G
BRSINHRI
TIH O M E
YOM KIPPUR 5781:
OR HOW I CAME
TO LOVE
THE ANXIETY
OF EARTHLY
E X ISTENC E
By MICKI WEINBERG
Ben Bag Bag used to say,
“Turn it, turn it, for all is in it…”
Pirkei Avot 5.6
SPIRIT TO SPIRIT
While Rosh Hashana is about conception and world-making, on the
days leading up to Yom Kippur we focus on our involvement in social life
by rectifying our social breaches, asking for forgiveness from those
we wronged and dedicating ourselves to bettering and strengthening
our interpersonal relations. By Yom Kippur we withdraw from society
and from our bodies as we refrain from food and sex; purified and
cleansed we become nothing but breath/spirit.
In the words 1 of R. Yehudah Aryeh Leib Alter (1847-1905): “Yom Kippur
is the one day of the year that is a foretaste of the world to come…
where we are like angels, revealing a state of being that transcends
nature...” From Rosh Hashanah to Yom Kippur we see a rehearsal
of the human story: We are created (from breath and spirit), in our
earthly existence we mess up, work to fix ourselves and our relations,
and ultimately we return to our spiritual state in the world to come.
The circular nature of this story, from spirit to spirit, begs the
question, if, according to the tradition, humanity was created from
the spiritual source on high, and all we want to do is return or regain
that spiritual state, why do we spend all this time on earth?
This question was explored 2 by R. Arye Leib Heller (1745-1812):
“While the soul is on high [before coming to earthly existence] it is like
a cistern that does not produce [water on its own] but can only be
filled up by others. It is essentially empty. But when the soul descends
to this lowly earth and it achieves what it is supposed to…alas it
acquired the status of a well; which is an overflowing spring that is
emanating from itself…”
We see that, according to this line of thought, the whole earthly
existence, with all the struggle and painful learning experiences,
facilitates growth and development that actually uplifts the soul to
a higher spiritual level than it was before. The earthly struggle makes
one spiritually self sustaining like the well.
1. Sfat Emet: Yom Kippur 5644
2. Shev Shmat’ta: Introduction: Alef
In fact, there is a recurring theme throughout Jewish thought
that argues for a humanly generated spirituality 3 rather than one
dependent on prophets 4, miracles, and other things sourced from
heaven (rather than man).
The feeling of spiritual barrenness as we struggle through the painful
mundane aspects of existence suddenly disappears when we realize
that the struggle and emptiness itself is the very source of spirit.
Albert Camus’s words 5 read after R. Heller’s exposition of the Zohar
resonate in deeply spiritual terms: “This universe, henceforth without
a master, seems to him neither sterile nor futile…The struggle itself
toward the heights is enough to fill a man’s heart.” That “filling of the
heart” might be the equivalent of the self-emanating spirituality that
the Zohar seeks.
Yom Kippur is after Rosh Hashanah and the earthly struggle that
the 10 days represent—and Yom Kippur is the holiest day of the
Jewish calendar. We now see why—the “pure” state of creation of
Rosh Hashanah is inferior to the spiritual state achieved through the
earthly, social struggle.
IN PRAISE OF ANXIETY
Let us return to our opening quote:
Ben Bag Bag used to say, “Turn it, turn it, for all is in it…”
The Roman era sage of the Mishna, Ben Bag Bag taught the above
regarding how one ought to relate to the sacred texts of our tradition.
His cyclical attitude is a radical departure from the linear and
essentialist worldview that tends to dominate many spiritual traditions
and political ideologies, where there is one fixed, often distant truth
3. Much of Jewish mysticism focuses on the human role in generating spiritual growth. The Zohar goes so far as to have God tell
humans, “it is as if, you have made me!” (Zohar 3: 113a)
4. Talmud Bavli Bava Batra 12a: “Ameimar said, ‘A scholar is preferable to a prophet.’”
5. The Myth of Sisyphus (1942)
that must be sought out—and once “found”, there is “awakening”,
“utopia”, “bliss/happiness”, or whatever else lays at the end of the
road, peak of the mountain, or last page of the book.
Such an essentialist attitude is the bedrock of alienation and delusion
—once you externalize “awakening”, “utopia”, “bliss/happiness”,
“completeness”, “wellness” or other goals, you set yourself up to the
unhappy situation of always being grasping for something that exists
only in fantasy. You’re left stumbling feeling that you lack something
that does not exist.
Yet it can seem that the whole Yom Kippur experience does exactly this!
The service is filled with confessions of guilt and shortcomings
combined with pitiful pleading that generate a profound sense of
inadequacy, anxiety, and lacking. Might we look at the Yom Kippur
process not as a holiday reflective of some essential reality (of sin
and inadequacy) but rather as a process that stimulates an anxious
and broken sense of being in order to produce a state ready for
mystical experience and transformation? This would suggest that the
anxiety and agitation born from this turning over of ourselves is the
goal of the service. The only thing we can be certain is that we face
an uncertain future—in the meantime we are condemned to be hurled
in the rising and falling waves of anxiety like a ragdoll in the sea.
What of that sea of anxiety? Spiritual insight and mystical experience
has a strong connection with anxiety and agitation. In fact, according
to one Talmudic source, mystical teachings could “only be surrendered
to one whose heart is anxious within him 6.” An anxious heart was a
prerequisite for mystical experience!
Despite the much touted cliché encouraging everyone to “step out of
their comfort zones”, the current trend seems quite the opposite;
We are much more concerned about avoiding anything that might
trigger discomfort, preferring to extend (and remain in our) comfort
zones rather than stepping out of them. We forget that going outside
of your comfort zone means…being uncomfortable! Yom Kippur can be
seen as a grand exercise in discomfort—where we willingly enter the
tempest.
6. Talmud Bavli Chagiga 13a
THE PURLOINED LETTER
The Yom Kippur service is replete with references to missing the mark
and unfulfilled expectations. We expect every letter to neatly arrive at
the posted destination. But letters don’t always reach their “intended”
destinations (indeed, Yom Kippur would have no value if we didn’t “miss
the mark.”).
How do we respond to a “lost” or “stolen” letter? Or maybe there is
no “lost” letter, as Jacques Lacan famously wrote 7: “a letter always
arrives at its destination.”
Barbara Johnson 8 interpreted this to mean that “Everyone who has
held the letter-or even beheld it-including the narrator, has ended up
having the letter addressed to him as its destination… there is no place
from which he can stand back and observe it... The letter’s destination
is thus wherever it is read…. Its destination is not a place, decided a
priori by the sender …the receiver is whoever receives the letter…”
How can we apply this to those anxious, alienating suffering stretches
of life that seem like things are simply not arriving at their planned
destination? Maybe we, in suffering, are like the “letter in sufferance”
and the tiger-leap we need is to insist that we are not a lost letter.
We are at this moment, exactly at the destination—in suffering!
We find a similar approach in an interpretation of the suffering of
alienation and exile, where it has been observed 9 that the Hebrew word
for “Exile” (G.W.L.H./ )גולהand “Redemption” (G.A.W.L.H./ )גאולה
are nearly identical, except for one letter – the aleph (A/)א.
We might say that exile, suffering and all the other mental and
emotional pains are brought about by the diverted, stolen, “purloined
letter”-- the aleph.
7. Seminar on the Purloined Letter in Yale French Studies n.48, 1972, p72
8. The Frame of Reference: Poe, Lacan, Derrida in Yale French Studies n.55/56,1977, p502
9. See Vayikra Rabbah 32.8 and the Maharal of Prague’s Netzach Yisrael, ch1
We see that redemption involves bringing the aleph into exile.
Before we explore what the aleph can mean—I want to emphasize
the inversion here—we nol onger seek a way out of where we are, but
instead we bring something in.
This involves simultaneously a radical acceptance of your situation
(through a shift in how you look at where you are) and a profound
structural change (represented by the additional letter) both enabling
that acceptance and paradoxically transforming the very situation
that is accepted. We see here the process of revealing the spiritual
potential of the human condition that we discussed earlier in R. Heller’s
text.
What about the missing aleph that enables the change?
There are countless ways to interpret what the missing letter represents.
In Hebrew, words starting with the letter aleph include “I”, “Nothingness”,
“Infinite”, “Divine”, “One”, “Unity”, “Truth”, “Humanity”, “Food”, and
as you can imagine, many others. We needn’t take this too far and go
crazy finding words that begin with aleph or A.
I think what’s key here, is not so much what the exact meaning we
give is (we are all different, and we change, our priorities change, our
attitudes change, everything is always changing, including meaning).
What matters most is the decision to bring in to our lives and
consciousness that aleph, whatever it may be for you.
So, I’ll ask you this Yom Kippur, “what’s your aleph?”
