Kol Nidrei 2022 at Congregation Agudas Achim
The Vidui: We each need to hear our own message from it
Rabbi Talya Weisbard Shalem
Jacob ben Wolf Kranz, a famous Lithuanian/Belarussian Jewish storyteller and teacher of the 18th century, taught the following parable (which is quoted in our machzor on p. 9):
A man came to a big city for the first time and lodged in an inn overnight. Awakened in the middle of the night by the loud beating of drums, he inquired drowsily, “what is this all about?” Informed that a fire had broken out and that the drum beating was the city’s fire alarm, he turned over and went back to sleep.
He reported the incident to the village authorities on his return home. “They have a wonderful system in the big city. When a fire breaks out, people beat their drums and before long the fire burns out.” Excited, they ordered a supply of drums and distributed them to the population. Several weeks later, when a fire broke out in the village, there was a deafening explosion of beating drums, and while people waited expectantly for the flames to subside, their homes burned to the ground.
A visitor passing through the village, when told the reason for the ear-splitting din, mocked the simple residents. “Idiots! Do you think that a fire can be put out by beating drums? The drums are no more than an alarm for people to wake up and extinguish the fire themselves.”
Thinking about this story, look inside yourself and consider:
What is the message you personally need to hear this year at Yom Kippur? Have you been setting off “fires” in the world around you, physical or emotional? Have you been walking through the world obliviously and do you need start paying more attention to what’s really going on (for example that drums can’t put out fires themselves)? Do you need to step up and take action to put out any of the world’s fires, or those happening in your own life? Are you the smart yet arrogant person passing by who understands everything but doesn’t yet know how not to treat others as idiots? Are you curled up in a ball blaming yourself for the fire, or for making a mistake (of thinking drums would work to solve this problem)? We are each different people in the story, and we each need to hear a different message from the shofar and the prayers of this holiday.
Shortly, we will be moving into the portion of our service in which we recite a public confessional for the first of several times over the course of this day, called the Vidui. The Vidui is one of the most challenging aspects of Yom Kippur. Vidui is the recurring section of each Yom Kippur service where we collectively recite an alphabetic acrostic of our sins, starting with the word Ashamnu, which means “we are guilty”, followed by a longer list of extended sins called the Al Chet (“for our sins”) once the alphabet is completed.
As a collective, of course we are not perfect. None of us can even be perfect as an individual. There’s a power to collectively going through the recitation – in my opinion it can humanize us to ourselves. We see a full catalog of possible human failures, and situate ourselves within the sea of humanity.
Throughout this recitation, we are traditionally supposed to beat our chest for each line. I imagine that the pounding on our chest is a way to embody “afflicting our souls”, which is what the Torah tells us we are supposed to do on Yom Kippur.
And yet…
Each of us need to hear a different message on Yom Kippur.
Some of us do need to look closely at our own actions and acknowledge and take responsibility for our own failings in a way we typically avoid.
Some of us may not err so much as walk through life oblivious or checked out. Yom Kippur can be our wakeup call to try to check back in to ourselves or our loved ones.
Some of us are so busy beating ourselves up for what we perceive as our individual failings on a day to day basis that we need a different message from the holiday, one of coming to accept ourselves more.
For those in particular that lean towards already coming down hard on ourselves, for whom the words in the machzor itself may exacerbate unhealthy worry, I’d like to offer this contemporary Ashamnu acrostic, by Rabbi Sara Berman.
ASHAMNU for those with depression
For the “sins” I commited against myself:
If this is the right message for you, please hold on to it as we go through the prayers throughout this holiday.
For all of us, I would really like to encourage each person here to choose your own pathway through Yom Kippur this year (and every year, actually). Go inside yourself and ask “What is the message I need this year?” Let the liturgy work its way through your soul and see what stands out.
Use the physical action that feels right to you to express the message you need to hear. Beat your chest to take responsibility for misdeeds. Tap your chest to help yourself wake up and check in. Massage your heart if you know you are already too hard on yourself and you need to practice more self-love.
You can start tapping in to your own inner voice in the private Amidah right now, which includes the first vidui moment, done privately and silently, before we chant aloud the Ashamnu as group in a few minutes.
Beyond the Vidui, which will recur several times in services over the next day, contemplate how moving through the rituals of Yom Kippur, can work for you. Do the physical actions of tashlich – of throwing something physical into the river to release a burden from your soul, or of fasting help you to reorient within yourself? How does the experience of at attending many hours of prayer services over one day, or the prayers themselves, or your taking the time for some serious inner contemplation help you to slow down and listen, hear the message and make a plan for what to do or how to be in the coming year?
(Do you need to buy yourself a drum?)
