Yom Kippur is supposed to be the most somber and difficult day on
the Jewish calendar. For me though, the days that weigh heaviest with
significance are the ones leading up to that apex of repentance and atonement: the
Days of Awe. Yom Kippur itself is but one day. Anyone can live in physical
discomfort for a little over 24 hours, unless you are too delicate a flower to
have ever endured hunger, thirst, a day without being at your most hygienic,
and depriving yourself of carnal relations—not that being parched, starved,
smelly and unbathed exactly puts one in an amorous mood. Of course, the day is
also supposed to be marked as a time when the heavens are said to open up, and
us puny, imperfect, sinful little humans must tremble before the King of Kings,
as though on trial, though not to plead our case, but to beg forgiveness for
our self-acknowledged sins. It can be an intimidating and daunting task for the
faithful, but that is, I would argue, the point of Yom Kippur. We take a day to
get that out of our systems and start over for the year, cleansed after
repentance, and ready to be the good people that we know we can be, and that we
have just spent an entire day in shul begging God to let us prove we can
be. In Judaism, we believe in a merciful God that we can trust enough to grant
us our forgiveness after sincere teshuvah, and the whole exhausting day should
be spiritually rewarding in the end. Seeking forgiveness from God is one thing,
but seeking forgiveness from others in the days leading up to our collective
trial date is generally uncomfortably humbling, and can even feel undoable at
times. Each year, there is always one person I can never seem to forgive and
never know how to apologize to: my own damn self.
The theme of asking for forgiveness from those we've wronged as
well as being open to accepting forgiveness from others is absolutely one that
I can get behind. I am really good at being apologetic. As a matter of fact,
I'm downright British about it. It doesn't have to be my fault, and I'll still
be sorry. And it's not that I'm insincere--I really am sorry for any hand I may
have played, even peripherally, in any unfortunate turn of events that I might
happen to witness. If I'm the recipient of an apology and true forgiveness is
sought from someone who has wronged me, I cannot wait, literally, cannot wait
to accept said apology, breathe a sigh of relief, move on and let the anxiety
of encountering conflict with another human being keep me from having another
panic attack (a trait which I do possess in spades and am, incidentally, quite
sorry for). But if I've done something that I really am sorry about on a deeply
personal level, something that I have to take full responsibility for and
ownership of, I generally have enough humility to recognize that, and to
apologize.
Self-forgiveness however, is, not too surprisingly, one of the
most difficult things for many of us. Anyone with a conscience is well aware of
that overly critical voice playing over and over in our heads each time we make
a mistake, feel foolish, experience regret, or struggle with something that we
feel we should have a better handle on. Anyone who stays up at night listening
to the loud voices of anxiety and worry over what has already happened and
passed, and what hasn't even happened yet, is really listening to the voices of
self-criticism and the self-flagellation that follows. If we knew how to
apologize to ourselves after we've beaten our psyches to a bloody pulp over
what we have done, we would be able to put the forgiveness band-aid over our
own wounds and allow true healing to take place. If we knew how to forgive our
own transgressions, we wouldn't feel the need to beat ourselves up in the first
place, and the never-ending cycle of self-inflicted abuse and neglect could
actually end. We would even be more forgiving of others and sympathetic to the
needs of those we have wronged. It’s kind of like not being able to love
someone else until you learn to love yourself, as clichéd as that sounds.
Why do we have such a hard time forgiving ourselves? So many of us
can forgive the worst actions of our loved ones, and even strangers who act out
of line can get our sympathies. You can forgive the person you are in love with
to an obscene degree, and you can forgive a neglectful family member, even
after years of their transgressions. But when it comes to the self, we are
often so much crueler than we would ever be to another person who makes the
same mistake or commits the same crime. Perhaps because the only two beings who
ever see every single thing that we do, who knows every single thought that
makes a blip in our minds, and every fleeting feeling that passes through us,
is God and the self. We know how we are at our worse, because we live with it.
We can hide, mask, and disguise much of ourselves from everyone and everything
else, but we can’t hide from ourselves any more than we can hide from God.
My first Yom Kippur was easy enough--I was in Jerusalem, a new
Jew, dressed all in white and wearing some hideous plastic flip-flops that I
had bought at the corner store for a few scant shekels because I wanted
something to wear on my feet in my dorm shower stall that I shared with four
other girls. They were too big for me and slid off my feet when I walked if I
wasn't careful, and they had huge, gaudy wads of cloth hot-glued to them in
order to resemble, I guess, flowers. I knew that I was only supposed to shun
leather shoes for the day, since the point is to not be too comfortable, but I
really went all out with those awful flip-flops. I didn't eat or drink
anything, of course, and though my lips were chapped and killing me, I denied
myself the use of Chap Stick, just in case the use of it was halakhically off
the table for the day too. I didn't brush my teeth or use mouthwash (which my
not quite as religiously observant friends found rather disgusting), and I let
my hair do whatever it felt inclined to do without the aid of a brush. I looked
a mess and felt a mess, and since it was my first Yom Kippur, I thought that I
must be doing it right. I spent the day in shul and napped at a friend's place between
the marathon services, and walked through the carless streets of Jerusalem,
marveling at all of us Jews dressed in white, strolling casually down the
middle of Emek Raphaim. When I broke the fast with a large group of friends at
a party (where some of us thought it a good idea to drink vodka on our 25-hour
empty stomachs, because that's what you do when you are in your early 20s), I
really did feel a sense of renewal and joy. Maybe that was the bourekas and
vodka kicking in, but I like to think that Hashem had a hand in it too. All in
all, I felt really good after the long and tiring day of seeking atonement from
God, like it really was an opportunity to start over, tabula rasa.
Fast forward a few Yom Kippurs later and I have not been able to
find that same sense of serenity in the spirit of the season. It’s not that I
have done anything that I find deeply unforgiving since my first Jerusalem High
Holidays, but perhaps it’s the mistakes, regrets and missed opportunities that
have stacked up since I've become a self-aware Jew, along with my own propensity
to be too hard on myself that has made the season particularly burdensome.
Other people come and go in our lives, and they may choose to apologize to us when they've hurt us, they may not. They may be receptive to our apologies when we
cross the line, they may not. God is merciful enough to see every single
blemish on our souls and still seal us for the year in the Sefer Chaim after we
seek atonement. We have to live with ourselves though, and true teshuvah means
really cleaning the slate each year, and leaving the mistakes and regrets in
the past. That’s why this year, I am making the effort to look in the mirror
and say “I’m sorry” to the one person who will always be with me, and to
forgive the one person I cannot walk away from, cannot shut out, cannot lie to
myself about. It’s about time, and there’s no time like the present,
especially when the present is now, in this Jewish season. After all, if I
can’t even do that, then what is the point of seeking atonement from anyone
else? If I deserve forgiveness from others, than surely I just deserve
forgiveness, plain and simple. I'd be willing to bet that that goes for all of
us. In fact, I know it does.
So gmar chatima tovah, and my apologies for this long and
ponderous post. Please do forgive me.
