Yom Kippur 3

Yom Kippur 2010



This year, 2010, we have a great opportunity. Yom Kippur falls on Shabbat. What does this mean?

The Sfas Emes points out that Yom Kippur itself is known as a Shabbat Shabbaton. In the realm of time it is the greatest of all Shabbats, its Divine service is performed by the Kohen Gadol in the most sacred space on earth, the Holy of Holies. The Sfas Emet continues to say that rather than simply being passive participants in the process of spiritual ascent , the Jewish people (when the days coincide) are to be active. Let’s make this clear. Because of the doings of time we get a triple Shabbat. Compare it to a triple in baseball. The ball has been hit. The runner gets to third. But there’s more. It is up to us to somehow push the ball a bit further and turn it into a home run.

But a ball once hit is hit, we think. We can’t stop time and change the motion, the speed, the height of a hit ball. We can’t change vows made (we might think) hurt words said, damage done, distance created from God…or can we?

Well, according to ancient Jewish writings we can. We can actually walk right on through the 50th gate, the most profound of them all, and create an intimacy with Hashem on the highest level. According to the kabbalists, not even Moses gets an invite. So, then, let’s go, we think. Let’s just walk on through and create a homerun for past games, future games. Let’s be baseball mystics. Let’s clear past vows, future vows, enter the Holy of Holies like the Kohen Gadol. Let’s just not watch others do it, let’s do it ourselves. It’s not that easy though. There’s a process outlined in Torah and Talmud, and we’d be best to follow it.

First, let’s see what happens if we don’t. Let’s look at Nadav and Avihu, the sons of Aaron the Kohen Gadol (the High Priest). They are involved in sacred offerings. There’s the blood flying, the people praying, the priests chanting, the animals writhing, the knife being sharpened, the smell of incense burning, the altar smoking. No doubt they get wrapped into the escalation of the energy. In their feverish radiance, they make an extra offering. Then they are taken in by the fire and are burned to death. So, while some say they are bad and are therefore punished, other rabbis (such as the Sfas Emes) say that this overwhelming urge to become exceedingly close to Hashem is not necessarily evil. They are even extolled by Moses as being greater than Aaron himself. No doubt, Nadav and Avihu rise to God but their bodies just can’t go there. They can’t take it. That much of God is perfect for the soul but too much for the body.

Now we think to ourselves, forget it. We want that homerun but we don’t want it that bad. We want to walk through the 50th gate alive, not dead, thank you. So, I guess the big question is how? How can we free ourselves, our souls, to the greatest heights and take our living breathing bodies with us?

Here’s the good news. We can do even better than that. We can enter the Holy of Holies. We can do it cathartically and (in my opinion) even experientially. All we need to do this special Shabbat Shabbaton on Shabbat is to study Talmud, the tractate Yoma to be specific.

The rites in Yoma were actually performed. They fizzled out about 2,000 years ago when the second temple fell. What this means (no doubt) is that we can’t do the same thing. We don’t have one central temple with an altar, we don’t do animal sacrifices and we don’t have a Kohen Gadol. Finally, the arc of the covenant has long since been lost (since the fall of the Temple of Solomon and the exile). Therefore, what we want is to study these rites and have the cathartic experience. Then we can see how each might symbolize an action we can do in the here and now. In other words, we can place a symbol on the rite (don’t worry…Torah likes symbols) and perform the symbolized action instead. This way we can not only actualize Yom Kippur but be in the rhythm of the process in a way that makes sense to us today.

One small tangent. Any procession of rites studied in Torah at the right time brings us into the dream of intimacy within a single moment of time. The Zohar says that the line he (Aaron) is not to come at any time into the Sanctuary (Leviticus 16:2) refers to the fact that time is constantly changing like the Shechinah who is influenced by various forces at various times. The Zohar continues to say she has a fixed time for everything, for drawing near, for being illumined, for waiting…and that…whoever engages in Torah fashions and arrays this time. It then quotes Psalms 69:14 which says as for me may my prayer come to You at a time of favor. What all of this means is that given our study of Torah and given the changing aspect of the Shechinah, during a Shabbat Shabbaton on Shabbat the Shechinah is about as close as she’s going to get. The time, in other words, is now.

Therefore, here are some of the actions of the Kohen Gadol (as described in tractate Yoma) as he offers the sacrifices and finds expiation for the sins of himself, the priests and the whole Jerwish community.

First, for seven days he isolates himself to study the services with the sages. This is not surprising. No doubt, the week before Yom Kippur many people are preparing. They might be making arrangements for family members. Given the purpose of the day, we are having serious talks with people about past conflicts, apologizing when we feel we have at all been a cause of pain. There’s more though. Isolation means inner search, and reaching towards God. Meditation, prayer, chanting, these are ways to prepare for the sacred rituals. We might have a personal process . We bring it out now. We really do it up.

In the morning ordinary priests, not the Kohen Gadol, does the tamid, the regular offerings. How can we apply this to our lives? We all don’t have people serving us. But what if, on the Shabbat morning of Yom Kippur, we visualize an angel doing the regular morning blessings, see it in our room, bless it. This leaves us open to isolate the sanctity of the day.

There are 5 changes of clothing on Yom Kippur into either white or gold linen. Each time the Kohen Gadol washes his hands and feet twice. Each time therefore he is placing a new opening before God, creating a new revealing of his vessel on earth. By washing he is keeping only his blood within and on him, getting rid of any impurities that separate him from God. While praying in temple, what this could mean for us is that after important prayers we visualize an outer change on our bodies, a shedding of skin so to say, a letting go of any inner weights that can hold us away from the divine radiance.

The Kohen Gadol slaughters a bull as a personal sin offering, a goat for the Lord as an offering for the priests and then sends a goat to Azazel as a sin offering for all of the people of Israel. When semikha is being done, and he places his hands on the animal and confesses the appropriate sins, he says God’s name and all the people prostrate. In many temples today, the congregation still prostrates at the mention of God’s name these three times. The prostration itself is a complete humbling before the force that has allowed us to let go of anything that holds us back from intimacy and consciousness. In other words, it’s the recognition that we alone cannot wash away the stuff that keeps us from God. The humbling and the recognition can be experienced in many physical ways. Doing the prostrating is powerful because it’s ancient but can be weakened if the intent is blurred. We have to know why we’re doing it.

The Kohen Gadol also takes the blood of the dead animals and with his finger he sprinkles it in the Holy of Holies seven times on earth and once up to heaven. What this means is that we want to take the essence of our prayers….prayers have long since replaced the sacrifice….and bring them in our minds to the most sacred physical place…perhaps near Torah…and visualize the energy of that essence being sprinkled on the earth seven times. This is a powerful action. What we are doing here is grounding our prayers, making them solid in the most holy of places. By sprinkling them once up to heaven we are showing (according to Rashi) that what is done once in heaven takes seven times on earth. This way, not only our prayers, but their very essence becomes integrated into the earth and embraced by God.

There are many rites that the Kohen Gadol takes part in. By doing them with him in our minds and by enacting the meaning of these rites in today’s world we create an opening to walk right through. And this opening (today) is the 50th gate. And we not only walk through it, we come out alive. We may not be the same person. We may not even be human given our very condition. But we are in vessels that can continue to grow.

So may we listen to the Sfas Emet and be active on this sacred day. May we have patience and deliberation as we study and enact the process. May we help a ball fly right out of the park. May we understand that all time is in one moment and that moment is now. May we let go of anything that holds us from God. May we have the humility to see that the power of our intimacy is within the community as well as within the ever-changing ever drawing-near motion of the Shechinah. May we take responsibility and may our personal love bring all divine sparks in all people into a place of adoration and fusion with the absolute beauty and radiance we call God.