The Communal Jew - Column 9
REFLECTIONS Written by Lana Melman for the SOUTH FLORIDA JEWISH JOURNAL / SUN SENTINEL. Originally published on October 09, 2023.
Each Rosh Hashanah, we celebrate the new year with the blast of the shofar, a ram’s horn. It awakens our senses to the coming days of self-reflection.
On Yom Kippur, we think about our deeds and words in the past year and how we could have done better. As Jews, we understand the power of choice given by the soul, and commit to return to our best selves (teshuvah) in the coming year.
I love the chance to make amends and start again, the familiar melodies, taking those precious moments to “just be.” But, most of all, I love the sense of community.
We confess and repent the alphabet of our sins in unison as a people. “We have been frivolous, rebellious, neglectful…” It is a list of our mistakes. We acknowledge how we have hurt our fellow human beings by our actions or tongue, whether willingly or under duress.
Each of us confesses to all the sins. There is no picking and choosing. “We have been cruel, sarcastic, arrogant…” We ask for forgiveness and another chance.
The first time I went to synagogue for the High Holidays, I was in my 30s. I remember balking at the idea that I should confess to a whole list of sins, many of which I believed I had not committed. And so, I defiantly picked through the list in my mind. Okay, I gossiped, I thought, but I am not vulgar!
This communal repentance, however, is an essential aspect of Jewish tradition. We repent as a community to uphold our religious beliefs, reaffirm our shared historical experience, and acknowledge our interconnectedness.
Yes, Judaism emphasizes personal responsibility. During the Days of Awe between Rosh Hashanah, when God opens the Books of Life and Death, and Yom Kippur, when the Books are sealed, we make amends to those we have wronged. We own the hurt we have caused, express regret, and ask for forgiveness. We repair what we have damaged if we can, promise not to do it again, and commit to change our ways.
However, Judaism also views the relationship between the individual Jew and Jewish community as interdependent and essential. Each of us is responsible not only for our own actions but also for the well-being of our community. When one Jew commits a sin, the entire community is diminished. When one member of the community repents, it contributes to the overall spiritual cleansing of the group.
We depend on each other to pass down the teachings of Torah and our traditions. Public religious services or rituals require a minyan of ten adults to represent the “community of Israel.” Several prayers, like Kaddish and the reading of the Torah and the Haftorah, also require a minyan. We are advised not to study Torah alone.
We are a community not just in our own eyes, but in the eyes of the rest of the world. Throughout history, Jews have experienced untold challenges and hardships. We have endured discrimination, persecution, exile, and mass murder.
The Nazi Holocaust may be history’s most extreme and well documented example of antisemitism, but there are countless other cases. In Medieval Europe, Jews were denied citizenship and civil liberties and suffered intermittent spells of forced conversion and mass expulsion. Jews faced quotas and exclusion in the US and centuries of anti-Jewish discrimination and violence in Arab countries.
When we are picked out for persecution, nobody asks what synagogue we go to or who we voted for in the last election. We suffer collectively.
Our historical experiences are part of our identity. When Black Americans talk about the inter-generational trauma resulting from slavery and Jim Crow laws, I understand exactly what they mean.
Our communal repentance during the High Holidays reinforces the idea that we are interconnected. We share responsibility for maintaining the ethical and moral standards of the Jewish people.
Today’s world is awash with strife. It is easy to focus on what divides us. But when the sky darkens with hate, we Jews will only be saved by each other.
So now, I embrace that long list of sins. I feel the power of reciting confessions in the plural. I am part of a religion, a history, a community – the Jewish community.
Read the original article here.
Lana Melman is a contributing columnist for the South Florida Jewish Journal.