Torah Reflections for Yom Kippur Observed on the evening of September 27, 2009. A few years ago, I finally decided I was too scared to drive on the tires that I thought seemed close to bald for a few thousand miles, so I got new tires on my car. That was a big deal for me, because I really wanted to see how long the original tires on my car would last. It was 58,000 miles, and the car was starting to slide around on dry streets. I worried what would happen when it started raining. As long as I was getting new tires, I figured the car needed some other work. Once the work was done, the mechanic showed me the alignment report, which indicated in cryptic numbers that there had been something to be adjusted. I just stared and marveled at this piece of paper. They moved the tires in the rear of the car by one hundredth of a centimeter. Other tires they moved by a little more: a tenth of a centimeter. This is an incredibly tiny amount of movement, which I said to the mechanic. He said, "Yeah it is a tiny amount of movement, but it makes a huge difference in the wear of tires and the suspension of the car." That's an amazing thing to me, that such a tiny change can make such a big difference. One tenth of a centimeter makes a difference when driving 58,000 miles? Tiny changes make a difference, not just on a car. Tiny changes in our lives can also be influential, and Yom Kippur is not only about the big changes we have to make in our lives but also about the tiny things we have to do to get better at being human. The small things that we change can really have a huge impact. Sometimes we focus so much on what we think we see, we miss the whole picture, the entire experience. We look at the trees but don't see the forest; we look at the forest and don't see the trees. So this year, as we confess our sins, try to focus on the little things you coulda/shoulda/woulda done that might have made a difference. Yom Kippur is about seeing both the big picture and the minutiae that make the picture happen. In next week's Torah portion, Ha'azinu, Moses tells us to see God in the droplets of dew, the rain which falls upon us, in the small stuff. Moses concludes the poem we read by reminding the people to take to heart all of the words that he has spoken - to see both the droplets and to see the growth that is nourished by them. To see that in their multitude, they do make a difference, each step we take, no matter how small it may seem, can bring us closer in our relationship with God, closer to our inner spirit, closer to seeing the big signs that we miss precisely because we miss the little ones. We are constantly bombarded by the showers of gifts from God. God is constantly there trying to nurture us, but many of us keep looking for the gifts not in the small droplets that rain upon us, but elsewhere, where we can't seem to find them. Maybe if we looked a little less for the big things, we could find God where God is, in the showers of blessings we tend to ignore each and every day. In the Talmud, Yoma 86b, Reish Lakish says "Great is repentance, for because of it, sins are turned into merits." Teshuva, repentance, by redefining our attitudes, our values, our place in the universe, redefines and recreates time, undoing our sins from the past. Ki bayom hazeh yehaper letaher et-hem mikol hatotayhem, for on this day God will forgive you, cleanse you of all of
(over)
your sins before God. The essential nature of Yom Kippur is to freeze time, and within the frozen time, to rearrange our lives, redefine our existence, and rewrite our past. We all know that moments from our past influence our future - we are who we are, and do what we do, because of where we have been, what we have done in the past. But repentance causes a moment from our future to change our past. How else could a sin, which is in the past, change into a merit? Think about something you did, which you regretted and made amends for. Think about whether you, and whomever it was you wronged, feel better now that you have corrected the problem, worked through your error. By repenting, atoning, you have turned the past into something better than it was, into something that you and whomever you wronged now feel better about. You have brought peace and healing into a place of hurt. The present and the future have the power to affect and to remake the past from hurtful into learning experience. Yom Kippur can be a time when we do alignments on our personalities. Making minor adjustments so that sins turn into growth opportunities. Sin, by the way, in Hebrew, is het, which means missing the mark. And I suspect many of us miss the mark by just enough hundredths of a centimeter, and that impacts our journey of life. Centimeters make a difference in the ways that we travel on our roads through life. This High Holy Day week, and throughout this New Year, may we see God around each and every one of us like the droplets of dew on the grass, and may we all find healing and hope in the alignment of Yom Kippur. Shanna tovah, and g'mar hatimah tovah. May we all be blessed and sealed for a good and sweet New Year.
© Bay Area Jewish Healing Center, Rabbi H. Rafael Goldstein
Rabbi H. Rafael Goldstein, Vice President for Jewish Affairs and Executive Director of the JFCS Endowment of Jewish Family and Children's Service in Phoenix, AZ wrote this Torah Reflection. It is brought to you by the Bay Area Jewish Healing Center (a beneficiary of the Jewish Community Federation of San Francisco, the Peninsula, Marin and Sonoma Counties), an affiliate of the Institute on Aging, in collaboration with the Center for Life Enrichment of Jewish Family and Children's Service of Phoenix, AZ and the Deutsch Family Shalom Center, Temple Chai of Phoenix, AZ.
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