It’s said that one day a rabbi told a visiting wealthy miser to look out the window and asked him, “What do you see?”
The rich man said, “People.”
The rabbi then led him to a mirror and asked, “What do you see?”
Reply: “Now I see myself.”
The rabbi then told the rich man: “In the window there is glass and in the mirror there is glass. But the glass of the mirror is covered with a little silver, and no sooner is the silver added than you cease to see others but only see yourself.”
That bit of Russian folk wisdom is among 300 selections in “Yom Kippur Readings: Inspiration, Information, Contemplation,” edited by Dov Peretz Elkins, rabbi emeritus of the Jewish Center in Princeton, N.J.
For Jews, the period between the two biblically mandated High Holy Days, Rosh Hashana (New Year) and Yom Kippur (the Day of Atonement), is designed for spiritual and moral self-examination. Elkins’ thought-provoking and varied collection will help foster that process (and may interest Christians as well).
The 170 writers include ancient and medieval sages, including Maimonides, storytellers (Sholom Aleichem), poets, modern non-rabbis (Albert Einstein) and rabbis (Abraham Joshua Heschel, Abraham Isaac Kook) and even a few Gentiles (Leo Tolstoy, Marian Wright Edelman).
Theologians say the weekly Sabbath is Judaism’s central festival, and Elkins agrees with that in principle but says Yom Kippur “holds the most special place in the mind and imagination of the average Jew.”
This year, Rosh Hashana begins at sundown on Monday, Yom Kippur at sundown on Oct. 12.
These solemn 25 hours have “the potential to be confusing and empty of spirituality for many who attend out of obligation, custom, family pressure or other nonreligious reasons,” Elkins says.
He hopes these readings will provide explanations, meaning and a deeper level of intimacy with God.
Laying groundwork, Rabbi Peter Tarlow of the Hillel center at the University of Texas at Austin writes that the daylong fast without food or water is never easy. But harder yet is the requirement “to examine the totality of one’s life,” to forgive others and to receive forgiveness – but only for “those who sincerely desire to recognize their errors, to repeat, to change their ways and to begin again.”
Rabbi Arthur Green of Hebrew College in Boston says the Talmud teaches that “the purification of Yom Kippur is effective only for transgressions against God. Sins against our fellow person require that person’s forgiveness.” Thus it’s customary for Jews to ask forgiveness of one another before or during Yom Kippur.
Rambam, the 12th-century sage, said repentance doesn’t involve just major sins such as theft but evil dispositions, for example “a hot temper, hatred, jealousy, quarreling, scoffing, eager pursuit of wealth or honors, greediness in eating.”
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