Yomim Noraim
…or making it
By: Rabbi Dovid Samuels
“This act of disconnecting from our sole dependence on the physical and attaching to our spiritual source is the process through which we can achieve full repentance and forgiveness.”
Men with white kittels, women without their finest jewellery, no festive meal…no meal at all! A day spent almost entirely in shul. Angels neither eat nor do they drink. We imagine them in pristine white garments. I suppose we are trying to show Hashem that we are like angels. Yom Kippurim does derive its name from Purim, afterall…is it because we dress up and play make-believe on both days? We certainly can’t fool Hashem, so who are we fooling? Do we want Hashem to forgive our angelic self, or do we want Him to forgive us for who we really are? On a day of repentance, where truth and honesty are key ingredients, what’s the deal with this charade?
To begin to explain our strange behaviour on the holiest day of the year, we can start with a fascinating idea in the sefer Shnei Luchos HaBris. There, he quotes the Zohar which refers to Yom Kippur as “the World to Come”. He explains this puzzling statement using a Gemara[1]: “Rav would often say that the World to Come is not like this world. In the World to Come, there is no eating, drinking, procreation, business, jealousy, hatred, or competition. Instead, the righteous sit with their crowns on their heads, basking in the radiance of the Divine Presence, as the verse[2] states: ‘They saw G-d, and they ate and drank.’” Rashi there explains that Nadav, Avihu, and the elders of the Jewish people were sustained by the radiance of the Divine Presence as if they had eaten and drunk.
To understand this idea, we need to ask ourselves a question: What sustains our lives? Many would point to food and drink. That is correct. But what fuels our energy and motivation? Often, it is ambition, jealousy, and competition. Sometimes a person is invigorated by a challenge, to the point that he thrives on arguments and to feel alive he instinctively starts fights with people. This warms him. Others thirst for a rush, a thrill, even danger. What Rav in the above Gemara is teaching us is that in the World to Come, the righteous derive their vitality entirely from the radiance of the Divine Presence. But the fact that the verse he quotes refers to people experiencing this spiritual vitality while they were very much in this world, not the next, teaches us an amazing idea: that a person can be sustained by spirituality even while in this world. In other words, a man can experience the vitality of the next world while he is still in this world. How? By becoming close to Hashem.
To take this idea a step further, we can learn a deep lesson simply by looking at a very natural phenomenon. All of creation constantly requires replenishment of energy. Without it, life would cease. But why did Hashem design the world this way? Hashem’s world is designed to teach a Jew about himself, his life, and his Creator. A Jew must understand that the laws that bind all of nature bind him as well. Everything needs to draw from its source of energy to survive. What is our source of energy? Our soul is our life force, and it finds its energy in connecting to its source: Hashem. How? Through the Torah and mitzvos that Hashem gave us… for that very purpose. This is Rav’s lesson to us, and the sefer Iyun Yaakov notes that Rav frequently emphasised this lesson to remind people that those who learn to derive life from closeness to Hashem will find their dependence on physical sources of energy diminishing.
A Day of Real Life
The above Gemara described the World to Come as a place void of eating, drinking, work, and other aspects of this world. Do we look forward to such a world? Granted, a life without work might seem appealing, but do we not feel a satisfaction after doing a job well done, earning a paycheck, contributing to a bigger idea? Will we not feel an emptiness without the flavour of food, a quenching drink? Will we enjoy the next world? Aren’t we promised a world of absolute paradise? In truth, this dry and empty image of the next world only holds true when we are unaware of how to draw nourishment from the spiritual. When we experience this idea taught to us by Rav, we are energised and filled with joy, to the point that the other pleasures are no longer needed. It is a world where we derive our pleasure from something beyond the physical. It is the next world… the world beyond this one.
Now, back to our Yom Kippur Purimshpiel. Hashem gave us one day each year when we refrain from eating and drinking to focus solely on closeness to Him. Yom Kippur allows us to discover the ability to derive true vitality from the Divine. Just like if we were involved in something we thoroughly enjoyed, we could go a long time before even realising that we were hungry. On Yom Kippur, we ‘deprive’ ourselves of five things, but this is certainly not self-torture. On the contrary, we are allowing ourselves to release ourselves from the bounds of this world and allowing ourselves to connect to and derive vitality from our true and eternal Source: from Hashem Himself.
A Lesson a Day
If we learn this lesson from Yom Kippur, we can use it to shed a new light on our entire year. Yom Kippur offers guidance for our behaviour throughout the year. While we are physical beings who require food and drink, it is essential to remember that it is not the physical sustenance itself that gives us life. Rather, it is the spiritual spark within the food that sustains us. There are those who have witnessed tzaddikim from previous generations who subsisted on minimal food and drink for extended periods, yet their minds remained clear and sharp. Although we cannot emulate these tzaddikim entirely, we can learn from them that the true sustenance we receive is from the spiritual power within our food. Yom Kippur helps us remember this lesson. On this day, we derive life from the radiance of the Divine Presence alone while still existing in our physical bodies. This same source nourished Nadav and Avihu and the elders of the Jewish people. After the resurrection of the dead, it is the radiance of the Shechinah that will sustain the bodies and souls of those who return to life. We should also extend the lesson of Yom Kippur beyond food and drink. Rav mentioned many other aspects of this world that people feel are essential for life: procreation, business dealings, jealousy, hatred, and competition. Yom Kippur teaches us that, above all, closeness to G-d is the source of true vitality, and through the experience of Yom Kippur we can approach the whole year differently. Instead of seeking to derive vitality purely from the physical, we can invest in finding the pleasure that exists in the connection between a Jew and His Creator.
This act of disconnecting from our sole dependence on the physical and attaching to our spiritual source is the process through which we can achieve a full repentance and forgiveness. When we realise where our life is sourced, where our pleasure is truly found, who we really are, then we can regret, then we can admit, and then we can forsake our past behaviours. Without this realisation we will find it very hard to avoid another year full of the same mistakes as the previous one.
A House in the Lower Worlds
Now, before we all decide to leave behind everything in this world and escape to the next, as if we were angels, we have to appreciate that it is within the physical confines of this world that we will find this sublime connection with our creator. Hashem placed us in this physical world with its challenges for a reason. We must eat and drink, but we must ensure that what we consume is kosher, recite blessings before and after eating, and avoid being consumed by materialism. We must engage in business but do so with honesty, avoiding sins like theft and deceit. Hashem desires that we create a place for Him right here, in the lower world of physicality. It is exactly through avoiding the pulls that interacting with this world presents that we find our way towards Hashem. And one of the most powerful and critical tools is through prayer. When we realise that finding the spiritual behind the physical is no easy task, Hashem offers us a solution: “Ask Me for help. Pray to Me.” If we use the desire and drive we have been born with to forge strong and holy families, healthy relationships and communities, striving for spiritual successes above the physical ones, then our real vitality will be strengthened. By following the lesson of Yom Kippur, we can fulfil all the tasks required of us in this world while drawing life from the radiance of the Shechinah.
A Day for a Year
Yom Kippur, more than merely being a day from which we can learn for the rest of the year, it is a day that injects true vitality to the rest of the year. Yom Kippur is the healthy cell from which we can regenerate an entire body. The connection we make to the world of the spiritual on Yom Kippur, coupled with the disconnection from the physical, is the blueprint through which we can redesign our entire year. It is the flash of light that can light up the entire sky; it is the spiritual spark that ignites our entire soul.
Recalibrate
The process of realigning ourselves with our true source is achieved through asking ourselves who we are. Are we merely a body that is sustained by food and drink, or is the body a house for our soul, which is sustained through the Torah? Are we approaching our lives with a focus on the physical or the spiritual? Are we going to be ultimately satisfied with the pleasures of this world, or are we working to find the pleasure that exists in the next? In the Gemara above, Rav urged everyone who would listen not to lose sight of who they are, and from where they derive their vitality. If we approach Yom Kippur with this profound outlook, it will mark the beginning of a totally new existence for us.
So, back to our Yom Kippur charade. In truth, instead of being a day of fakeness, it is a day of total realness. We take a time-out from the world that we have been accustomed to believing is the only realm of our existence and enter a place that transcends the limitations of this world and fuels us to be able to engage in this world for another year without becoming consumed by it. Yes, we act like angels, abstaining from the pleasures of this world, and strive for the pleasures of the World to Come, because that is who we really are! And on this holy day, we not only escape and connect to something beyond, but we also instil in this world the Divine energy of the world to come.
