Since I retired at the end of April 2021, I’ve written a book with the title, Judaism Beyond Binaries. I began my exploration by identifying ‘threes’ in the Torah and Jewish teaching generally, in an effort to confront binary thinking and practice. In my Kol Nidrei sermon, I explored a refrain of threes that expresses the purpose of Yom Kippur in the form of a plea: ‘forgive us, pardon us, grant us atonement’ – s’lach lanu, m’chal lanu, kappeir lanu. This morning, I want to talk about another powerful refrain of threes that frames the entire journey of the yamim nora’im, these ‘awed days’ that began on Rosh Ha-Shanah and conclude today on Yom Kippur: T’shuvah, ‘Return’, T’fillah, ‘Prayer’, and Tz’dakah. ‘Deeds of Justice’.
The call to T’shuvah, T’fillah, and Tz’dakah is a feature of a mediaeval piyyut, ‘poem’, known by its first two words, U’n’tanneh Tokef. We will recite this poem at the beginning of the Musaf, the ‘additional’ service. Emphasising the supremacy of God as Judge, Arbiter, Expert and Witness,[1] and the fragility of mortal humanity, the language of U’n’tanneh Tokef is poignant. It is also intimidating, reminding us that the Judge before whom each one of us stands, ‘writes and seals, records and recounts the deeds of every human being’ and decrees a judgement. Nevertheless, there is a message of hope, the hope that we will act to mend our ways, expressed with this simple statement: U’t’shuvah, u’t’fillah, u’tz’dakah ma’avirin et-ro’a ha-g’zeira, ‘But return, prayer and just deeds annul the evil decree’. T’shuvah, t’fillah and tz’dakah: this is the threefold challenge set before us.
We start with T’shuvah. There is sense of urgency. We will not automatically be absolved at the end of Yom Kippur. On the contrary, as we read in the Mishnah, tractate Yoma (8.9):
One who says: I shall sin and repent [v’ashuv], sin and repent, they do not afford that person the opportunity to repent [t’shuvah]. [If one says]: I shall sin and Yom Ha-Kippurim[2] will atone for me, Yom Ha-Kippurim, does not effect atonement. For transgressions between a person and God Yom Ha-Kippurim effects atonement, but for transgressions between one person and another, Yom Ha-Kippurim does not effect atonement, until they have appeased their friend.
The import of this teaching from the Mishnah is that t’shuvah is a task that requires effort. T’shuvah is usually translated as ‘repentance’, but the root Shin Vav Beit means to ‘turn’, or ‘return’. The word ‘journey’ has been overused in recent years, but the process of acknowledging our misdeeds and taking steps to make amends involves a journey.
T’shuvah involves recognising that we have strayed off the path of our lives, or taken a route that has led to a cul-de-sac, and that we need to turn around and return to our path. Turning around does not mean going back: we cannot go back; the past cannot be undone. We can only move forwards. When we turn and move towards the path and then find it again, we discover that we are further along. We have learnt from our experiences. In making the effort to turn and return we have become more self-aware, admitted our errors and mistakes, and acknowledged how and why we came to lose our way.
Returning to the path of our lives is only a beginning. As the passage in the Mishnah quoted above makes clear, t’shuvah entails putting things right in relation to those whom we have harmed or wronged, and rebuilding our relationships. But t’shuvah is elusive. Those who approach it in a mechanical fashion, ticking off items on the list, will not experience the sense of renewal it offers. T’shuvah requires commitment not drive. It is not possible for us to speed our way back to the path of our lives, or find easy fixes to rebuilding trust with those whom we have hurt. In the awareness of personal frailties, all we can do is put one foot in front of another, tentatively, and feel our way along, and approach others with contrition and humility.
T’shuvah, ‘Return’ – and T’fillah, ‘Prayer’. What is prayer from a Jewish perspective? The root of t’fillah, Pei Lamed Lamed means to intervene, interpose, arbitrate, judge, intercede. Jewish prayer takes the form of liturgy, set prayers, mostly written hundreds of years ago.[3] The majority of these prayers are not actual prayers in the commonly accepted understanding of the word. Most are peons of praise to God in the form of blessing. There are blessings connected with thanksgiving, and acknowledgement of God for the gifts we enjoy that nourish us and enrich our lives, and blessings concerning actions that we are commanded to perform, like lighting candles.[4]
Petitionary prayer is largely confined to thirteen blessings recited on weekdays in the middle of the Amidah, the central ‘standing’ prayer, which consists of nineteen blessings all together.[5] Apart from the option of adding a personal prayer to the blessing for healing, the themes of the petitionary blessings are fixed, and include requests for understanding, repentance, forgiveness, justice. On Rosh Ha-Shanah and Yom Kippur, the liturgy is even more extensive and includes special prayers, like Avinu Malkeinu, which addresses God as ’our Parent and ‘our Sovereign’. The tone of these prayers is utterly supplicatory. For example, the concluding verse of Avinu Malkeinu, which we find so moving when we sing it:[6]
Our Parent, our Sovereign, be gracious to us and answer us, for there is little goodness in us; treat us with justice [tz’dakah] and lovingkindness [chesed], and save us.
Interestingly, ‘to pray’, l’hitpalleil, is a reflexive form. Reflective forms express an action in relation to ourselves. In the context of praying, this is very significant. We assume that to pray is to address God, but l’hitpalleil suggests that when we pray, we also address ourselves. Of course, some people never pray. Some only pray in desperate situations, their prayer a plea for help: Please God, please help me! Others, only pray during the ‘awed days’ when prayer becomes a lifeline, a means of personal repair. Whatever the reason any one of us may find to pray, and whether or not prayer is familiar, alien, or irrelevant at other times of the year, what we are doing when we pray during these ‘awed days’ is, essentially, interrogating ourselves. To pray, l’hitpalleil, is to open our hearts and to acknowledge our frailties, and needs for love, compassion, support, affirmation, forgiveness. To pray is to give thanks for the gift of life, and all the ways in which our needs are met. To pray is to acknowledge that each of us has the potential to shape and transform our lives. To pray is to recognise that in order to transform our lives, we must also be prepared to let go and move on, and trust that we can renew ourselves and our relationships.
T’shuvah, ‘Return’, and T’fillah, ‘Prayer’ – and Tz’dakah, ‘Deeds of Justice’. The focus of the ten-day t’shuvah journey is for us to make amends for our misdeeds, and so receive at the end of this sacred day of Yom Kippur, forgiveness and atonement. But that goal is only a beginning. Jewish teaching is concerned with the work of renewal and repair for the sake of the future. The journey of t’shuvah reaches beyond the gift of forgiveness and atonement to tz’dakah, to the task of practising righteousness and justice after the yamim nora’im, the ‘awed days’, are over.
Tz’dakah is usually translated as ‘charity’, but the root of the word charity is the Latin caritas, which conveys a different meaning from the root of tz’dakah, Tzadi Dalet Kuf, to be ‘just’. Caritas centres on the feelings of love that move us to feel compassion for others and to take action to support them, both materially and emotionally. Related to the word tzedek, ‘justice’, Tz’dakah focuses on the imperative of just action.[7] Emotions cannot be compelled, so righteous acts that are dependent on our feelings are useless. We may feel moved to help others, but we may not. Tz’dakah, by contrast, is a commandment. It is our obligation to put right what is wrong in relation to the poor, including the homeless, those who are oppressed and persecuted, and the most vulnerable groups in society, identified in the Torah, specifically, as the sojourner, the orphan and the widow.[8]
In Isaiah chapter 58, the Yom Kippur morning haftarah, the ‘concluding’ reading from scripture, which we will read shortly, the unknown prophet of the later chapters of the Book of Isaiah who addressed the exiles in Babylon in the 6th century BCE,[9] decries observance of the rituals of Yom Kippur that are not accompanied by acts of righteousness. We read (58.5-7):
Is this the fast I look for? A day of self-affliction? Bowing your head like a reed, and covering yourself with sackcloth and ashes? Is this what you call a fast, a day acceptable to the Eternal One? / Is not this the fast I choose: to release the shackles of wickedness and untie the fetters of bondage, to let the oppressed go free and to break off every yoke? / Is it not to share your bread with the hungry and bring the homeless poor into your house; when you see the naked, to clothe them, and never to hide yourself from your own kin?
The prophet’s words recited on Yom Kippur morning are just as relevant to contemporary society as they were 2500 years ago. But they do not simply address the community as a whole. It is the individual who fasts, afflicts themselves, and engages in the rites of Yom Kippur. The call of Isaiah 58 is to the people Israel, and also to the individual, to each one of us, to act against oppression and destitution. So, each one of us is challenged to ask ourselves: how will I respond? I know that I live in a world in which injustice is rife. What will I do about it? The ten-day t’shuvah journey will conclude in a few hours’ time, and then it is every individual’s task to harvest the fruits of our repentance with acts of tz’dakah.
U’t’shuvah, u’T’fillah, u’tz’dakah has been the framing refrain of aseret y’mei t’shuvah, the ‘ten days of return’, for hundreds of years.[10] We recite these words, as we recite all the words of the yamim nora’im liturgy, year after year. And yet, each year we find ourselves in a different place. This past year we have been living in the shadow of October 7, 2023 and its aftermath. What do these words mean to us this year? How do the obligations they encapsulate resonate with us today on Yom Kippur, less than a week after the October 7 anniversary? We have felt so overwhelmed by despair and hopelessness these past twelve months. The call of tz’dakah, in particular, reminds us that feeling devoid of Hope, we must, nevertheless, act. Indeed, those Israelis and Palestinians who continue to work together to create a better future are crying out for Jews in the diaspora to support their efforts.
To give you just one example. On September 1, I attended a zoom gathering organised by the British Friends of Rabbis for Human Rights, an organisation that encompasses rabbis across the religious spectrum, who put their commitment to human rights into practice, in Israel and in the West Bank and Gaza.[11] There were three speakers, orthodox Rabbanit Leah Shakdiel, conservative Rabbi Amirit Rosen, and Rabbi Michael Marmur of the Israel Movement for Progressive Judaism. All three spoke powerfully, but I was particularly taken by Rabbanit Leah Shakdiel, whose voice was truly prophetic. Ordained in 2019 and the first woman to be elected to an orthodox religious Council, in addition to being involved in Rabbis for Human Rights, Rabbanit Leah Shakdiel is also a member of Machshom Watch,[12] the group of women who go to checkpoints – machshom means ‘checkpoint’ – and monitor what goes on there. She is committed to speaking out because, as she put it, ‘orthodox voices seem to be backing the war.’ She called what they are doing, chillul Ha-Sheim, a ‘desecration of the Divine Name’, ‘because’, as she put it, ‘the Torah is being used to sanctify war.’ Here are some extracts from Rabbanit Leah Shakdiel’s powerful address at that zoom meeting:
Vengeance goes nowhere. We are supposed to value life above all, to value peace above all… We are systematically destroying a people, their livelihoods, their future… It’s totally forbidden to engage in this kind of warfare, as if we were in the times of Joshua… The only kind of Jewish state we can have must be aligned to democracy, equal rights for all… Since 1967, Religious Zionism has changed into religious messianism, the notion that the land is sacred, and that every inch must belong to the Jews. Messianism is a turning away from Zionism. This is fundamentalism. You cannot read the Bible literally. You must read it in the context of the needs of the present and the future. Does this fundamentalism support life or drag us into death? The role of religious leaders in general is promote the values of freedom and justice. We have to scream from the rooftops… We must speak Truth to Power.
The courage of Rabbanit Leah Shakdiel, Rabbi Amirit Rosen, and Rabbi Michael Marmur, and all the rabbis involved in Rabbis for Human Rights, who stand in front of bulldozers to prevent the demolition of Palestinian homes by the IDF, who accompany Palestinians in their olive groves to prevent settlers uprooting their trees, who advocate for Palestinians in the courts, is tz’dakah in action. Of course, we are not there on the ground. But we can support their work, and the work of the many organisations that are determined to continue the struggle for Justice and Peace. Coexistence organisations like Standing Together,[13] Women Wage Peace,[14] the Parents’ Circle Bereaved Families Forum,[15] and Combatants for Peace[16] – not forgetting the wonderful village in no man’s land of Jews Christians and Muslims, which inspired the Hebrew name of this congregation: Neve Shalom, Wahat al-Salaam, ‘Oasis of Peace’.[17] May the call of t’shuvah, t’fillah and tz’dakah, revive our spirits, and be a source of inspiration when the sun sets on this unique day, and we step out into the challenges of the new year that lies ahead. And let us say: Amen.
Rabbi Elli Tikvah Sarah
Leicester Progressive Jewish Congregation
Yom Kippur Shacharit 5785
12th October 2024 / 10th Tishri 5785
This is the translation of the Hebrew text in Machzor Ruach Chadashah, 2003, p.141. ↑
Yom Ha-Kippurim is the name for Yom Kippur in the Torah. See: Leviticus 23.27. ↑
The rabbinic sages devised the first post-biblical prayers, but it was not until the 9th century that the first complete prayer book was written: Seider Rav Amram, the work of the head of the Babylonian Talmudic Academy of Sura at that time, Amram bar Sheshna. For an in-depth exposition of the development of Jewish okayprayer, see: Elbogen, Ismar, Jewish Liturgy. A Comprehensive History, Philadelphia and Jerusalem: Jewish Publication Society of America, 1993 (first published in German in 1913. See note: 14). See also: Hoffman, Lawrence A., The Canonization of the Synagogue Service, Notre Dame and London: University of Notre Dame Press, 1979. ↑
For an accessible guide to Jewish prayer, including the types of blessings, see: Hoffman, Lawrence A., The Way Into Jewish Prayer, Woodstock, Vermont: Jewish Lights Publishing, 2000. ↑
The Amidah (meaning, ‘standing’) is the central prayer of Jewish worship, traditionally recited while standing. The thirteen petitionary blessings are not recited on Shabbat because it would be inappropriate to petition God while enjoying God’s gift of rest. In place of the thirteen petitions, a blessing for Shabbat is recited. The thirteen petitions consist of six that are personal, six that are communal, and a final one, asking God to listen to our prayers. ↑
See: Machzor Ru’ach Chadashah, 2003, p.74, for a slightly different translation. ↑
One of the most important pronouncements about justice in the Torah is in Deuteronomy 16.20: Tzedek, tzedek, tirdof, ‘Justice, justice, shall you pursue’. ↑
Significantly, the word tz’dakah is used in relation to restoring the garment of a poor person given in pledge (Deuteronomy 24.10-13). The code in Deuteronomy 24 also mentions all three of these categories of vulnerable people (Deut. 24.17 to 22). See also: Leviticus 19.9-10 and 19.33–34. ↑
Isaiah 1.1 speaks of ‘Isaiah, son of Amoz, who prophesied concerning Judah and Jerusalem in the reigns of Uzziah, Jotham, Ahaz and Hezikiah, kings of Judah’. Isaiah 6.1 mentions Isaiah’s call to prophecy in the year that King Uzziah died (742 BCE). While chapters 1-39 belong to the period when Isaiah prophesied. Chapters 40 to 66 are later in origin, the work of a Second (Deutero) Isaiah. Sometimes chapters 55-66 are seen as the work of a Third (Trito) Isaiah. ↑
The first prayer book to include prayers for the festivals is Machzor Vitry composed by French scholar, Simchah of Vitry, c. 1055 – c. 1105 https://www.sefaria.org/Machzor_Vitry?tab=contents ↑
https://www.rhr.org.il/eng ↑
https://www.machsomwatch.org/en/node/51914 ↑
https://www.standing-together.org/en ↑
https://www.womenwagepeace.org.il/en/about/ ↑
https://www.theparentscircle.org/en/about_eng-2/ ↑
https://cfpeace.org/about-en/ ↑
https://wasns.org/about/ ↑
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