The Mood and the Goals of Yom Kippur
Yom Kippur Day, 5772
Shmuel Herzfeld
This past summer I had the great honor of being mesaderkiddushin at an amazing wedding. At most weddings everyone works very hard to set a spiritual and romantic mood and this was no exception. The wedding was exquisitely planned. The seats were set up beautifully outside to overlook a national park. Everything was perfect; except for one hiccup. At the exact moment when the chuppah was about to begin, the heavens opened up. It began to pour a torrential rain. Even though the room inside was much smaller and over-crowded, the bride had no choice but to say, “Let’s move the chuppah indoors.”
I quieted down the guests and I said, “There is an expression, ‘Men plan, and God laughs.” At the exact moment that I said that a huge thunder exploded and then a lightning bolt flashed. I imagined to myself that it was God’s entrance into the chuppah. We could not have set a better spiritual mood for the chuppah.
It turns out that it ended up being an amazing chuppah, with an intense, incredible spiritual energy in the room. Afterwards I reminded the bride and groom that I was once at another chuppah with thunder and lightning: when I stood along with all of you at Mount Sinai as God gave the Torah.
Setting a mood is vital to all holidays, but none more so than on Yom Kippur.
On Yom Kippur we actually have a biblical commandment to create a mood. It says in the Torah (Leviticus 16: 29): בחודש השביעי בעשור לחודש תענו את-נפשותיכם, in the seventh month on the tenth day of the month we must afflict our souls.
The Mishnah in Tractate Yoma informs us that there are five innuyim or afflictions that we must practice on Yom Kippur: No eating or drinking, no washing, anointing¸ no marital relations, and no wearing of leather shoes.
Rabbi Soloveitchik explained (and this was taught to me in his name by Rabbi Menachem Genack) that these afflictions really derive from a positive commandment of Yom Kippur: shevitatasor, to rest in a proper manner on Yom Kippur; in other words the source for the innuyimis not a negative commandment or a prohibition on having any enjoyment on Yom Kippur but from the idea that this is the way to create the proper mood of the day and observe Yom Kippur
There is a medieval dispute between Maimonides and Rabbeinu Tam as to whether these afflictions are biblical in nature, but regardless, Rabbi Soloveitchik’s point is that the purpose of the afflictions is not to evoke a sense of mourning, but to create a different mood; a mood of spiritual rest and tranquility on Yom Kippur.
Our tradition gives the rabbis the authority to determine the exact nature of the prohibition. And since the rabbis determined the exact nature of these afflictions, the rabbis are able to be lenient in certain areas. So the Mishnah in Tractate Yom teaches that there are three specific instances where we can be lenient about these innuyim: the case of a bride in her first thirty days, a king, and a woman who just gave birth.
The Mishnah rules that a woman who just gave birth can wear leather shoes and a king and a new bride can both wash their face, ירחצו את פניהם.
I understand why a new mother can wear leather shoes as she is in great discomfort already. I also understand why a king can wash his face, as he is the king and he needs to be treated differently than everyone else. But why is a new bride permitted to wash her face? After all we are trying to create the proper mood on Yom Kippur, and how is this mood created if a bride comes in to synagogue with a sparkling clean face?
There are two answers to this question. One is technical and the other is deeply symbolic.
The technical answer to this question is that since the prohibition of washing a face is rabbinic, the rabbis therefore reserve the right under certain circumstances to suspend the law. In the case of a bride we apply the principle of kavodhabriot (human dignity) out of concern that the bride will look unseemly in front of her new husband, and therefore we permit her to wash her face.
But there is another answer to this question and this second answer says that we should look at this law of the new-bride in the context of the mood we are trying to create for Yom Kippur.
In the time of the Temple and the Mishnah it appears that the mood of the day on Yom Kippur was entirely different than our mood today.
Today our Yom Kippur is spent praying in a Synagogue. There really is nothing else we should be doing on Yom Kippur except davening and worshiping to Hashem (or being a caregiver for our dependents).
But in the time of the Temple there was a totally different type of worship and mood. Many of the prayers we recite on Yom Kippur today were not in existence then. The worship service consisted of the KohenGadol performing the Temple service and everyone else was crowding onto the Temple Mount to see as much of the service as possible. Much of our service today is really just a description of that service.
What about everyone else who couldn’t make it to the Temple Mount? How did they spend their Yom Kippur? So the Talmud in Tractate Taanit(30b) explains that since Yom Kippur was designated as a day of forgiveness and atonement-סליחה ומחילה- --it was also designated as a propitious day for another activity, finding a wife.
This is how the Talmud describes Yom Kippur (Taanit 26b): “Israel had no days as festive as the Fifteenth of Av and Yom Kippur, when the young women of Jerusalem would go out dressed in white garments that were borrowed so as not to embarrass anyone…They would go out and dance in the vineyards. And what would they say? Young man, raise your eyes and see what you choose for yourself. Do not pay attention to beauty, pay attention to family….”
We see from here that because Yom Kippur was such a festive day it was chosen by the Jewish people as a propitious day to choose a mate. The young women would dance and men would choose their spouse.
Can you just imagine this? Let’s say our shul would issue a note saying that this year instead of Yom Kippur services we are going to cancel our Yom Kippur services and hold a singles dance instead so that we could make shidduchim.
It might get us a few more members but it would also attract us some more controversy.
When we start to look closely at the laws of Yom Kippur we see that there are a number of laws that are related to theme of marriage on Yom Kippur.
Just as an example, let’s look at one more law:
The law was that in order for the KohenGadol to serve in the Temple on Yom Kippur he had to be married. The technical reason for this is that as part of his service he needs to recite a confessional prayer for his family, as it states in the Torah: וכיפר בעדו, ובעד ביתו, and he seeks atonement for himself and his house. The rabbis explain that the words “his house” means “his wife.” So he can’t fulfill this verse and this confessional prayer unless he is married during the service.
The very first Mishnah in Tractate Yoma (which discusses all the laws of Yom Kippur) goes even further and records the position of Rav Yehudah who says that not only must the KohenGadol have a wife, but he should have a back-up wife ready as well lest his first wife die suddenly and he be left without a wife: רבי יהודה אומר, אף אישה אחרת מתקינין לו, שמא תמות אשתו.
The rabbis responded to Rabbi Yehudah’s position by saying, “imkeyneinledavarsof, if so then there is no end to the matter”; i.e. in theory they don’t mind the idea of a back-up wife but they think that practically speaking it is a poor solution.
While some might dismiss this text as representing a cavalier attitude towards women by our ancient rabbis, the truth is just the opposite.
Rabbi Menachem Genack was kind enough to share with me his personal notes from the class that Rabbi Joseph Soloveitchik taught about the service of the KohenGadol on Yom Kippur. In those notes I found the following point that Rabbi Soloveitchik made.
Rabbi Soloveitchik said it is clear that the reason the KohenGadol must have a wife on Yom Kippur is not only because of the technical requirement of being able to recite the confessional prayer properly. It goes beyond that. The proof for this is that just suppose the KohenGadol’s wife would die after he recites the confessional prayer. Rabbi Soloveitchik said that the KohenGadolwould still need to be removed from the service. This proves that the requirement for him to have a wife is not dependent upon the technical text of the prayer.
Unfortunately, in Rabbi Genack’s notes I could not find a suggestion from Rabbi Soloveitchik as to why the KohenGadol must have a wife on Yom Kippur.
So I will suggest an approach to this question.
The point is that Yom Kippur must be a day about creating harmony and peace in our personal relationships. We can only come closer to God by first coming closer to our friends and our community members who are all created in the image of God. The reason why a KohenGadol must be married is because marriage is the paradigmatic relationship of harmony between two people; marriage is about two people giving themselves over to Hashem so that they can have a closer relationship with God.
This idea of harmony as epitomized in a beautiful, loving relationship is exactly the mood that it is necessary to create on Yom Kippur.
This is why we have these innuyim on yomkippur. They are not as a sign of mourning, but an aid to help us move beyond the material distractions of our life and focus on the inner core, so that we can create a more harmonious world.
The mood we are trying to create on Yom Kippur is so essential to a relationship with the divine. It is also so essential for what we are trying to create in our shul and we should all be working to create in our larger Jewish community.
Recently YeshivatChovevei Torah sponsored an essay competition for college students. It offered a cash prize to the student who best answered this question: What is the large challenge facing Orthodox Judaism today? And how can we best confront that challenge?
For me the answer to that question is the same question that Yom Kippur is trying to prepare us for and the same challenge that is facing us in our community. How do we improve our character and personal relationships so that our faith community becomes a more harmonious place?
In the ancient world the mood of Yom Kippur was set to remind us that we are all in this together. We all gathered to be inspired by the service of the KohenGadol and in doing that it was reinforced to us that we share a common destiny.
The point of the day was very clearly about creating harmony and unity amongst our people.
Today we don’t have either of those two major aspects of Yom Kippur—we don’t have the practice of the unmarried maidens dancing for a husband and we don’t have a KohenGadol—but the challenge is greater than ever.
Yom Kippur must remind us that the entire Jewish people share a common destiny and that the very existence of our community depends upon a strong effort on our part to improve our interpersonal relationships. In order to do we have to first and foremost realize that our primary responsibility is to care for our Jewish brethren—all of our brethren, and not just about people who look and pray exactly like us, but so that we are truly one family.
The goal of Yom Kippur, and it must be so about our lives in general, is to transform our community from a community of individuals and cliques into a community of harmony and oneness with God.
There used to be a practice of handing our honey cakes on the eve of Yom Kippur. Most people don’t have that practice anymore (and its kind of late to incorporate that practice into our holiday observance this year), but there is still time left in the day to hand out symbolic honey cakes. But let us not just hand out our symbolic honey cakes to the people we know and are already friends with, lets seek out people who might be a little different than us, and present them with our symbolic honey cake in our quest to make a beautiful and harmonious community. If we do so then we will truly be fulfilling the mood and the goals of Yom Kippur.
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