On the Meaning of the High Holy Days: Good Wishes to the Readers and a Request for Their Forgiveness (Column 94)
With God’s help
Today I received a question from Tair about the meaning of the High Holy Days according to my approach. I thought a brief clarification was in order even before the coming Yom Kippur.
The main difficulty arises in light of my view that nowadays God is hardly involved in the world, if at all. So what exactly is the meaning of these days? Is our fate for the coming year determined on them? After all, if God has left the world to conduct itself by way of nature, according to the laws of nature and according to our own choices, then there is no significance to determinations made on the High Holy Days. What will happen to us in the coming year, and in general, will be dictated by the nature of the world and by our choices.
I wrote to her that, for me, Rosh Hashanah is a day of accepting divine sovereignty (crowning Him king), that is, creating a commitment to God’s word. Here I will elaborate a bit more. I have already cited here more than once Maimonides’ words in chapter 3 of the Laws of Idolatry, law 6, where he defines religious worship (with respect to idols, but by logic the same applies with respect to God) as accepting something as a deity. The meaning of accepting something as a deity is unconditional commitment. Whatever He says, I do. Not because I am afraid of Him or in awe of Him, and not even because I love Him (as Maimonides explicitly says there). Simply because He is God. That is the meaning of crowning Him king on Rosh Hashanah, and it is the most fundamental basis of the service of God on all days. Rosh Hashanah is meant to internalize the decision to accept Him as God, and that is the crowning required there.
Yom Kippur, which follows it, is a day of soul-searching on my part about my ways, thoughts, and character traits. It is not necessarily the case that my fate is determined there, since in this world God is not significantly involved. Perhaps there is some determination here that is relevant to the World to Come (I do not know). See also what I wrote here:
https://mikyab.net/translated-articles-rabbi-michael-abraham/post-817/
You have hereby also received my permission to take shortcuts with the fixed prayers (aside from the obligatory parts), and to focus more on clarifying your path, thinking about the past, and making decisions for the future.
I would like to ask forgiveness if I have wrongfully hurt anyone. I have already clarified my ironic-cynical style (but substantive. See the link on the first page of the site that explains my approach here), but I understand that it is not always received that way, so I apologize.
Beyond that, if I cut off a discussion (sometimes rather sharply), I ask pardon. That usually happens when I feel the issue has been exhausted and the discussion is repeating itself. Please understand that I do not have enough time to devote so much attention to every thread, especially since they repeat themselves quite a bit (I make a point of answering every inquiry on the site or by email, by phone or in person, or in any other way). Beyond that, sometimes there are threads that repeat one another, and what I explained in one reappears in another. Sometimes I lose the connection and think the repetition is in the same thread itself, and so I mistakenly write that I have already explained and that we have exhausted it. For that as well I ask your forgiveness.
I invite readers to add good wishes here, and to ask forgiveness if you have hurt one another in your arguments. As for me, I do not recall anything that requires such a request, and in any case all is forgiven.
I would like to conclude by wishing that you be sealed for good, and that it be a good, fruitful, and happy year. A year in which we seek the truth and do not fear the scoffers (neither from within nor from without), in which we think rationally and chart our own course for ourselves, and afterward are also upright and faithful to that course.
Discussion
Dear Michi,
I wanted to thank you for an eye-opening year,
a year in which I freed myself from a great deal of religious apologetics and lack of honesty.
A year in which I feel truly connected to Judaism and to my values,
without living in fear of questions and doubts.
Granted, it is a Judaism reduced in a rather troubling way,
but as far as I’m concerned there is no substitute for honesty and for the feeling of integrity and inner peace.
Also with regard to the embellishments of Judaism,
the basket of non-binding beliefs that comes from Judaism,
I am experiencing a new flourishing and closeness,
the ability to enjoy it without fearing
that the things that seem far-fetched to me
prove that everything, absolutely everything, is false and vanity.
To filter out what doesn’t suit me and accept the rest.
I want to apologize to all those who represent the usual traditionalist faith in general, and Rabbi Shimshon Tzvi in particular, for my blunt attacks, which were not always substantive.
I wish for myself to be more accepting of those who hold that approach,
without dumping on them the anger over years of deception
and self-deception.
It does indeed. So?
As my predecessors have said, you raise my level of reflection; and know that it is so: your posts accompany my thoughts on a walk with my child and in the filthy alleyways. More power to you, for you break—and nourish!
But the Master of the Universe promises: ‘And the Lord—He is the one who goes before you; He will be with you; He will not fail you nor forsake you…’ (Deuteronomy 31:8)
With blessings, Sh. Tz. Levinger
Happy New Year, honorable Rabbi,
There is no need to bless you with a ‘good writing,’ because you have already been blessed with that. So: ‘A good sealing.’
Following the opening sentence of your reply to Tair: "Hello Tair.
First of all, thank you. Letters like these make it worthwhile to invest time and effort and to enter into all the exhausting arguments here".
So although, as I have declared, I consider myself a deist, thanks to you I can say that I have a great deal of respect and appreciation for tradition, and much love for our sources. I have learned that it is possible to separate the chaff from the grain, and that it is not all one package.
I am certain that beyond this influence on me, this feeling radiates onto those around me in Haredi society, who do not know my views accurately.
Beyond that, your words influence me on various levels, helping me develop thinking and judgment in different areas of life.
So, a good and sweet year,
May you be able to maintain your high standard, while still conveying your words in a clear and captivating way.
A year in which your wellsprings will spread outward,
A year in which you will have abundant strength and energy, patience and health, to study and to teach.
With great appreciation –
A good final sealing and a good year; forgive me for being absent from the lessons 🙂 – I follow and read eagerly through the other channels.
I do not forgive the fact that you still have not published your trilogy.
There is a limit.
A good final sealing
A good year and a good final sealing to the rabbi and to the site’s commenters, who for the most part are the cream and finest oil of the people of Israel
A good final sealing
With God’s help, on the eve of ‘the day of his wedding’ 5778
To Rabbi M. Abraham – much peace to you
In the Mishnah (Ta’anit 4:8), the dance of the maidens in the vineyards on Yom Kippur is described, and it says: ‘And so it says: Go out and look, O daughters of Zion, at King Solomon… on the day of his wedding—this is the giving of the Torah; and on the day of the joy of his heart—this is the building of the Temple.’ On Yom Kippur we received the Torah anew, and from that point onward we begin building the shared Tabernacle.
On Memorial Day, ‘From afar the Lord appeared to me.’ As we approach the end of the days of harvesting grain, grapes, and olives, in which we were immersed in gathering the fruit of our labor, we remember the Lord who gave us ‘the strength to prosper’ and awaken love; and after the ‘seven clean days’ between the Covered Day and the Tenth, we immerse in the waters of knowledge and return to stand before Him—’Before the Lord you shall be purified’—out of a firm decision and hope that from now on there will no longer be forgetfulness and separation between us.
With the blessing of ‘a good completion of the wedding,’ Sh. Tz. Levinger.
Accepting His kingship is not only accepting the yoke of His commandments (which is done afterward in ‘And it shall come to pass, if you surely listen’); acceptance of His kingship in the section of ‘Shema’ is faith in God and love for Him with all our heart and soul, and passing on this faith to our children and to all those around us.
On this matter, the words of the Torah itself accord with your view (perhaps not regarding individual providence, but the final outcome is identical).
Apologies in advance for the ‘dvar Torah structure’—I simply typed the idea in this form to send to friends and was too lazy to retype it.
In the book of Leviticus it says:
"And this shall be to you an everlasting statute: in the seventh month, on the tenth day of the month, you shall afflict yourselves, and you shall do no work, neither the native-born nor the stranger who sojourns among you. For on this day He shall make atonement for you, to purify you; from all your sins, before the Lord you shall be purified."
According to the verse, we must fast and cease from work *because* the Holy One, blessed be He, atones for our sins (and not the other way around, as we are accustomed to think).
That raises some questions.
Why keep commandments all year, pray, and repent, if in any case everything is atoned for in the end?
(It should be noted that this applies only to transgressions between a person and God; for transgressions between a person and another person, Yom Kippur does not atone until he appeases his fellow.)
The question comes from a place of: I keep the commandments for the sake of the Holy One, blessed be He. That’s what He said, and I do it for Him.
There is a lot of truth in this approach, but there is something deeper: the whole observance of the commandments is not only so that it will be better for the Holy One, blessed be He, but also so that it will be better for me.
So that I will be a better and more moral person, and so that I will live in a better and more moral society.
When I honor my parents, I do so also for the sake of the Holy One, blessed be He, but also because I believe that the purpose of this commandment, and of the commandments in general, is to benefit me.
Therefore, the matter of keeping the commandments and repenting is not so that in the end, in the balance of commandments versus transgressions, I will come out acquitted.
Rather, it is so that I will become a better person.
In short, may we merit to return in true repentance and to become better people.
A good final sealing ☺
So in your view the Holy One, blessed be He, is an ‘atonement-machine’—an automatic debt-eraser?
Perhaps the Ministry of Education will adopt this method and award you a matriculation certificate without exams?
With blessings, Sh. Tz. Levinger
that we open the door. We afflict our souls over the past, resolve to improve in the future, and God completes it on our behalf, far above and beyond our deeds.
With blessings, Sh. Tz. Levinger
I would be happy if the Ministry of Education adopted this approach 🙂
And now seriously:
This is what seems to emerge from the plain meaning of the verse.
I did not find that Rashi or Ramban addressed the issue, and Ibn Ezra (as I understand him) explains it in the way I claimed.
I would be glad to hear what your understanding is.
I will try to correct it
In fact, in Parashat Acharei Mot the matter appears as follows. The Yom Kippur service is described there as the proper way to enter the sanctuary (not as Nadav and Avihu did), and as part of entering the sanctuary, the fasting and cessation from work appear. But it seems to me that the meaning is that the very day itself atones, as you wrote, but it atones for those who repent. The formulation in the verse you cited can be explained as meaning that we fast because on this day there is a possibility of being atoned for by virtue of the day itself, and the fast is there because repentance is a condition for atonement. There is no necessity for the conception that Shatz”l called an atonement-machine.
In Rambam, at the beginning of the Laws of Repentance, he explains the relation between the atonement of the very day itself and repentance (there is much to discuss here in light of the sugiyot in the Talmud itself):
Halakha 2
Since the scapegoat is an atonement for all Israel, the High Priest confesses over it in the name of all Israel, as it is said: ‘and he shall confess over it all the iniquities of the children of Israel.’ The scapegoat atones for all the transgressions in the Torah, minor and severe, whether one transgressed deliberately or inadvertently, whether he became aware of it or did not become aware of it—everything is atoned for by the scapegoat, provided that he repented. But if he did not repent, the scapegoat atones only for the minor ones. And what are the minor and what are the severe? The severe ones are those for which one is liable to execution by the court or karet, and false and vain oaths, even though they do not involve karet, are among the severe; and the rest of the negative commandments and positive commandments that do not involve karet are the minor ones.
Halakha 3
At this time, when the Temple no longer exists and we have no altar of atonement, there is only repentance. Repentance atones for all transgressions. Even if a person was wicked all his days and repented at the end, nothing of his wickedness is mentioned to him, as it is said: ‘The wickedness of the wicked, he shall not stumble by it on the day he turns from his wickedness.’ And Yom Kippur itself atones for those who repent, as it is said: ‘For on this day He shall make atonement for you.’
With God’s help, after Yom Kippur 5778
To Shira – much peace to you,
According to R. Ovadiah Sforno, the atonement brought about through the priest’s service is only the beginning of the way, after which each person must repent in order to attain purification, and this is what he writes: ‘For on this day He shall make atonement’—and the reason that along with this you also need cessation from work and affliction is that indeed the priest, through his service, will only make atonement. And the matter of atonement is the lessening of sin and preparing it to receive forgiveness… but attaining purification and complete forgiveness will be only “before the Lord,” and this is through confession and repentance, for He alone knows their truth…’ (Leviticus 16:30-31).
According to this, the Torah says that because on this day the priest will make atonement for you in order to purify you, to open for you the way to purification—therefore it is incumbent upon you to continue and ‘before the Lord you shall be purified’ through confession and repentance.
With blessings, Sh. Tz. Levinger
At any rate, both your question and the answers proposed so far proceeded from the shared assumption that ‘he shall atone’ = ‘he shall forgive,’ and that the Lord (or His agent) is the one who atones, as the High Priest requests of the Lord in his confession: ‘Please, in Your Name, atone, please.’
However, aside from two places in the Torah where it appears that the Lord is the one who atones—regarding the heifer whose neck is broken, ‘Atone, please, for Your people Israel,’ and in the Song of Ha’azinu, ‘And He will atone His land, His people’—from the rest of the verses it emerges more strongly that ‘to atone’ means ‘to appease,’ to seek pardon and atonement.
The clearest places are: (a) in Jacob’s words, commanding his messengers to say to his brother that he sent him a gift—’For he said, I will appease him’—it is clear that ‘I will appease him’ means ‘I will placate him.’ (b) In Proverbs 16:14: ‘The wrath of a king is messengers of death, and a wise man will appease it.’ When the king is angry with a person, he may decree death upon him, and the wise man knows how to speak in his defense and calm the king’s wrath.
It may be said, therefore, that in all the instances where it says of the priest in Leviticus 16, ‘and he shall atone,’ whether regarding the confessions or the sprinklings of blood—the priest is the agent of the priests and the people, standing to ‘appease the king’ and ask of Him, ‘Let my life be given me at my petition, and my people at my request’; and this is indeed how Rav Saadia Gaon explains it: ‘and he shall atone for him’—’and he shall request atonement.’
And when our emissary, the High Priest, enters the innermost sanctum to atone for us, to request atonement on our behalf—all his brethren must ‘keep their fingers crossed’ for him, gather and fast and purify themselves before the Lord in prayer and repentance so that he succeed in his mission.
With blessings, Sh. Tz. Levinger
Indeed, even the confession and the entry into the sanctuary, done by the priest, are accompanied by prayer to the Lord that He atone and bless His people. The technical acts must be accompanied by service of the heart.
Another example: "And no atonement can be made for the land for the blood that has been shed in it, except by the blood of him who shed it" (clearly the land did not sin; rather this is language of appeasement)
With God’s help, after Yom Kippur 5778
To David—much peace to you
Bravo for the assistance. However, there one can say that the land needs atonement because the sin of bloodshed committed in it has defiled it and desecrated its sanctity, and therefore the land requires atonement.
A place where the explanation of ‘appeasement’ fits better is in the Song of Ha’azinu: ‘Sing, O nations, of His people, for He will avenge the blood of His servants, and render vengeance to His adversaries, and appease His land, His people,’ where the land and the people are those who were harmed by the enemies, and the Lord ‘atones’ them, that is, appeases them through redemption and vengeance against the enemies, as Hizkuni explains (Deuteronomy 32:43): ‘And appease’—an expression of appeasement, as in: ‘I will appease him’ (and ‘His land, His people’ is like ‘His land and His people,’ for ‘there are words lacking a vav at their beginning’).
With blessings for a good and blessed year and joyful festivals, Sh. Tz. Levinger
Bibliographic note: the commentaries of Rav Saadia Gaon, R. Ovadiah Sforno, and the Hizkuni—in the Mikraot Gedolot ‘Torat Chayim’ of Mossad Harav Kook
According to this approach, perhaps one can explain the name ‘kaporet’ given to the cherubs, based on the role assigned to them on Yom Kippur: ‘And the cloud of incense shall cover the kaporet that is upon the testimony, so that he not die.’
And of course: ‘And upon the front of the kaporet he shall sprinkle seven times… and he shall atone for the sanctuary’
In my humble opinion, ‘kapar’ means ‘protection’—whether it is the ‘atonement’ that protects from wrath, the ‘pitch’ that protects the ark from the water, or the ‘kaporet,’ the covering that protects what is in the Ark.
With blessings, Sh. Tz. Levinger
And likewise ‘heresy,’ which purports to protect against the claim
With God’s help, Tuesday of the portion ‘Carve for yourself’—from there Moses became greatly enriched.
13 Tishrei 5778.
See ‘Deliver him from going down to the pit; I have found a ransom’; ‘and each man shall give a ransom for his life’; ‘who denies the commandments that I did not command’; ‘one who denies the fundamentals’; ‘Julian the Apostate’; ‘Kfar Barotai’; and due to limited space etc.
With blessings,
Y.H. HaKohen.
And of course, one who denies everything is liable to an oath of inducement.
The above-mentioned.
It seems to me that I once heard that the intention is not ‘to protect’ but דווקא ‘to cover.’
The above-mentioned.
A question somewhat in passing for this post, Rabbi Michi:
Is it impossible to infer facts on the basis of holding certain moral values? (It seems to me that you, Leibowitz, Mendelssohn, and many other Jewish and non-Jewish thinkers followed a path of separating theological questions from morality or values or the service of God.) But in the context of the World to Come—does not the absence of a World to Come raise the difficulty that it indicates injustice toward created beings? (The fact that a person dies after 80 years and returns to dust with no continuity, and that his whole existence ultimately becomes emptiness and vanity and there is nothing new under the sun, as Ecclesiastes says—and despite this one must serve the Holy One, blessed be He, and give up daily pleasures and things we want for the sake of this service—that I accept, and for me there is no moral difficulty in it.) The moral difficulty begins with the fact that there are people who are condemned to lives of misery, suffering, and sadness despite being righteous / doing good in the eyes of the Holy One, blessed be He / moral, and they receive no tranquility or measure of happiness in this world; and even more so that righteous people and those who are good in the eyes of the Holy One, blessed be He, are burned to death and suffer, while murderers like the Nazis live lives of happiness and revelry all their lives and are not punished for it. That sounds utterly unreasonable!… because what emerges from this picture is that in the end the Holy One, blessed be He, has left the world and moral values ownerless. If in the end the greatest villain enjoys himself and indulges until his last day and dies a quiet and pleasant death, while the righteous person, through no fault of his own, suffers all his life and is tormented—this shows that ultimately there can arise a situation in which it would have been better for the wicked person not to have been born, and yet he is not punished at all for his sins; and it would have been better for the righteous person not to have been born at all, and he is miserable for the rest of his life through no fault of his own. For the rabbi—is such an argument not sufficient to justify belief in the World to Come? (From a completely rational point of view, not an emotional one—for the Holy One, blessed be He, is the God of justice, judgment, and law. Does this not logically and rationally require that He execute judgments and distinguish between the righteous and the wicked? And if He does not distinguish between them in the World to Come, assuming there is no such world—then must it not follow from reason that He distinguish and execute judgments on them justly in this world?)
And another point for thought that may perhaps be more related to the post: many commandments in Judaism (according to my limited understanding, of course—and by the way I am not expert in the Talmud, nor in halakhic literature, nor in philosophical literature, and the very meager knowledge I have I draw from lectures on Judaism by rabbis, from sources of Jewish historians who try to be fairly objective, and from scholars of Jewish thought) depend on the assumption that at some specific time in heaven some action exists because of which the commandment must be observed—such as prayer, about which you once wrote a question and uncertainty: does it really affect reality or not, and if not, does prayer have value? Another question that can be added is that prayer apparently—according to my understanding—is based on the assumption that precisely at the time and hour when we pray, our prayer will be heard in heaven, whereas if we pray at another time our prayer will not be heard, even if we have intention, and so on and so forth. There is also the well-known saying of the Sages: ‘On three things the world stands…’ and ‘If you do not keep My covenant day and night, I will return and destroy the world’—
The question is whether these midrashim are to be understood literally, or whether they are a metaphor for something. Perhaps the meaning of ‘On three things the world stands—on Torah, on service, and on proper conduct’ and ‘If you do not keep My covenant day and night’ (which is also a verse from Scripture, if I am not mistaken) is that if these values are forgotten, the world will in any case deteriorate into chaos and death, as in the time of Abraham our father. There are also, for example, midrashim in the style of: Jerusalem was destroyed only because they disgraced Torah scholars, only because they judged strictly by Torah law, only because they equated the small and the great. Perhaps the purpose of such midrashim is to say that honoring Torah scholars, fair and moderate judgment, and properly recognizing differences between great and small are values of the utmost importance, and not a historical description that in heaven it was decided to destroy Jerusalem דווקא because of these things. And perhaps likewise the midrashim and sayings about Rosh Hashanah do not really mean that ledgers are literally opened in heaven at that time, but rather that this time is the appointed time that the Holy One, blessed be He, gave a person in order to remember that God judges him every single day—and not that specifically on that day some mystical or supernatural process takes place in heaven.
I am also puzzled by your statement that serving the Holy One, blessed be He, out of recognition that He is God and there is none beside Him is the most fitting service for its own sake—it seems to me a kind of absurdity. If in fact fear of God and love of Him and attachment to Him as straight and good and one who executes judgments and is just and whose kindness endures forever—I find it hard to accept that these are inferior forms of serving God. For what objective advantage is there in serving the Holy One, blessed be He, simply because He is the Holy One, blessed be He? To what is this comparable? To a man whose wife dies, who comes to the funeral without tears and without showing sadness and says: ‘I am sorry for the death of my wife—not because I love her or because she is personally important to me, not even because I appreciated certain good qualities in her, but simply because objectively she is my wife and we are eternally bound in a marriage covenant—that I respect.’ Such a person would, in my opinion, justly be received with a kind of contempt, because there is no logic or meaning in his loyalty. I will go even further and say that in such service of the Holy One, blessed be He, a person is actually very close to simply filling some value exactly like all other human values—and by this one empties the service of the Holy One, blessed be He, of all meaning of awe and real commitment, and simply turns Him into a concept and a value like all other human things.
As the new year begins, I wanted to thank you from the bottom of my heart for disseminating your Torah and your teachings, and for the great investment in the books and on the website.
You are interesting, original, innovative, sharpen thought, refine faith, and endear Torah.
Thank you.
Thank you very, very much, and a good final sealing.
Hi Michi, good evening,
A good year and happy holiday. Michi, honestly, it is hard for me to accept your words—for the reason that the Torah itself explicitly writes things that contradict what you say—it says explicitly that God heard the people of Israel when they cried out to Him. Just because today these things are hidden and not scientifically proven [precisely from the place of hiddenness, God may perhaps not make prayers operate within a framework of scientific testing, and all this is done מתוך His knowledge of the past, present, and future that will come; in practice one cannot negate providence, only prove it—for if statistically we do not see something, that does not mean that prayer is not heard or does not work, only that it has not been proven—for it is always possible that God, from the place of hester panim, does not act from prayers in a statistical percentage that points to the hearing of prayer] this does not mean that prayer is not heard or that it has no value, God forbid, and therefore perhaps one should not, God forbid, abolish it or refrain from praying even when it is an optional prayer.
Precisely the point of acting for the sake of Heaven obligates prayer even if God will not bring about anything from my prayer. Even if prayer does not operate on the physical plane, God forbid, that does not mean there is no providence, for the two are different things—especially since we do not know one another’s will, nor how God judges each person according to the level of his will and yearning to fulfill commandments, as is known from the Scriptures that no one is equal to another.
Thank you very much, Or
Could you point to places where you explain: ‘in light of my view that today the Holy One, blessed be He, is hardly involved in the world’
Hello Or.
These matters have already been discussed here to exhaustion. One can raise any speculation one wants and then demand that others refute it. Can you disprove the claim that every transparent fairy has three wings? Haven’t you seen them? That’s simply hester panim (the transparent fairies are hiding their wings). If you set up a theory while placing the burden of proof specifically on whoever refutes it, you can adopt almost any theory whatsoever, and then the whole discussion is pointless.
I have already explained the relation between what the Torah says and what we see today, and I will not repeat it here.
There is a link here above in this post. The rest can be found through searches on the site. The matters will be clarified further in the trilogy I wrote, which I hope will be published soon.
According to what you say—why does the rabbi say "Unetaneh Tokef"?
First, who said that I do? Second, what is special about that one in particular?
A good final sealing to you as well, Rabbi Michi. May it be God’s will that we all merit to clarify the truth and serve the Holy One, blessed be He. (Only “may He be”—doesn’t that sound a bit too much like “God has abandoned the land”?)