What Yom Kippur Isn't

I was having a conversation about Yom Kippur with a friend and what she said triggered another idea completely. Yom Kippur is the most solemn day on the Jewish calendar. It is when we go before God, year after year, and admit that we messed up...really badly...and then we beg. We BEG for another chance, another year to try harder.

Many years ago, a young boy ran between a parked car and a high stone wall into the street. He looked down the hill only as he was entering that lane. Still at a fast pace, in a fraction of a second, as he was beginning to swivel his head to look to the right to see if the next lane (which he was already entering) was clear, he slammed into the front side panel of my car.

I caught him out of the corner of my eye milliseconds before he hit my car and started to hit the brake. He hit the car, the side mirror then hit him. He fell back to the street as I pulled quickly to the side. Thankfully, from the other direction, cars stopped and didn't run over him. The police and ambulance were called. He had broken his shoulder, cracked his skull and was, thankfully, able to heal completely.

At the same time as they rushed to treat him, to some extent, I was treated like a criminal. Asked for my license, I was told to sit on the side of the road. The ambulance came and took the boy and still I sat. The ambulance driver incorrectly told the boy's mother that I had hit him (in fact, as proven by the dent in my car over the front wheel, he actually hit the car).

The accident inspector (traffic expert) came and measured and asked me how fast I was going. How fast could I have been going? I asked him. The road curves as it goes down hill. There is one speed bump that I had just gone over, another about to come up in another 50 meters. The official speed limit there is 50 km/hour; in practice, you can't safely travel there beyond 30 km/hour. I told him the boy ran into my car and watched as he looked at my car, saw the dent, the scraped away dust on the side of the car, the front untouched completely.

They told me that they were keeping my license and that I had to come to the police department the following Sunday (where they returned my license, told me it was not my fault, and that sometimes accidents do happen and this was just that). It was entirely the boy's fault and, as I thought about it further, had I been going any slower, he would have ended up in front of my car and I WOULD have hit him, versus the much better outcome of his hitting my car.

But as I was sitting on the side of the road watching the inspector, a friend came over and because it was the last Friday of the year, told me that I should consider something. "Last year, God decided that on the last Friday of the year, this accident would happen. It's your job to figure out why."

That's Yom Kippur - the day God judges each and every one of us and perhaps worst of all, He almost never delivers the decision He makes. Sometimes He delivers it months later, even on the eve of the next year.

So one might mistakenly think that Yom Kippur is only about standing and waiting for God to record those final decisions in what we call the "Book of Life".

The reality is that Yom Kippur really isn't just the day of Judgment - it's so much more. It's also the day of sentencing. We are judged and the punishment (or reward) is determined. And it's also the day of appeals. We can change what the verdict will be, even in the last moments of the day. As the sun is setting and we are preparing to end the fast, even then, our prayers and thoughts have weight.

There are many beautiful prayers said over the course of the long fast day. One of the most well know is what is called the Vidui, or, for lack of a better explanation, the Confession.

We have transgressed, we have acted perfidiously, we have robbed, we have slandered. We have acted perversely and wickedly, we have willfully sinned, we have done violence, we have imputed falsely. We have given evil counsel, we have lied, we have scoffed, we have rebelled, we have provoked, we have been disobedient, we have committed iniquity, we have wantonly transgressed, we have oppressed, we have been obstinate. We have committed evil, we have acted perniciously, we have acted abominably, we have gone astray, we have led others astray. We have strayed from Your good precepts and ordinances, and it has not profited us. Indeed, You are just in all that has come upon us, for You have acted truthfully, and it is we who have acted wickedly.

One of many unique elements of Judaism is the collective/communal element we carry with us. Anywhere in the world, without prior notice, I can land on the doorstep of a Jew and ask for help. Once, around 10:00 p.m. while driving in the north, my husband had a horrible headache and I had no medicine to help him. Moments after we passed the last pharmacy that I knew of, I pulled the car down a side street, stopped at a house and knocked on the door of complete strangers. I explained that we were driving, my husband needed some painkillers, and the pharmacy was closed.

Without hesitation, they invited me in and without hesitation, I went in. They put some pills in a cup, gave me a cup of water, and asked if it wouldn't be better if my husband came in to lie down for a little while until the painkillers started to work. I explained that we had children in the car. They seemed a bit upset that we didn't take them up on the offer.

In India, in a souvenir store, I struck up a conversation with an English speaker. I was sure she was Jewish...and she was...and we talked about Israel, her travels etc.

Back to Yom Kippur - on Yom Kippur we confess...not to a priest (or in our case a rabbi), but to God. And we confess in the communal sense. "We" have sinned. "We" have transgressed. We did this and we did that.

In a human court, judgment day is limited to only one facet of Yom Kippur. The judge delivers his verdict - guilty or innocent. In the heavenly court, Yom Kippur is part of a process, evolving, changeable, flexible.

A human judge will often feel disgust at the criminal brought before his or her bench; in the heavenly court, God feels love for all his creations and the best outcome for all is true repentance and the intention to try harder in the year to come. Both God and man know that one year later, we will all be right back in the same "court room" once again apologizing, once again asking for yet another year to try to do better.

And in the end, when we walk away from the heavenly court at the end of Yom Kippur, we do so hoping, praying, that unlike the criminal whose record now has one more transgression written in stone, we have been cleansed. Our slate is clean, our record unblemished.

A new year full of promise and hope and dreams lies before us. Yom Kippur starts tonight - may we all be blessed to be written in the book of life, inscribed for a year filled with health, happiness, safety, prosperity and love.

Shana tova - g'mar hatima tova.