Tonight is the beginning of a very holy day in Judaism – the "shabbat of shabbats" – the day of atonement. The saying goes "On Rosh Hashanah ( the New Year – last week) it is written, on Yom Kippur (tonight and tomorrow) it is sealed." God inscribes us in the Book of Life for another year.
You ask to be forgiven for all your sins and turn to those in your life to apologize, not just to God. You have to mean it. We are told that God knows we are not perfect and seeks our pursuit of virtue and repentance from our failures in those pursuits.
I have to say until the past couple of years, when I’ve been involved in observant Judaism (yeah I grew up Reform) I never felt the impact of the day, really. Now though, it is something I take fairly seriously — including fasting from sundown to sundown. Tonight we have some families having pre-fast dinner at our house and then we will all walk to services together. Three kids under two will be among them. The presence of children really brings home the value in trying to live a good life. They will be inheriting so much that is bad in this world that any move we can make toward virtue is a plus.
I haven’t really done the human to human apology as I should I don’t think. I hope by next year – my third in this new life, I will be comfortable doing that. I have however, tried to be honest within myself and move toward real efforts to behave ina better way.
I’ve written about this before but the other thing that fascinates me is the similarities between the 12 steps and observant Judiasim. Again here, the steps include listing all one might have harmed and "trying to make amends to them all" unless an approach might do damage (I guess reveal secrets to others etc.) On Yom Kippur we make the same approach to God.
If I can get myself to feel that I’ve moved in that direction – I know I’m far from spiritually ready to carry out the whole journey – it will be a wonderful way to move through the new Jewish year, appreciate the beauty of the changing leaves and the silvery winter to come. Shanah tovah.
That’s just beautiful. Really.