Yom Kippur Redux

I suggested in my previous post that, this year, the prayers of Yom Kippur did not speak to me. A few days after writing those words, I was again confronted by the Yom Kippur liturgy. I was forced to reconsider my verdict.

Recently, I began teaching a course in Jewish ethics to middle-school children and their parents. Last week, we unpacked a brief passage from a text read on Yom Kippur. The text came from the Haftarah, a cycle of readings taken from the Prophets, a series of late books within the Hebrew Bible. The Haftarah portion read on any given Sabbath or holiday complements other parts of that day’s liturgy, including the portion read from the Torah, the five books of Moses.

The Haftarah is often the most moving and unsettling part of the service. The prophets of the Hebrew Bible stood outside the societies in which they lived. Typically, they rebuked their contemporaries for their decadent, selfish, self-absorbed behavior. It was the mission of the prophets to alarm their fellow Israelites and exhort them to act as God had commanded them. To a modern-day reader, the prophets come off sounding ethical, insightful, and inspired, if eccentric. They seem wide awake. They seem worthy of emulation.

The Haftarah passage that my class and I examined last week was from the Book of Isaiah. In it, the prophet Isaiah describes for us what the Yom Kippur fast, in his opinion, ought to consist of. His is not the typically private, self-absorbed fast. Rather than focusing on his private prayers and his bodily discomfort, Isaiah engages with conditions outside himself.

The class then broke out into three-person groups. I joined together with one of the groups. We began our study by reading a passage from the Haftarah portion:

No, this is the fast I desire:
To unlock the fetters of wickedness,
And untie the cords of the yoke
To let the oppressed go free;
To break off every yoke.
It is to share your bread with the hungry,
And to take the wretched poor into your home;
When you see the naked, to clothe him,
And not to ignore your own kin.

(Isaiah 58:6-8)

The two fathers, one student, and I examined ourselves in light of the passage. We discussed our own attitudes and practices regarding homeless people. We considered whether we personally could have “take[n] the poor wretched into [our] home.” We didn’t agree about the usefulness of Isaiah’s prescription. But we all felt challenged by the words.

Suddenly, Yom Kippur didn’t seem so beside the point. Suddenly, I found myself pushed to engage in the most important sort of action. What could be more crucial to right living than to sacrifice one’s own comfort, and even safety, so that others might share in life’s basic necessities? And what could be more difficult to do?

Suddenly, Yom Kippur felt too audacious, too difficult. A week after dismissing the day’s worship as not in keeping with my spiritual yearnings, I was confronted by exhortations too demanding for my rather timid social justice practices. And this had significance for my spiritual life. I had spoken a bit too soon.

I am probably not likely to invite homeless people into my home (especially nowadays, when my family and I don’t have enough room). But, if I can remember to bear these words in mind next year, I will be tasked to build an outward, interpersonal dimension into my fast. Yom Kippur, refracted through the day’s Haftarah reading, perhaps requires me to get out of my head—on a day when most Jews are unusually inside their own heads. I am reminded that to repent is to act differently, to do what is difficult. Next year, I hope, I will bear in mind that seeking forgiveness requires more than words. It requires that I demonstrate a readiness to live more generously, more compassionately. It requires me to wake up and love.

What was it I was saying about “idol worship”?