integral part of Yom Kippur observance and—as several of the selections in this section make obvious—it is undoubtedly one of the most important aspects of the holiday.

The poetry here, which begins with the work of medieval poets Solomon Ibn Gabirol and Yehuda Halevi and concludes with a poem by the late-twentieth-century American writer Robin Becker, ranges from the devotional to the irreverent. Ibn Gabirol’s “Confession,” for example, intended for the Yom Kippur service, is liturgical and worshipful, as is Halevi’s “Hear.” Both poems acknowledge their speakers’ frailties, while emphasizing God’s power and grandeur. Several centuries later, however, such poets as Cynthia Ozick, Chana Bloch, and Robert Pinsky—all of whose work is included in this section—express more doubt than belief, more indignation than faith. The speaker in Ozick’s poem “Yom Kippur, 5726,” for instance, challenges the meaningfulness and purpose of Yom Kippur ritual. Rather than praise God or plead for forgiveness, she would prefer that God apologize to her, both for the state of the world and for her own self-doubt: “Let God renounce what’s done/ And for his absence and my doubt/ Atone.” Pinsky, too, questions the relevance of Yom Kippur observance in his poem “Avenue,” whose narrator, drunk and “dead to the world,” inhabits a universe where penitence is neither sought nor granted. In a different tone but similar spirit, Chana Bloch finds little meaning in the traditional Yom Kippur fast, in her poem “The Converts.” Counting the hours until sunset, the poem’s speaker can think only of food: “fish / and little steaming potatoes.” Only “the converts,” those who have chosen Judaism deliberately and consciously, “sing every syllable,” savor every word. And the narrator, recognizing their passion, can only covet “what they think we’ve got.”

Not all the twentieth-century poems included in this section, of course, are characterized by a mood of cynicism or doubt. The poems of both Marcia Falk and Sam Goldemberg, for example, call forth the intended spirit of the holiday, as does Yehuda Amichai’s memory poem, “On the Day of Atonement.” In this poem, Amichai’s speaker pauses in front of an Arab button and thread shop in the Old City of Jerusalem, and recalls that his father had a similar store in another place, another time. The narrator’s concluding thoughts coincide with the end of the Yom Kippur service. The shopkeeper, the speaker observes, “lowered the shutter and locked the door,” a gesture that replicates the “closing of the gates” referred to in the concluding prayers of the Yom Kippur service and one that reinforces the poem’s theme of unspoken but not unrecognized brotherhood.

Memories of Yom Kippur come in various forms, and the notion of repentance and teshuvah seems to .t naturally with the concept of autobiography. The excerpt from Chaim Grade’s memoir, a continuation of the selection reprinted in the Rosh Hashanah section, focuses on the author’s mother and her self-sacrificing nature. Grade, however, in the spirit of the holiday, offers apologies for not being the devout son he believes his mother would have liked him to be. Marjorie Agosý´n recalls her early days of Yom Kippur observance in Chile in the two short pieces included here from her memoir, The Alphabet in My Hands. Golda Meir’s memoir, My Life, records among other things her recollections of Israel’s 1973 Yom Kippur war. The excerpt reprinted here is a personal glimpse into history from the perspective of one who was intimately involved with its making. For the careful reader, it is also Meir’s public declaration of atonement, an exercise in the ritual of self-examination and repentance so essential to the meaning and purpose of Yom Kippur.

In the passage included here from Legends of Our Time, one of several memoirs of his years in the concentration camps, Elie Wiesel recounts the strange story of Pinhas, a fellow prisoner, who—with his own twisted logic—manages to defy his God on Yom Kippur. With this selection, ironically titled “The Day Without Forgiveness,” one begins to understand the rationale for the objections raised by such poets as Ozick, Pinsky, and Bloch. Yom Kippur is a time for forgiveness and understanding, but the Holocaust brings a new perspective to one’s view of the world and God’s role in it.

Forgiveness in one form or another is the dominant theme of Yom Kippur, and every story in this section, like the personal essays, expresses some aspect of this motif. The short stories of Sholom Aleichem, I. L. Peretz, and Israel Joseph Singer—all written in Yiddish and set in the old world culture of eastern Europe—share a somewhat ironic vision of repentance and what that might imply, given the absurdities of the human condition. Aleichem understands all too well that fasting on Yom Kippur is serious business, yet he manages to poke fun at the whole enterprise and the seriousness with which the pious approach this tradition in his story “A Yom Kippur Scandal.” Peretz’s “Yom Kippur in Hell” is equally sardonic, yet with a final note of existential futility. Israel Joseph Singer, older brother to the more famous Isaac Bashevis, in his short story “Repentance,” gives another rather unconventional interpretation of teshuvah, which—for his Hasidic protagonist—involves more indulgence than abstinence, more celebration than observance. Like Aleichem, Singer and Peretz manage to mock tradition gently, and by so doing bring into question the larger concept of moral transgression and the possibility of forgiveness. For the almost twenty authors represented in this section, Yom Kippur presents diverse and at times conflicting themes: abstinence and self denial, yet joy and gratitude as well; self-reflection and repentance, but also doubts and questions; forgiveness and understanding for some, remembrance of those things that can never be comprehended for others.

For many, this most serious of Jewish holidays represents the opportunity (as always in Jewish tradition) for inquiry, self-doubt, irony, humor, and a continual discussion as to the meaning and purpose of religious belief and practice.

Yom Kippur, with all its solemnity and synagogue-based observance, is followed by the colorful and joyous festival of Sukkoth, the fall harvest celebration that follows only a few days later. Sukkoth, in turn, is succeeded by Hanukkah, a winter holiday of warmth, light, and home celebration—and the subject of the subsequent section of this volume.

Excerpted from Celebrating the Jewish Holidays. Collection and introductory essays copyright Brandeis University Press, used by permission of University Press of New England.