When We Are Angry at God

Yom Kippur, 5785

Awe. Majesty. Atonement. These are the words that often come to mind when we speak about Yom Kippur. We are used to our rabbis telling us, throughout the month of Elul, that the High Holidays are coming, that we must use this time to get ready, to do teshuva, to repent and atone and be prepared for Yom Kippur. We are used to our rabbis reminding us, in the Ten Days of Teshuva from Rosh Hashana to Yom Kippur, that Yom Kippur is not a get-out-of-jail free card, that Yom Kippur only atones for sins between us and God, not between us and our fellow human beings. If you were here for Psukei Dizimrei this morning, right at the beginning, we even read “Yom Kippur can bring atonement for transgressions between one person and another only if the offended person has first been reconciled.” We focus so much of our energy on thinking about Yom Kippur, and teshuva, in terms of repairing our relationship with others. And indeed, that is important. That is one of the essences of the holiday. But what about repairing our relationship with God? We talk about God so much in our High Holiday liturgy. What does our relationship with God look like?

We also read, in Psukei Dizimrei taken from the Mishna, from tractate Yoma,

הָאוֹמֵר, אֶחֱטָא וְאָשׁוּב, אֶחֱטָא וְאָשׁוּב, אֵין מַסְפִּיקִין בְּיָדוֹ לַעֲשׂוֹת תְּשׁוּבָה. אֶחֱטָא וְיוֹם הַכִּפּוּרִים מְכַפֵּר, אֵין יוֹם הַכִּפּוּרִים מְכַפֵּר

Whoever says “I will sin, and repent, and sin, and repent,” does not receive the opportunity to repent. Whoever says “I will sin, and Yom Kippur will atone for me,” will not receive atonement from Yom Kippur. This is the counterpoint to doing teshuva between ourselves and other human beings. The truth of the matter is, that Yom Kippur brings no atonement, whatsoever, without doing any type of teshuva. Either between us and our fellow humans, or us and God. Yom Kippur is the reminder, the clarion call that we need to do teshuva. Without teshuva, it is ineffectual. A day by itself cannot grant forgiveness for sin. We need to put in the work as well.

Last Shabbat, I spoke impromptu along roughly the same lines. I asked the twenty-some odd congregants who were assembled what their relationship with God was like in the last year, and how they imagined doing teshuva to repair their relationship with God this coming year. After a brief silence, someone answered “What if we think God needs to teshuva for us?” I was taken aback. It was such a beautiful point, and yet one that I could not answer. I said that I would need to do some thinking and studying to try to answer that question. Here is my attempt at an answer.

You may have noticed that we use special Torah trop for the High Holidays. The Ashkenazi Torah trop has been modified, so the tradition goes, to encourage us to cry. Why? Because the reading for Yom Kippur begins with the simple and blunt statement “וַיְדַבֵּר ה אֶל־מֹשֶׁה אַחֲרֵי מוֹת שְׁנֵי בְּנֵי אַהֲרֹן בְּקׇרְבָתָם לִפְנֵי־יְהֹוָה וַיָּמֻתוּ” “And God spoke to Moshe after the death of the two sons of Aharon, who drew close to God and died.” The incident, narrated more fully earlier in the Torah, is that after the ordination of the priests at Mt. Sinai, Aharon’s two eldest sons, Nadav and Avihu, drew too close to God and offered their own “alien fire” up to heaven. God sent down His own fire, and consumed Aharon’s two sons in the flames. No other explanation is given for why they died. We are told that God subsequentially commanded Aharon not to mourn, and that וַיִּדֹּם אַהֲרֹן, Aharon was silent. This all occurred around six chapters before the Torah reading today. So why remind us the deaths of Nadav and Avihu? The traditional answer is that the subsequent command, that Aharon is never allowed into the Holy of Holies, except on Yom Kippur, illuminates why his sons died. They entered the Holy of Holies without permission, and so perished. Reminding us of their transgression, God reminds Moshe that the penalty for trespassing in that most sacred space, with the exception of the High Priest on Yom Kippur, is death.

This all may be true, and does explain a little more why Nadav and Avihu died. But there is something else to take into account: this is the first Yom Kippur that Aharon will perform as High Priest, and this is the first Yom Kippur that he will do so after the death of his sons. He is obligated, commanded as High Priest, to purify himself, and to bring sacrifices behind the curtain into the Holy of Holies. He is supposed to bring incense, as his sons did, and create smoke in the room. He needs to stand in the spot where his sons died, and sprinkle blood onto the altar, to purify it. What must Aharon be thinking, what must he be feeling as he has to perform this ritual? And so we are reminded this all happens after the death of his sons, because we cannot understand this first Yom Kippur without understanding that Aharon is doing this after his sons have died.

We all come to Yom Kippur in different places of our life. All of us are in need of doing a little teshuva-not a single person alive is a saint who has never sinned. But many of us find ourselves in a place where we don’t feel like asking God for forgiveness this year. Perhaps this is the first Yom Kippur after the death of a beloved family member, or friend. Maybe this is a Yom Kippur after a long year dealing with a hard illness. Maybe this is the first Yom Kippur after a national tragedy, or mass loss of life. Maybe you are afraid. Maybe you are angry. You are no doubt, asking yourself, I should repent? I should make my atonement before God? Perhaps it is God who needs to atone to me! How can we go about even having a relationship with God when we feel hurt, betrayed, or even abandoned by him?

In the aftermath of the Holocaust, two stories emerged that dealt with feeling abandoned by God. One is in the form of a joke. A pious Jew who survived the Holocaust dies, and ascends to heaven. Having kept his faith all of his life, he is allowed one request to make of God. He asks that he be allowed to tell God a joke. God ascents, and the Jew clears his throat, carefully considers, and simply says “Auschwitz.” God frowns and says that He doesn’t get it. To which the Jew replies “Ah, you had to be there.”

Or put more seriously, Elie Weisel recounted the story of how, one night in Auschwitz, a group of pious Jews assembled a Bet Din, a Jewish court, to put God on trial for abandoning His covenant with the Jewish people. After deliberating all night, they found that God was guilty. Then, as the sun rose, they began their morning prayers.

What these stories have in common is that they detail an ongoing relationship with God. The survivor and the prisoners mock God, put God on trial, condemn Him, rage against Him. But yet, somehow, they still are in relationship with God. It is ongoing, maybe even imperfect relationship. Perhaps God has abandoned them. But they refuse to abandon God. They shout and scream and hold God accountable, and will not let Him alone. They will not walk away.

Let us return to Aharon. How does he react to the tragedy the befalls him? He is silent. He does not blame God, yell at God, argue with God. He does not engage in his relationship with God. And so when he is given the instructions for how to officiate at Yom Kippur, we hear nothing of his mental state. We can assume he followed them, but nothing else. He does not question God or demand anything of God. And so Aharon’s relationship with God begins to fall apart. For the rest of the book of Vayikra, God will not speak to Aharon and Moshe, but to Moshe only, telling him to speak to Aharon on His behalf. Aharon will interact with God sparingly throughout the rest of his life. Even in one of his moments of great distress, when his sister Miriam is inflicted with leprosy because the two of them were gossiping about Moshe, he does not appeal to God, but to Moshe, asking Moshe to pray to God on their behalf. Aharon’s relationship with God is never as strong as Moshe’s, who speaks to God face-to-face. But it does seem that after the death of his sons, which Aharon took silently, his relationship with God faded.

What if Aharon wasn’t silent? What if he demanded to know why of God? What if he called God to account, and demanded a reason, even if he couldn’t understand it, even if he couldn’t receive it? Would he speak more to God later? Would he find his voice? Would he maintain that relationship?

And yet, still, in his own small way, Aharon refuses to let go of God. He continues his work as High Priest. Silently, but he does it. He shows up every single day to offer sacrifices to God. His relationship suffers, but he does not entirely abandon it. He cannot entirely abandon it. He needs it, the connection with God, maybe even more than God needs it.

I wish I could tell you why bad things happen. I wish I could tell you why God lets innocents die, get deathly ill, suffer miscarriages, live in poverty, be hit by natural disasters. I don’t have those answers for you. And if you have cause to feel angry at God this year, I encourage you to feel it. To express it. We’re going to be davening the silent Amidah soon for Musaf, and it is as good a time as any to let God know exactly how you are feeling. Have that conversation with God! It may not feel like it helps. But it gives you a chance to continue your relationship with God. When I was a child, a rabbi once described our relationship with God like a rope that can occasionally snap. The process of mending it, which he likened to tying a knot with the two broken pieces, could make the rope stronger than it was the in the first place. It could make us stronger than we were before.

The alternative is to walk away. It is a possibility; we could do that. But then our relationship with God can never be repaired. The rope will always remain broken. You might say, why do I care? Why should I bother to repair it? To which my answer is: because we are attached to the other end. Our relationship with God has an impact on us just as much as it has an impact on the Divine. If we nurture it, if we grow and change in our relationship with God, we will find that we ourselves grow and change. We will find that it is easier to do holy work here on earth if we have a sense that we are connected to that holy work. If we want to help ourselves, if we want to grow, we want to tie that knot. We want to repair that rope.

My challenge to you this Yom Kippur is not an easy one. God knows I have had plenty of reason to be angry at Him over the last several years of my life. I imagine you have as well. But I encourage you to not walk away this Yom Kippur. We read about Aharon, serving in the Temple after his son’s death, silently going through the motions. You could follow his example. You could follow the example of countless Jews throughout history who have chosen not to be silent, but raged and argued and yelled at God. But whichever path you choose, I urge you to engage. To choose to be in a relationship with God. To choose to strengthen that knot. Not just for God’s sake, or religion’s sake, but for our sake. We will be stronger for it.