A not very funny joke that many rabbis told their congregations, almost all via a computer screen, this Rosh Hashanah was that 2020 has been a terrible year, maybe 5781 will be a better year. We American Jews approached the High Holidays knowing that during the Ten Days of Penitence between the start of Rosh Hashanah and the conclusion of Yom Kippur, our country would be passing 200,000 deaths for the corona virus pandemic, a total exacerbated by an uncaring narcissist who even now has turned the once respected Center for Disease Control into his personal propaganda arm. In the days before Rosh Hashanah, great fires erupted in the western states, and great storms ravished the Gulf Coast. Then, a few hours before rabbis would be repeating this not very funny joke, Ruth Bader Ginsburg died.
Mishnah Rosh Hashanah 1:2 tells us that on Rosh Hashanah all the people of the world pass before Him like a division of soldiers, as it says, “He who fashions the hearts of them all, who discerns all their doings” (Psalms 33:15). This year the U-ne-Tah-neh To-Kef prayer, author unknown but likely written during the Medieval period, chanted by the cantor only on Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, has particular resonance (translation Lev Shalem Mahzor 2010):
Let us speak of the sacred power of this day — profound and awe inspiring;
On it, Your sovereignty is celebrated, and Your throne, from which You rule in truth, is established with love.
Truly You are the Judge and Prosecutor, Expert and Witness, completing the indictment, bringing the case, and enumerating the counts.
You recall all that is forgotten, and will open the book of remembrance, which speaks for itself, for our own hands have signed the page.
The great shofar is sounded, and the still small voice will be heard.
Angels will be alarmed, seized with fear and trembling, declaring “This very day is the Day of Judgment”, for even the hosts of heaven are judged, no one is innocent in your sight.
All lives on earth will pass before you like a flock of sheep.
As a shepherd examines his flock, making each sheep pass under the staff, so You will review and number and count, judging each living being, determining the fate of everything in creation, inscribing their destiny.
On Rosh Hashanah it is written, and on Yom Kipper it is sealed:
How many will pass on, and how many will be born,
Who will live and who will die,
Who will have a long life and who will come to an untimely end.
Who will perish by fire and who by water, who by sword and who by beast, who by hunger and who by thirst, who by earthquake and who by plague.
Who will be strangled and who will be stoned,
Who will be at peace and who will be troubled;
Who will be serene and who will be disturbed;
Who will be tranquil and who will be tormented;
Who will be impoverished and who will be enriched;
Who will be brought low and who will be raised up.
Some of us may have qualms about blaming all the evil that has happened in the world solely on Acts of God. Such blame casting is not entirely a Jewish philosophy. Rabbi Levi Yitzchok of Berditchev lived from 1740 to 1809 and was an early Ukrainian Hassidic rabbi.
The story is told of Rabbi Levi Yitzhak of Berditchev that once on Kol Nidre, the holiest night of the year when all sins are confessed, the tailor, one of the most devout members of the community, was absent. Concerned, the rabbi left the synagogue and went to the tailor’s home. To his surprise he found the tailor looking at a piece of paper before him on the table. “What’s the matter?” asked Levi Yitzhak. “Oh, everything’s fine,” replied the tailor. “As I was getting ready to attend the service I made a list with two columns. At the top of one I wrote my name and at the top of the other I wrote, ‘God of all the Universe.’
Then, one by one, I began to list my sins. ‘Cheated Goldman out of a pair of trousers.’ And in God’s column I noted God’s omission: ‘Little girl died of diphtheria.’ Then the next sin, ‘Lost my temper with my children,’ and in God’s column, ‘I heard there was a famine in another country.’” And so it went. The tailor showed the rabbi the completed list. “And for every sin I had committed during the past year, God had done one too. So I said to God, ‘Look, we each have the same number of sins. If you let me off, I’ll let You off!’ ”
But the story doesn’t end there. When the rabbi looked at the paper his face grew red and he scolded his friend: “You fool! You had Him and you let Him go!” Here is a kind of relationship with God unique to Jewish tradition. Jews don’t just get angry with God. They call God to account.
We live in a country where four years ago 46% of our fellow Americans voted to elect evil. Now this evil man is showing that he will not accept electoral defeat but will use the power of his office to remain in office despite what the election results may bring. The hurricanes battering the Gulf Coast, and the fires burning California, Oregon, and Washington, are in part Acts of God, but are in part the result of climate change that we have allowed to occur and refused to accept. No human agency caused Justice Ginsburg to die when she did, but we created the conditions that has turned the death of a single Supreme Court Justice into a nation altering event.
And lest you think “It is them, and not us”, remember that the Yom Kippur liturgy contains confession of our sins. This translation from Mahzor Lev Shalem 2010, converting our sins from aleph to tav into a to z:
We abuse, we betray, we are cruel, we destroy, we embitter, we falsify, we gossip, we hate, we insult, we jeer, we kill, we lie, we mock, we neglect, we oppress, we pervert, we quarrel, we rebel, we steal, we transgress, we are unkind, we are violent, we are wicked, we are extremists, we yearn to do evil, we are zealous to bad causes.
You may be thinking, "I have not done all of those things!" For example, most of us, I hope, haven't killed anyone during the past year. But notice, we confess our sins in the first person plural - WE. Judaism is a faith that believes in collective guilt. If someone murders, if someone robs the poor, if someone forces the unemployed and other poor Americans to go hungry and to lose their homes or to be denied medical treatment, if some of us fail to reduce our carbon footprint to ameliorate the effects of climate change, if some allow covid 19 to spread because we are too selfish and arrogant to wear a mask, if our election is stolen out from under us and we cease to be a democracy, then we are all guilty. For no matter how hard we work to make our world a better place, to repair the world tikkun olam, there is always something more we could have done but did not do, and therefore we share in our guilt.
And this theology of collective guilt is based on Torah and Talmud. In the parsha we read this year on August 22nd, we read at Deuteronomy 21: 1-9, that if the body of a dead person is found lying in the countryside, the elders of the nearest town, - that is, the elders of that town's Court of Justice, must come to the site where the body was found and declare "Our hands did not shed this blood, nor did our eyes see it done." Rabbi Joshua ben Levi asked, at Babylonian Talmud Sotah 38b,
But can it enter our minds that the elders of a Court of Justice are shedders of blood? The meaning is, [The man found dead] did not come to us for help and we dismissed him, we did not see him and let him go — he did not come to us for help and we dismissed him without supplying him with food, we did not see him and let him go without escort.
May the coming Hebrew year of 5781 be an improvement over 5780 and 2020. And for those who will be observing Yom Kippur Sunday night and Monday, may you have an easy and a meaningful fast.
