Yom Kippur and Shabbat
By Nalini Ibragimov
If you would ask what the most widely celebrated Jewish holiday is, would you be surprised that it’s Yom Kippur? It does seem to jive with the whole Jewish guilt thing (which is not Jewish at all!). But I’d rather Judaism be known for Purim (cool costumes and wine) or Chanukah (lighting menorahs and eating latkes) or Shavuot (can you please pass the cheesecake?).
There is one positive Torah commandment on the day of Yom Kippur – viddui, confession. We recite this confessional prayer five times individually and an additional five times with the congregation. We list a whole range of sins in alphabetical order, some of which we may think have no relevance to me. And this is where the fallacy of Jewish guilt was created – we grew up thinking standing all day in synagogue, head slightly bowed, banging on our chests, listing our sins is what being Jewish is. It’s at least the minimum observance of so many Jews since everyone acknowledges the holiday of Yom Kippur.
But alas, we were wrong. Because the vidui is not a description of who I am. It’s a description of who I am not. It’s a list of commandments that I may have transgressed this past year. But those transgressions do not define me. They are absolutely not a description of me.
Remember the shofar blowing on Rosh Hashanah, what I was thinking then, what I was thinking about who I want to be – that’s who I am. We recite the vidui in order to disconnect from past shortcomings, so we can focus on the part of ourself we want to develop and nurture.
So Yom Kippur is a day of tremendous joy because there is a sense of relief that I’m not trapped by my past misdeeds. I’m free from my past so I can actualize the vision I conceived for myself on Rosh Hashanah.
Tonight begins 24 hours of tremendous spiritual opportunity. And it carries a unique potency in coinciding with shabbat. The Berdichever Rebbe, Rav Levi Yitzchak, was especially calm when Yom Kippur would fall on Shabbat. He explained that since it is known that there is a prohibition to write on shabbat, yet to save a life, writing would be required; therefore, Gd can only “write” us in the book of life as this would be the only permissible way for Gd to “write” on shabbat. May you all be sealed in the book of life, growth and success.