A Little Torah, a Lot of Tears, & Yom Kippur

Last Thursday, the first day of Rosh Hashanah, along with a heavy heart, I had some beautiful experiences.

The most beautiful of them was during the “Great Aleynu.”

One of the final prayers of all Jewish services, recited just before the mourners kaddish, the “Aleynu” on the High Holy Days is recited and carried out in a grandiose way (thus, “great.”) It is a prayer I normally don’t recite in its entirety because I don’t like the triumphalist tone of it and our “chosenness.”

But there’s one part I love, and that’s the bowing.

On Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, rather than just bowing at the knee, we prostrate completely on the floor. And rather than submission, for me, this is a moment of complete and utter surrender.

It’s surrender to what is, as opposed to what could be, or what I think should be.

This year, as I got down on the floor covered with my large tallis, my prayer shawl, ready to go deep inside, I felt a hand inside my arm. I didn’t know who it was, nor did I get up to look, but I tried to imagine, and I imagined it to be someone I barely knew who I’d seen standing across the aisle from me.

Suddenly, there were sobs coming from her. And all at once, it didn’t matter who it was. I started sobbing as well, and we cried together. In that moment, we were so deeply connected, and it wouldn’t have mattered if it was a complete and utter stranger.

The details of our tears were most likely different, but we were speaking the same language: the language of brokenheartedness.

Yom Kippur is a time when we reckon with what is.

We face the reality of death, our own death, in our prayers and in the simplicity of the day (not a drop of water or food), and of the way we dress (all in white, as if in a shroud, no leather shoes, no make-up, unshaven, no jewelry).

It’s a reckoning with how we’ve behaved, how we have hurt others, with the intention of doing better next year—if only—if only, we can be “written in the book of life.”

It’s a time of personal reckoning, but also collective reckoning.

Assuming it is decreed already for the coming year, we recite in the prayers all the ways we might die: by fire, by water, by war, by famine…

As I heard another rabbi say in a beautiful Yom Kippur sermon this year on Chutzpod (pronounced liked your clearing your throat, as in “chutzpah”), it’s a time when we face all the “no’s,”

And the answer has been a resounding “no!” to all our wishes: “Can our governments please take full responsibility for Climate Disaster and prevent it from getting worse? Can all the hatred and hostility stop? Can these wars end? Can the corruption please stop? Can the hostages come home safely? Can all the killing and starvation in Gaza, and now Lebanon, stop? Can justice please win out? Can we at least stop killing innocent children?”

And, as Rabbi Shira said on Chutzpod, our American culture would have us bury our pain, and go out and buy a new car.

But as the Chassidic rabbis taught, the pounding on our chests that we do on Yom Kippur, admitting our faults, taking responsibility for our missteps, vowing to do better, is maybe more of a knocking on our chests to break open our hearts.

This Yom Kippur, my wish is for all of us to break open our hearts—to all the pain that exists in the world, no matter who we are, no matter what our beliefs, whether we intend to vote for Trump or Harris.

It is brokenheartedness that can make us angry and vengeful, but that can also break down the walls that separate us if we let it.

Because it is broken hearts that connects us all as humans.

And it is with a heart cracked open that we can begin to see clearly the next step forward as opposed to the “I don’t know’s” and all the “there’s no other way’s.”

When we allow ourselves to feel the pain of loss rather than girding ourselves with strength with a stiff upper lip to get through it, that is the beginning of healing.

On the anniversary of the deaths of over 1,000 Israelis on October 7th, I honored the dead and the hostages by listening to This American Life. I had been realizing that the news I listen to sensitizes me more to the death and starvation of Palestinians than those who continue to suffer inside Israel. I realized I needed to feel the same for all those suffering.

Because suffering should not be a competition.

And so, I heard stories of the experiences of hostages that were freed early on last year, and also the extreme hostility these families receive from right wing religious Jews in Israel, accusing them of “bringing it upon themselves.”

I heard stories of their captors seeing them as human—and also not.

All of it broke my heart.

This Yom Kippur, and in the year ahead, may you, too, have your heart broken open to the point where you feel connected with the pain of others, especially if it’s not the same pain as your own.