Sins Between Us and God
Shabbat Shuva, 5784
Tomorrow night Yom Kippur begins. Are you ready?
Today is Shabbat Shuva, named after the Haftarah. שׁ֚וּבָה יִשְׂרָאֵ֔ל עַ֖ד יי אֱלֹקֶ֑יךָ כִּ֥י כָשַׁ֖לְתָּ בַּעֲוֺנֶֽךָ׃ Return, O Israel, to Hashem your God, for you have fallen in your sin. It is a call to action for us before Yom Kippur. It has become tradition for rabbis to spend this Shabbat excoriating their congregation to undertake teshuva, repentance, or return, before Yom Kippur begins. To exhort their congregants to think back on their sins of the previous year.
I also need to make something clear before I continue. “Sin” is a heavy word. When we hear the word sin, we are primed by living in a Christian culture to imagine an incurable weight dragging us downward, insuring future punishment. When we talk about sin in Judaism, we aren’t imagining anything so permanent. Sin is better understood as a missing of the mark. When I say no one is free from sin, I don’t mean that we are all doomed, but merely that as human beings, we all make mistakes. Yom Kippur, with its focus on teshuva and atonement, is not meant to be a glum and depressing holiday. Yes, there is a stream of our tradition and poetry that focuses on the terror of being judged for actions in the previous year. We only have to look at Unetaneh Tokef for an example. Who will live and who will die. Who by fire, and who by water. But remember how that poem ends. וּתְשׁוּבָה וּתְפִלָּה וּצְדָקָה מַעֲבִירִין אֶת רֽוֹעַ הַגְּזֵרָה But Teshuva, Prayer, and Righteousness annuls the evil decree. Sin is not the end, and Yom Kippur presents an opportunity. An opportunity to make amends and be better than we were in the past.
For as so many rabbis have pointed out, and will be pointing out this day, Yom Kippur is not a get-out-of-jail free Day of Atonement. As the Mishna teaches us,
אֶחֱטָא וְיוֹם הַכִּפּוּרִים מְכַפֵּר, אֵין יוֹם הַכִּפּוּרִים מְכַפֵּר. עֲבֵרוֹת שֶׁבֵּין אָדָם לַמָּקוֹם, יוֹם הַכִּפּוּרִים מְכַפֵּר. עֲבֵרוֹת שֶׁבֵּין אָדָם לַחֲבֵרוֹ, אֵין יוֹם הַכִּפּוּרִים מְכַפֵּר, עַד שֶׁיְּרַצֶּה אֶת חֲבֵרוֹ
“One who sins and says ‘Yom Kippur will atone for me,’ Yom Kippur does not atone for them. For sins between a person and God, Yom Kippur atones, but for sins between a person and their fellow, Yom Kippur does not atone, until they appease their fellow.”
On the basis of this line, many rabbis’ sermons today have and will focus on the importance of righting the wrongs we have done to others, of correcting the hurts and mistakes we have made, of doing genuine teshuva for the people in our lives. This is an important theme of the holiday, and one I also want to stress today. Yom Kippur alone does not atone. We must put in the work. We must right what we have wronged.
But often, and ironically, I feel that those sins between a person and God get ignored in all the bustle around teshuva and Yom Kippur. After all, when I just read this section to you from the Mishnah, you very well might have thought “At least I have the sins between God and me taken care of. It’s just the people I need to worry about.” Sometimes I worry that in stressing how Yom Kippur only atones for the sins between God and Man, I underplay how important it is also to think of the sins we have also committed against God. The sins that are easy to overlook, especially in our modern age, because they do not seemingly hurt anyone. Sins of a sort that many of us would call “religious” rather than “ethical” in nature. These are the sins that occur when we break the Jewish laws and traditions called “Hukim,” the irrational, religious laws, rather than the “Mishpatim,” the rational, ethical laws. They are related to Shabbat, holidays, Kashrut, praying, and so forth. When we break these laws, we are not struck down by a bolt of lightning. No heavenly voice issues forth to condemn us. In contrast to many of the Mishpatim, there may seem to be no consequence at all. Which is why it is so important to examine them.
It is no secret that we live in an increasingly secular society. It is increasingly easy, indeed, often the path of least resistance, to go through life without examining our personal theologies, our relationship with God, and what we believe our obligations to God are. This is true not just of laypeople, or liberal denominations of Judaism. There was a joke I heard often at JTS that theology is not discussed at the Jewish Theological Seminary. And Rabbi Haym Soloveitchik, in 1994, wrote an article lamenting that in much of the Orthodox world, the feeling of God’s presence and intimacy has been lost, replaced with a focus on following the rules without contemplating their Source. To cultivate a relationship with God takes time, energy, and is counter-cultural in our society. But Yom Kippur demands this of us.
“For sins between a person and God, Yom Kippur atones,” we learned. But how does it atone? In the exact same way we do teshuva between ourselves and our fellows: by communicating with God, acknowledging what we have done wrong, and vowing to do better in the future. Yom Kippur is not a get-out-of-jail free Day of Atonement, for others or for God. We have to take the time, the ample time we have leading up to and in services on Yom Kippur, to have that conversation with God, to be honest about where we have failed to live up to our ideals for God, and where we want to improve in the future.
I cannot tell you what that conversation will look like, or what your theology will be. I can give you some questions to consider, however: that’ I would recommend looking at some of the big markers of Jewish religious identity: Kashrut, Shabbat, Holidays, Prayer. What does your practice look like right now? Why? How does that relate to God? What does God ask of you in those practices? How are you living or failing to live up to it? I cannot answer those questions for you. They are questions I ask myself. If we want to create a personal theology, if we want to have a personal relationship with God, then these are questions we must ask ourselves. Like any relationship, the one we have with God takes work to maintain.
Here is my challenge: When you do Teshuva this year, do it not just for those people you have wronged in the past year, do it not just for the mishpatim you have broken, but also the chukim. Ask yourself “What was my relationship with God last year? What do I want it to be this coming year?” For Yom Kippur brings atonement, but only if we put in the work.
Tomorrow night Yom Kippur begins. Are you ready?
