|
4) When the Thread Would Not Whiten (Yom Kippur)
The pasuk in Shir HaShirim (4:3) reads "k'chut hashani sifsosayich u'midbareich naveh." Rav Shlomo Brevda zt"l, in Siach Shlomo (his derashos on the moadim, collected from recordings), opens his Yom Kippur sha'ar from the Midrash (Shir HaShirim Rabbah on the pasuk), which reads "chut hashani," the scarlet thread, as the lashon shel zehoris tied to the sa'ir hamishtaleiach, and "u'midbareich naveh" as the vidui. He asks a sharp question. The strip of crimson wool was hung at the entrance where everyone could see it, and in a year when Klal Yisrael was zocheh it turned white and the whole city rejoiced. But in a year when they were not zocheh it stayed red, in full public view, a gnai far worse than any private failure. Why would Chazal set it up to be displayed openly and risk that disgrace, instead of keeping it discreet?
His answer reaches into the foundation of avodas Hashem. The root of all service is ratzon, the will to serve, and a person who is kashur l'shorsho, bound to his higher root, is compelled to feel simcha even before he has turned that will into deeds. The thread was public because a Jew's bond to his Source is not a private matter to be hidden away; when it whitened, the Kohanim would go out and gladden the people with the news. Red was a real risk, but the simcha of the white was the whole point.
The second half of the piece lands the vidui itself. Brevda cites the Vilna Gaon (in his peirush to Shir HaShirim) that the sa'ir hamishtaleiach served as Klal Yisrael's shaliach and sanegor, and asks what earned it that role. His answer runs the pasuk "mechaseh peshaav lo yatzliach u'modeh v'ozev yerucham" (Mishlei 28:13) against "hineni nishpat osach al amreich lo chatasi" (Yirmiyahu 2:35). A person's tikvah begins the moment he admits chatasi; the danger is the man who insists lo chatasi. And the chiddush is that this holds even when he says it honestly, imagining himself an angel, because ein tzaddik ba'aretz asher yaaseh tov v'lo yecheta, so that even a small failing makes "lo chatasi" a claim no one can truthfully make. The admission is the sanegoria. The mouth that opens to say ana Hashem chatanu is the same "midbareich naveh" that turns beautiful before Him.
5) The Drawer That Was Never Opened (Yom Kippur Yizkor)
R. Paysach Krohn tells the story of Mordechai Kaler, a sixteen-year-old volunteer at a home for the aged, who was warned about Chona, an elderly resident who had cursed another volunteer for inviting him to the minyan. Chona wheeled Mordechai to his room and told him why. As a boy of twelve in a concentration camp, Chona had watched his father go out at great risk on the morning of his bar mitzvah to secure a complete pair of tefillin, and had watched a Nazi shoot his father dead before his eyes as he came back carrying them. Chona kept his father's tefillin for sixty years, unopened in a drawer, showing them only as proof of what his father had died for. "How can anyone pray to a God Who would kill a boy's father right in front of him?"
Mordechai did not answer Chona's question. How could he? There are questions about suffering that no sixteen-year-old can answer, and perhaps no one can. Instead he asked Chona a different question: what would your father want you to be? And that question brought Chona back. He let Mordechai bring the tefillin down to the shul, put them on, and sat there with the straps wound around his arm, caressing them and repeating, "Tatte, Tatte, it feels so right." For the first time in sixty years his father came back to him. Every morning after that Mordechai would wheel him in to daven, until the morning the elevator opened and Chona was not there. He had suffered a stroke, and had asked his daughter to bring the tefillin to the hospital so he could daven one more time. He died wearing them, bound to his Father in Heaven.
That is what Yom Kippur asks. Teshuvah means return, and return does not mean every question has been answered or every wound has healed. Sometimes it means that even with the wound, even with the anger, even without understanding, we refuse to let the pain have the last word. For sixty years those tefillin sat in a drawer, and Chona's relationship with his father was trapped in there with them, frozen in the most terrible moment of his life. When he finally wrapped them on his arm, his father became more than the way he died; he became again the father who had risked everything so his son could do a mitzvah. Chona's teshuvah did not begin with an answer. It began with a pair of tefillin, with opening a drawer. You do not have to resolve everything before taking the first step. Sometimes you recover one mitzvah, one tefillah, one relationship, one part of yourself that has been closed away.
And that is where Yizkor enters Yom Kippur. On this day of return, the people we have lost help call us home. We remember a father or mother, a husband or wife, a sibling, a child, a teacher or friend, and we ask not only what we remember about them, but the question Mordechai asked Chona: what would this person want me to be? What part of me did they believe in? What did they teach me that I have neglected? What mitzvah, relationship, or responsibility have I left sitting in a drawer? There is a striking line in Yizkor that we ask Hashem to remember the soul of our loved one "baavur she'ani noder tzedakah baado," because I pledge tzedakah on their behalf. Jewish memory has to become action; their lives must keep producing goodness through ours. On Yom Kippur we ask Hashem for another year of life, and at Yizkor we ask ourselves what we will do with that year in the name of those who no longer have one. In these next moments, do not remember only what you lost. Ask what that person placed into your hands, and what part of them can live only through you. We are about to ask Hashem to remember them; perhaps they are also asking Hashem to remember us, to help us return to the people they knew we could become. What would my father want me to be? What would my mother want me to be? On this Yom Kippur, perhaps that question can bring us home.
6) What She Put on the Table (Ne'ilah)
In the old shul of Tarnopol there hung a white paroches before Ne'ilah, embroidered in diamonds and pearls with the words "yom mimim huchas, yom Kippur hameyuchas," one day among all days is set apart, the exalted Day of Atonement. Behind it was a story the city nearly forgot. A respected and wealthy talmid chacham named R. Shalom Dankner always bought the pesicha of the Aron at Ne'ilah, paying a very high price, and no one dared bid against him. Then he lost his fortune. The gabbaim, wise men, quietly told the mispallelim that they would announce an unusually low price for the honor and that no one should compete, so that even in his poverty R. Shalom could keep it. Year after year they called out a single gold coin, and he bought the pesicha. One year a newly wealthy man stood and offered more. Since the money was hekdesh, the gabbaim felt they could not refuse a higher bid, and the price began to climb. Everyone soon realized R. Shalom would be humiliated. Then, in full view of the congregation, a sealed cloth bag landed on the gabbaim's table. It was full of diamonds, pearls, and precious stones. His wife, sitting in the ezras nashim, could not bear to watch her husband's disgrace, and had thrown down everything that remained to her from their prosperous years, as a final bid no one could match. The other man withdrew. After Yom Kippur the gabbaim tried to return the jewelry; she refused, saying she had given it wholeheartedly so her husband could open the Aron. So they sewed the jewels into a paroches and hung it, once a year, only in the exalted moments before Ne'ilah.
You can make this about what we are prepared to surrender in the final moments of Yom Kippur. In a few moments we will cry, "Pesach lanu shaar b'eis neilas shaar," open the gate for us as the gate is closing. Hashem is not asking us to throw diamonds onto the table. He is asking each of us to surrender one thing we have guarded too carefully all year: our pride, an old grievance, an excuse, a destructive habit, our refusal to apologize or to change. That woman's jewelry was not lost; it became the paroches that adorned the Aron every Yom Kippur. And what we surrender during Ne'ilah will not be lost either. It can become the opening through which we return to Hashem. "Pesach lanu shaar b'eis neilas shaar."
7) A story you might find useful: What a Day of Your Life is Worth
Reb Aryeh Levine zt"l, the tzaddik of Yerushalayim, took it upon himself to serve as rabbi to the Jewish prisoners in the central prison, going every Shabbos and Yom Tov to daven with men the rest of the world had written off. Over the years an extraordinary bond formed between them. One Shabbos morning, in the middle of krias haTorah, Reb Aryeh was called out; his married daughter had been struck by sudden paralysis, and the doctors held out little hope. He returned the next Shabbos, mastered his emotions, and told the men only that his daughter was as well as could be expected. Then he began the mi shebeirach for the men called to the Torah. As he recited it for the first man, the prisoner announced that he was pledging a day of his own life for the recovery of the rabbi's daughter. The second man forfeited a week. The third pledged a month. One after another, these men who had nothing left in the world offered the only thing still theirs, the days of their own lives. By the seventh man, a young student who would later become a professor at the Technion, he cried out asking what their lives in prison were even worth against their rabbi's anguish, and pledged all his remaining days for her recovery. Reb Aryeh could not go on. He wept, shook every man's hand, and went home. On the day we beg for another year of life, it is worth asking what we are prepared to give away for someone else's. These men had almost nothing, and gave from the little they had, because someone they loved was in pain.
Did our chomer help you over Yom Tov? Want to see more or less of an idea? Let us know!
|
