Torah Study Blog

During Yom Kippur we pray, “Our God and God of all generations, may our prayers reach Your presence.”

As a community we confess that we are guilty of betrayal, stealing, scornfulness, cruelty, violence, slander, lying, abuse, corruption, hostility, stubbornness, immorality, and even murder! Rabbi Jaech has told us during her High Holiday sermons that she does not believe we are each guilty of all these sins, and feels pretty confident that none of her congregants is a murderer! But we come together as a community to share the suffering and confess to these sins as one.

And we end the prayer by saying:

You know the secrets of the universe and the secrets of the human heart. You know and understand us, for You examine our inner lives. Nothing is concealed from You, nothing hidden from Your sight. Eternal One, our God and God of our ancestors, we pray that this be Your will: forgive all our wrongs, pardon us for every act of injustice, help us atone for all our moral failures.

The Bible has a basic view of human nature that all people have an inclination for good and an inclination for evil. The inclination to do evil could also be viewed as our self-serving nature. The rabbis point out that this self-serving nature is an important aspect of humanity because it is the thing that gives humans the drive to thrive. But, as a whole, humans must learn to balance their urges.

You may remember from our last two sessions that the Bible says we all go to Sheol when we die. According to rabbinic literature, because humans are a combination of good and evil, people will spend some time in Gehenna, which is where the unrighteous go to make amends. During the High Holidays we repent for those sins in order to reduce our time in Gehenna. The Talmud reiterates that people are able to redeem themselves: “After going down to Gehenna and receiving the punishment due him, the sinner is forgiven all his iniquities and like an arrow from the bow he is flung forth from Gehenna.”(Pesikta Rabbati 53:2)

In the early centuries of the Common Era Jews were persecuted. The Jewish community could look around and see injustice. Early rabbis saw the injustice and suffering and tried to address it and give it meaning. One concept they developed was the understanding that there would be perfect judgment later, by our God who is just and who can redeem you.

God in the Bible is a god of justice. The rabbis taught that God was also a god of mercy. This is evidenced in the beautiful Yom Kippur song Avinu Malkeinu, which translates as Our Father, Our King. A king must mete out justice in order to keep the community functioning. But a father is more likely to show mercy. The rabbis showed that it is okay to have these two contradictory ideas of God at the same time.

What is not okay, according to the Talmud, were, “the heretics; and the informers; and the apostates; and those who denied the Torah; and those who denied the resurrection of the dead; and those who separated from the ways of the Jewish community and refused to share the sufferings.”

The rabbis were trying to preserve the Jewish community in a time of persecution and upheaval. All Jews today owe a debt of gratitude to the rabbis of old, because they kept the community together and relevant. As we have noted before in this class, the Judaism we practice today is actually the religion of the rabbis, not the religion of the Bible with its animal sacrifices at the Temple.

If everyone does their own thing and does not think about the community, the community will disappear. Sometimes it is important to be strict and say, “We all need to be on the same page for the sake of our community.” This can be a hard concept, especially today, when individuals often believe in putting their own needs first.

There will be no Torah Study next week, April 20th, due to the Passover holiday. We will resume on April 27th.

This has been Tara Keiter with her interpretation of the Temple Israel of Northern Westchester Torah Study session.

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misquotes or misunderstandings in what Rabbi Jaech taught us are the responsibility of Tara Keiter