It is eighty minutes before sundown here in Greater Fullerton as I begin to write. I have just decided that I'm going to try to fast, after all. To be honest, for me it has more to do more with machismo than devotion to God's strictures. I want to show that I can still do it, I suppose, like I can still put myself on autopilot when the need arises and say the ancient prayers of my youth.
I'm not much on Yohm Kihpoor -- often spelled "Yom Kipper," inviting pronunciation as if it rhymed with "Bomb Clipper" rather than correctly as "Home Demure" -- because I don't believe in it. That is, I believe in the idea of Kihpoor -- Atonement -- but no so much in its practice, especially in a group and on a schedule.
I'd wish for a holiday in which people were supposed to atone and then, at the end, rather than congratulating themselves because they succeeded, recognized that they had failed. Not everyone fails, of course: atonement does occur. But one way that you know it occurs is that behavior truly changes.
I've always felt that those around me who would go to shul on Yohm Kihpoor -- evening, morning, and afternoon -- were pretty much the same people with the same inclinations (although hungrier) after the services as before.
If there were Kihpoor, I think that there would pretty much have to be peace.
We hear often about how hard it is to say "I'm sorry." I don't find it so difficult. Life is filled with regret; every day brings with it countless new opportunities for apology, if that's what one wants -- feelings hurt, unfair advantages seized, elbows thrown. After a while, a reasonably sensitive and empathetic person learns to express apology, sorrow, and regret. Saying that one is sorry is easy. Atonement, true atonement, is hard. It cannot but leave one changed.
I am, unlike many of my family and peers, religious; I believe that there is a moral order to the universe, although I believe that the notion of a Hell for those who fail is one of the worst imaginable calumnies to cast against God. This falls short of Faith within me; it's just Belief, Suspicion, perhaps even Fancy. But yes, I think that we're dice rolled on the felt of reality in order to learn something as we bounce; to me, that implies some sort of universal moral order. That you may think otherwise is fine with me.
If you believe that there is a moral order, then it seems likely that a good part of the time we fall short. (Otherwise, what's the point? Life then becomes an obstacle course without obstacles, in which we need not stir ourselves to leap to greater heights.) Recognizing our deficiencies is, I think, an important part of being and self-reflection -- although I don't feel the need to invoke a concept such as Original Sin; the laws of economics and principles of social relations do just fine -- but it's not nearly as profound as atonement. Atonement is the commitment -- not mere choice or pledge, but commitment, perhaps beyond words or conscious will -- to reform.
How many times is our lives do we truly atone? How often do we pledge that we will never do something wrongful again -- and mean it -- and then follow through? I find my moral progress through life more haphazard than that. I can recognize moral change over the course of my life, generally I think for the better, but not many moments when I have said "this was wrong and I shall not do it again."
When one does atone, it is -- if it is really happening -- profound. To me it does not seem like something to share in a crowd, not something to have accomplished on schedule in the nine days before the day we say our prayers to mark our having done so. It does not lead us to wear sackcloth and ashes for the benefit of onlookers, to self-flagellate. In my rare experiences, the emotion accompanying atonement is a sense of wonder, like those following the first stirrings of puberty, like that which a caterpillar may feel in a chrysalis.
Atoning! "I'VE CHANGED!" I'm not sure how one even really knows. There are times that I've thought that I've atoned and it turned out not to be true. I forgive myself that; after all, it's hard.
So I don't celebrate Yohm Kihpoor -- to be fair, I don't think that anyone who does truly "celebrates" it. And yet I appreciate it. I appreciate it the way -- this will come off badly, at first, I know, but give me a moment to explain -- that I appreciate hypocrisy. "Hypocrisy," LaRouchefoucauld said, "is the tribute that vice pays to virtue" -- and to that, I say "great!" Virtue needs all of the tribute in can get!
Hypocrisy, measured in the distance between what we say and what we do, itself probably generates much of the impetus that we have towards virtue, when we find ourselves lacking in it. We act more virtuous to make the hypocrisy go away; in time, we become more virtuous as our minds follow our actions.
The problem with hypocrisy is that it often leads to too-ready self-forgiveness; it omits the grain of sand that forms the seed of the pearl. It can facilitate, or it can undercut, true repentance and atonement. If you know that success is coming, I think that it tends to do the latter.
So for me, the problem with Yohm Kihpoor is that -- it ends. It ends, or is supposed to end, in success. We say the Kohl Nihdrei -- the often and calamitously misinterpreted prayer in which Jews cancel the vows that they have made in the previous year, meaning not the vows towards others, but only the vows to oneself, including that to atone -- spend a day in prayer, and then it is off to break the fast. We tell ourselves that we are older but wiser -- but, then, we always do that.
What is Yohm Kihpoor lasted all year -- Shanah Kihpoor? What if there were no "break" in our atonement, no "successful completion"; what if it were an always-present obligation? How would we change?
I think that there would have to be peace, on the one hand, made by those who successfully atone; they would, after all, have truly had to change. And part of me also thinks that the world is designed so as to put those who would have atoned at a disadvantage in everyday life, that they would be more easily taken advantage of. If so, then no wonder that we often fake it.
We live in a world where atonement is both difficult and, to some extent, dangerous, because a truly repentant person cannot deal as sharply with the world. If that is our world, then we need to rethink our relationship with Kihpoor generally, not just Yohm Kihpoor but Kihpoor generally. Can we afford true atonement? Can we afford to change? If not, can we remake the world in such a way so that we can?
I don't say the proper prayers over this next day, the Day of Repentance. But I do ask myself questions such as this -- and hope that God understands my choice.