Kol Nidre - B'racha V'Klalla - The Reward and....

   Growing up, Shabbat morning almost always had a special breakfast.  Except of course, when Yom Kippur fell on Shabbat.  If it wasn’t home baked, it was usually made from challah from one of our favorite spots...and there were a few.  We would all work together to enjoy challah french toast.  Now, in our family there were actually a few different kinds.  And I’m not talking about raisin versus plain.  It was my brother and sister who liked their challah french toast crispy, what I would have called burnt in those days.  And my mother and I, we liked our french toast still a bit gooey.  The egg batter still soaking on the inside of the thick cut challah french toast.  I know, I know all of this food talk is unfair, but think about the great reward of our communal break-fast at the end of the waiting! 
   
    There were also a few different ways to “dress” your thick cut challah french toast in my family.  There was the rare, and I mean rare occasion when it called for a dollop of sour cream.  Not usually my preference.  Then there were the syrup days, nothing fancy just regular aunt jemima syrup drizzled over a mound of the thick cut challah french toast.  And then the white granulated sugar, poured generously over that same mountain of gooey goodness.  I remember those Shabbat mornings fondly.  I remember, too, that morning my sister said jokingly to me as the syrup streamed out of the plastic spout on the bottle onto my french toast, “if you’re going use so much syrup, why don’t you just drink it!”  So what is a twelve year old boy to do in response to his snarky older sister?  That’s right...  I proceeded to hold the entire bottle upside down above my hinged open jaw and squeeze as hard and fast as I could! 
   
    Just then, because Jewish mothers have eyes in the back of their head, my mother turned around from the stove top gasping at the sight of my gluttony and screamed, “Evon Joshua!”  “uh oh, middle name this must be bad, I thought to myself.”  “If I ever, EVER, catch you doing that, you will NEVER see the inside of an ice rink again!!!!”  Now I’m not quite sure to this day what that chosen punishment had to do with the crime.  But, I do know it was probably the worst punishment this guy, who still plays hockey today, could think of...  Hockey was my escape.  It was where this twelve year old boy could take out all his anger, his angst and not get in trouble for it.  It was my sport of choice, my passion.  Needless to say, I slammed that syrup back onto the table promising to never try that again...and this was one boundary I was never going to push.  The reward of hockey for me was far too important, and the prospect of a punishment banning me from the ice, was far too terrible to imagine. 
   
    There are many reasons the High Holy Day season draws so many of us to Temple.  There are countless motivations that stir the Jewish soul to ensure the proverbial Book of Life has us inscribed for good.  No matter what our Theology states, and it makes no difference what our view of God may or may not entail, there is a sense of the cosmic order being aligned for us as Jews on this day, the Day of Atonement.  It is aligned as THE TIME to make the sacred pilgrimage to the Temple to utter centuries and millennia old words that articulate our hopes for a better year, our fears about the past year.  On Rosh Hashanah we speak out...we speak to what our world is calling our for, what it is asking of us; but on Yom Kippur we look inward, we examine how a sense of reward and punishment drives, motivates us to engage.  The day gives voice to our wants for ways to better ourselves and it spells out clearly that reward and punishment are at least part of what we are feeling on this sacred day.  And while this ancient imagery is so present, we know there will not be any lightning bolts for those choosing not to fast, there won’t be natural disasters created as divine retribution, there is still a strong sense of reward and punishment.  Our Torah portion on this day, this Shabbat Shabbaton - Sabbath of Sabbaths puts forth quite clearly - “See, I have set before you this day life and good, or death and evil.”1  If the divine retribution part of the equation, the punishment is lacking, we must seek to understand differently how the punishment still plays a role.  The reward we can certainly articulate - the benefits of living in community, living our great Jewish tradition, ensuring it is passed on from one generation to the next.  But what happens to the other side of that equation, the punishment, the curse?  Bracha v’klalla - blessing and curse may no longer be exactly what is articulated in the text.  The choice of life and good or death and bad, of blessing or curse is in our hands the texts says.  On Yom Kippur, on the Day of Atonement we engage in recognizing that the reward and punishment are realized in our own actions, when we engage in what the day presents us with:  The opportunities to evaluate our teshuva - our turning, our tefillah - our prayer and our tzedakah - our righteousness.      

    The challenging words of the Unetaneh Tokef, the prayer that questions what the year truly holds for each of us, pervades the theme of this day.  A poem written about a thousand years ago epitomizes the Holy Days.  It is the troubling passage that reminds us of all that we cannot control in our world, in our lives.  It thrusts us into the reality of what it means to be human...that whether they are rewards or punishments, things befall us, things happen.  The Unetaneh Tokef forces us, even if for a brief moment, to cede power, for that’s what its title means - give over to the power of this sacred day.  But, I must ask the same question I did about reward and punishment.  If the equation is a bit broken - to what are we ceding power?  Helen Plotkin recently wrote in the Tablet mag, a Jewish online journal, that the “poem ‘Unetaneh Tokef’ reminds us that we can change our own character, even if we cannot completely control our future.”2  We are ceding power to the human reality that we cannot control everything that occurs in our world, but we can control our character.  Yom Kippur is the opportunity to center ourselves to be able to respond, respond with our character.  The middle section, the most difficult part of the Unetaneh Tokef begins:
   
    On Rosh Hashanah it is written, and on Yom Kippur it is sealed.
    How many shall pass on and how many will come to be.
                                           
The list continues to that crescendo we are all too familiar with:  ותשובה ותפילה וצדקה מעבירין את רוע הגזרה, But Repentance, prayer and righteous acts-righteousness deflect the severity of the decree.   The system of reward and punishment goes through a paradigm shift with the utterance of this poem, this prayer over the last millennia.  The reward is life itself it exclaims.  Unetaneh Tokef reminds us of the opportunity to continue becoming our best selves, to discover our authentic self.  The punishment, well those are beyond our control, but we can respond to all those that seem, that feel like a punishment by engaging in teshuvah, tefillah and tzedakah - they give us control of the person we aim to be...to become.
   
    TESHUVA - Our Jewish tradition teaches us much about the role of repentance.  We learn about the stages of this process laid out by Maimonides in his Mishneh Torah.  He guides us to think beyond the wrongful acts we may have committed but to think deeper about our character as well.  Maimonides wrote, “Do not think you are obliged to repent only for transgressions involving acts such as stealing, robbing, and sexual immorality. Just as we must repent such acts, so must we examine our evil feelings and repent our anger, our jealousy, our mocking thoughts, and our excessive ambition and greed. We must repent all of these.”3
   
On the High Holidays the kind of teshuva, repentance in which we engage to do this work, to develop our character so that we can respond better to the uncontrollable in life is different.  We can apologize, make amends and seek or grant forgiveness all year long.  However, there is a nuance to the uniqueness of these days of awe.  Teshuvah תשובה means “repent.” Well kind of...it literally means “return.” The goal of our work at this time of year is to return to the source. “Repent” is from the Latin meaning “to feel the pain again.” That certainly is one part of the teshuvah process (when we regret our past actions), but the overall goal of teshuvah is profoundly simple – return to who you really are, to what some call your “essential self” and an authenticity of self.  There is also a distinct component to the spiritual work on this day.  That is the Vidui, the confession.  The public confession of Yom Kippur holds special power.  On one hand it could be done in community for fear of individualized punishment, a request for it to be diluted amongst the whole people.  Or, better, there is something added when we do this in public, not in community, but as a community.  We acknowledge that the balance of reward and punishment is something we bear together.  The teshuva process charges us to confess and so this first step, done with the support of our community surrounding us leads us in strength and confidence to the next steps. 

The Kotzker Rebbe was once commenting on the verse from Psalms, “For the distance of East from West, have our sins distanced God from us.”4  He asked, “What is the distance of East from West?”  he answered his own question and said, “The distance of East to West is the turning of one’s own head!  If we simply turn around, and turn to God, and call, God is there.  Prayer, requests and petitions - those follow.”  It begins with the ‘turning’ the teshuva.  The next component is that of prayer.

    TEFILLAH - The Kol Nidre prayer itself is a great example of this reality.  It is the piece of liturgy that allows us to be human.  While it is essentially a legal formula, it has become the fixed prayer that highlights the entrance into the Day of Atonement.  This medieval legal formula creates room for honest effort, true striving to live up to the expectations we make for ourselves and the ways we put ourselves out there.  Yet, it also leaves plenty of space for when we don’t.  When the obligations to which we commit become too much for us, for when life gets in the way or we simply cannot live up to the spoken expectation - this is our safe out...but only after honest effort. 

    What would be the purpose of such a piece if we were not concerned with the punishment?  Certainly there is in the back of our minds the reality of consequences...what happens when we don’t...when we can’t...when we are unable?  The Kol Nidre prayer offers us on this day, the moment of pause to consider how all of this plays into that equation of reward and punishment, of blessing and curse.  It allows us the time to consider how we will grow into meeting the expectations we set for ourselves, or not.  Rabbi Jonathan Cohen, Dean of the Cincinnati Campus of Hebrew Union College taught that Kol Nidre, “...forces us to face our humanity in the face of a perfect divinity [construct].  It has everything to do with our human inability to live up to our own expectations of ourselves.  In this text, we are finally forced to come to terms with our failings and our inability to commit to keeping our word to ourselves and to others.”5  Just like the Unetaneh Tokef, we are charged to understand that we will not be perfect, that we must find a keen sense of what it is that we truly can have control over.  In that discovery is both the reward and the punishment, the blessing and the curse.       

    In our Shabbat prayerbook is found a poignant quote, “pray as if everything depended on God, act as if everything depended on you.”6  It is this idea that helps us recognize that while teshuva is one step, one component over which we do have control in our lives, and prayer - the way we engage with it is another, ultimately action is required.  In the Talmud, in tractate Berachot there is a section with a litany of the various rewards for certain actions, for prayer and for attending celebrations and many others.  One short part reads, the primary reward for fasting [on Yom Kippur] is for the tzedakah - the charity [and righteousness that results and is] given to the poor.7 
   
    TZEDAKAH - On Yom Kippur, our third step in taking control of what we can, of building, or re-building our character is tzedakah.  It is said in this Unetaneh Tokef prayer that this is the third component to deflecting the severity or the badness of the decree that is to come in the year ahead.  The first two are largely individual acts.  We begin to make the commitment to turn - teshuva.  Then we engage in the liturgy - the prayer, which begins to reach out to others, for it is done in community, with community.  Now, at this stage, in fully understanding the balance of bracha - blessing and klalla - curse, we move to fully engage with others.  The acts of tzedakah give us more control to be in support of humanity, of others. 
   
    Most of us were always taught and maybe still hold fast to that idea too, that tzedakah is charity.  It was the extra change your dad pulled out of his pocket as you left  the car for Sunday school, or the jingling change in the pushke - the JNF collection box on your kitchen counter.  Its meaning is actually much broader.  It is best understood as righteousness and justice.  When we give to others with the understanding that this is seeking, establishing what is right and just - that is to share the blessings we receive, that is taking control of what we can.  That is recognizing that reward is in the process.

    The prophet Micah exclaimed, “God has told you what is good and what Adonai commands of you, to do justice, love goodness and walk humbly with your God.”8  Tzedakah is giving generously yes, but it is incumbent upon us, it is the expectation to ensure justice and righteousness exist in our world.  The other two steps, the other two ways to deflect the severity, the badness of the decree...the seeming punishments of the year...are active choices, tzedakah is different.  It is incumbent upon us.   

    This is what we will be doing over the next day.  Finding the place of these three ways we can build our character, the ways with which we can respond to what befalls us in the year ahead.  We must balance how this Day of Atonement is the most intimate and personal of days...yet we are here as a community...as a collective, we must strike that balance.  In one sense the punishment is fasting.  Something many of us are doing together.  But it is more so engaging in this three part journey.  It is not meant to be easy.  Turning into our authentic, best, our essential self requires admission, acknowledgement - that is hard.  But, eventually we will eat!  And, the ultimate reward is that as the door closes with Neilah and we turn power over to the universe, to the mystery of creation and say seven times for clarity - Adonai Hu HaElohim - Adonai is God and then, tomorrow night we will know we have done what we can.  We have taken control over what IS up to us to control.  That is the reward.

Tzom Kal - An easy and meaningful fast and G’mar Chatimah Tovah - May all be Sealed for Good in the Coming Year.

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1 Deuteronomy 30:15. 2
2 Need a Reason to Repent?  The Answer - No Matter Who You are - Can be Found Here.  Helen Plotkin, September 3, 2013.  http://www.tabletmag.com/jewish-life-and-religion/142538/unetanah-tokef
3 Maimonides commenting on Isaiah 55:7, “Let the wicked forsake his way, the unrighteous his thoughts.”
4 Psalm 103:12.
5 A personal discourse I had with Dr. Cohen in August 2008.
6 Mishkan Tefilah.
7 BT Berachot 6b.  The emphasis and some additional words are my own based on my interpretations and study with Rabbi Joel Simon.  We understood the connection to be that charity/righteousness results from a fasting observer in two ways.  One is that s/he will have food to give away and the second is the intensive prayer experience will result in better behaviors, for which a reward is merited.  
8 Micah 6:8.