Are you a good person? Is your neighbor? How do you know? How do you judge? Why does it matter? After all, we have seen the wicked in great power, and the innocent suffer for far too long.
The Jewish tradition you and I belong to insists that this matters very much, and that you matter very much.
What you do matters. You may have heard the teaching that Judaism doesn’t care about your thoughts, but only your actions. That’s not quite true, but it is accurate that Jewish ethics accepts that we cannot fully control our thoughts. We can, however, control our actions.
Our actions come in three Jewish categories: hovah, reshut, and averah.
Hovah: this is something we must do. Until we do, it holds us in the grip of “should.” We should observe the Pesakh Seder; we should do tzedakah; we should be reliable to each other as MOT, members of the tribe. This list tends to grow as we become more aware of our obligations toward life and our ability to meet them.
Reshut: this is something we may choose to do. What a relief to know that this is the category of most of daily life. We may go see a movie; we may adopt a cat; we may try a new recipe.
Averah: this final category is, of course, the things we must not do. This list tends to grow as we become more sensitized to the ripple effects of our actions through space and time.
Part of what we expect from these Ten Days of Awe is a chance to consider how to repair the ill effects of the averot we’ve done in the world. To this we must also add: how to live with the consequences we cannot repair.
You can’t “carbon offset” a sin. As our ancestors taught:
With regard to one who says: I will sin and then I will repent, I will sin and I will repent, it won’t happen, and they will remain a sinner all their days. With regard to one who says: I will sin and Yom Kippur will atone for my sins, Yom Kippur will not be able to atone for their sins. – Mishnah Yoma 8.9
It reminds me of the very old commercial tag line: You can’t fool Mother Nature. And wow, have we seen how true that is. Half of Canada seems to be on fire, and from lax emergency procedures in Lahaina in Maui, to resource scarcity war in Khartoum in Sudan, to the dried up River Po of Italy, human inability to believe in the power of our sins is leading inexorably to what the prophet Malakhi called the day that burns like an oven:
כִּֽי־הִנֵּ֤ה הַיּוֹם֙ בָּ֔א בֹּעֵ֖ר כַּתַּנּ֑וּר וְהָי֨וּ כׇל־זֵדִ֜ים וְכׇל־עֹשֵׂ֤ה רִשְׁעָה֙ קַ֔שׁ וְלִהַ֨ט אֹתָ֜ם הַיּ֣וֹם הַבָּ֗א … אֲשֶׁ֛ר לֹא־יַעֲזֹ֥ב לָהֶ֖ם שֹׁ֥רֶשׁ וְעָנָֽף׃
Don’t look now, but that day is at hand, burning like an oven. All the arrogant and all the doers of evil shall be straw, and the day that is coming shall burn them to ashes, and leave of them neither stock nor boughs. – Malakhi 3.19
We’ve been so seduced by the silly idea that we are individuals (the guy drilling a hole under his seat in the lifeboat) that we can’t see the forest for the trees that keep burning up. It’s not us as individuals but us as the human community that will experience the effects of our actions.
Why does all this matter? Why not continue to go through life as you are, in the habits you’ve developed, in the life you’ve built?
Because this is real, and you are here, on this planetary that we share. Today is a day; maybe your last day. Why not live it as you would wish to be remembered? As the Presbyterian pastor and writer Frederick Buechner wrote:
Today is never going to come again.
Today is a moment of light surrounded on all sides by oblivion.
In the entire history of the universe,
let alone in your own history,
there has never been another just like it
and there will never be another just like it again. It is the point to which all your yesterdays
have been leading since the hour of your birth. It is the point from which all your tomorrows
will proceed until the hour of your death.
If you were aware of how precious it is
you could hardly live through it.
Unless you are aware of how precious it is,
you can hardly be said to be living at all.
Because we are here and we are lucky enough to be alive. Because we didn’t do anything to deserve to be alive; it was a gift, and the only way we can justify it is by actually living, in an aware state. By letting the soul out of the cage of habits and expectations. By recognizing despair and demoralization as the yetzer hara’ trying to keep us from realizing our true potential. By repenting one day before our death. Today.
On Rosh Hashanah and on Yom Kippur we will recite the Unetaneh Tokef, a prayer that contemplates the human endings that come to us. Its message is that we must cling to three things:
Tefilah, prayer and contemplation; Tzedakah, insisting on doing what justice you can; and Teshuvah, turning away from despair, cynicism, and selfishness.
These are how we ma’avirin et ro’a hag’zerah, together we lighten the burden of that which we cannot erase, nor avoid, nor save anyone from.
This is real.
This is inescapable.
We are utterly unprepared.
And we have nothing to offer but each other, and our broken hearts.
And, G*d willing, a dawning sense of our true human potential to live a life that will be remembered for good.
