October 13, 2024

How do we go on? As a new Jewish year moves from the introspection and accounting of the High Holy Days into the coming harvest festival, how do we find hope when so much of last year’s hopes were broken?

 War and global conflict are inescapable news. Devastation from natural disasters hits harder and comes again faster. Politics and media are full of bitter division. On a lighter and also devastating note, Philadelphia sports fans are subject to a pile of playoff losses. In this context, it is instinctive to ask, like the Psalmist (121:1), “from where will my help come?”

Help may come from the divine, but Jewishly that really means God empowers us. What can we do to help ourselves and others to go on, to hope? The High Holy Day liturgy offers three possibilities that I will consider here: one, by referencing and reinforcing past traumas, we might see that “this too shall pass;” two, by ritualizing and resetting our relationships to each other and to God, we might start over; and three, perhaps a more obscure reference, by acknowledging and proclaiming liberty, we might reclaim common ground.

If resilience is like building muscle, the martyrology service of Yom Kippur is a choice workout. From ancient persecutions by the Romans to the Crusades and to the Holocaust, Jews’ worst experiences are highlighted as times of deep pain, loss, and lasting trauma. Knowing how antisemitism and other forms of hatred have turned against Jews has been key to the call “never again.” Part of the challenge of the past year is how many resonances there have been to painful moments in Jewish history. Some have even argued that seeing those resonances has limited Jews’ ability to see more broadly.

Regardless, the liturgy asks us to look back, to dwell on pain, to remember, and then to move forward from death (enacted through fasting and other abstinences of the day) to life (when atonement is achieved).

The ritualizing of atonement in processes of forgiveness and in prayers culminated in a re-enactment of the High Priest entering the Holy of Holies on Yom Kippur to seek atonement. To achieve atonement for the Jewish people, the High Priest first needs to seek it for himself, then for his family, and then for the people.

In many synagogues folks will fully prostrate to bring this ancient ritual back to life. Upon arising, the transition to atonement takes place and the tone of the day shifts. In theory, we emerge from Yom Kippur with a clean slate. From there, it is easy to move on, even if we know not everything will go right. We can, at least, try.

This year, though, I am struck by the final shofar blast at the end of Yom Kippur. It comes from Leviticus 25:8-10 as a command to sound the shofar to proclaim the jubilee year on Yom Kippur. Here is the catch, though, we do not know which year is the jubilee anymore; we have not known for millennia. There is something about “proclaim[ing] liberty throughout the land to all the inhabitants thereof” every year in case it is the right one that strikes me as a great path to hope.

By reclaiming a doubt and turning it into a gift, we take the cracks in our world and in our lives (like the crack in the Liberty Bell) and make them a cause for repair. This act is not a commitment to an ideological vision, it is a humble cry to patch things up as best we can. That is how I have hope, a call to reclaim our fragility, our human limitations, and to proclaim freedom for all.