Repentance and Plan B- Kol Nidre 5785
When I was a boy, in Hebrew school, I heard a hasidic tale that I’d like to retell in the name of my teachers, Elaine Hercenberg and Marjorie Maidman.
On Erev Yom Kippur, so the story goes, someone knocked on the rabbi’s door before Kol Nidre. He said to the rabbi, “Rabbi, I have a great sin I have to atone for, but I can’t do it. The person I wronged is no longer here among the living. What can I do?” The rabbi thought for a moment, and then pointed outside to his garden. “Do you see that large boulder over there?”, the rabbi asked. “It weighs a lot. Go outside and bring it in here.” The man, looking confused, started to ask a question, but the look in the rabbi’s eyes told him that he should do it. So he went outside and set about the task of moving the boulder from its place.
While he was attempting to move the boulder, a second man entered the rabbi’s study. Before the rabbi could welcome him and ask his business, the man said: “Rabbi, I’ve had the very best year. I’ve tried to think about something to atone for this Yom Kippur, and I’ve had no success. What need do I have to go to shul this evening and tomorrow? My behavior’s been impeccable, and I consider myself to be a model for our community.” The rabbi, thinking for a moment, said to him: “Go out to the road and pick up as many pebbles as you can. Stuff your pockets with them, and then come back to me.” This man, looking as equally perplexed as the first, thought about protesting but did what the rabbi told him to do.
It so happened that both men came before the rabbi at the same time- the first holding a large boulder, the second with his pockets full of small pebbles. Looking at both of them, the rabbi said: “Now, both of you, go put your stones back exactly as you found them.” The man who moved the boulder thought for a moment, then slowly closed his eyes and nodded. He proceeded to slowly lift up the boulder and walk it outside, then placed it outside in the same spot, in the same position, as he had found it and then came back before the rabbi. His load, both physically and metaphorically, had been lifted.
The other man, looking incredulous with his mouth agape, protested to the rabbi: “How can I do that?! I have many, many stones in my pocket, and I paid no attention whatsoever to how they were positioned!” He went outside and futilely tried for a moment to do what was asked of him, but he came back to the rabbi without being able to fulfill his demand.
Then said the rabbi: “A person’s wrongdoings and errors are like these stones. Speaking to the first man, he said: “You can easily find the place from which you took the one large stone, and were able to bring it back immediately. But you,” he said to the second man, “could not restore the little stones, because there were too many spots for you to remember them.”
And then the rabbi arose and said: “Blessed is the person whose conscience is heavy upon him, like a big stone, because it is easier to remove his guilt and let repentance enter in.” And to the man who could see no evil in himself he said, “But woe to the person who pays no attention to the little errors he commits, and because they pay no attention to them, they will never try hard to be forgiven. Thus, the greater wrongdoer can often be the most contrite.
We all enter into Yom Kippur with our own stuff– our own regrets, our own baggage, our own mishegoss. It may be quite weighty for some of us, while for others it may be lighter. Like in the story, we may know specifically what we are atoning for this Yom Kippur, which may be quite weighty, and we also acknowledge that we atone for all of the small, seemingly insignificant actions we’ve done that despite our best efforts haven’t showcased our best selves. Some of us may not have anything too “serious” to atone for, yet we still communally acknowledge all the small, seemingly insignificant times when we have missed the mark.
My teacher Rabbi Ebn Leader, one time in a Talmud class, noticed that our pronunciation of a particular passage was not quite as it should be. We were reading haltingly, and not reciting out the text as we should have. Rabbi Leader stopped us and looked at us for a beat, then solemnly intoned: “Let’s get used to making mistakes in each others’ faces.” Our preparations may not be enough at times for a particular task; but acknowledging that this happens to all of us, at one time or another, can somewhat paradoxically bring us comfort. We are not alone, in our foibles and imperfections.
This dynamic, of our plans and expectations not coming to fruition as we’ve envisioned, is encapsulated in Kol Nidre. Believe it or not, halachically-speaking, “Kol Nidre” is not really a prayer, per se. It does not start with “Baruch atah Hashem”, nor does it have a hatimah- an ending benediction. It is instead a legal declaration mostly written in Aramaic, and it reads like one. As our mahzor explains, Kol Nidre “mentions seven types of promises and uses seven verbs expressing nullification”, with the number seven being a marker of completeness.
It’s not unusual, sadly, for our expectations to come undone. Dashed expectations are a part of life. And yet, we persevere through disappointment and coming up short. Last year, like so many of us, all my hopes and concerns that I fervently hoped to fulfill and address after Rosh Hashanah were quickly relegated to the background on October 7th. After that dark day, so early in the year, still in the month of Tishrei, a lot of my hopes become out of reach or obsolete. All too quickly, I felt my intentions shift, and both individually and collectively we pivoted to “Plan B”.
As I noted in my sermon on Shabbat Shuvah, the concept of “Plan B” is not at all foreign to Jewish tradition or halacha. To revisit one example, the rabbis of the Talmud explain in masechet Berakhot the idea of “tashlumim”, which means, in one sense, “to makeup” or “to re-do”. It comes out in a discussion in chapter 4 having to do with the time for prayer. To review, we have our three daily prayer services on a normal day- arvit or ma’ariv in the evening, shacharit in the morning, and mincha in the afternoon. However, it may not be possible for one reason or another to be able to pray all three services in a given day- we do lead busy lives, after all. The Gemara teaches:
“Didn’t Rav Mari, son of Rav Huna, son of Rabbi Yirmeya bar Abba, say that Rabbi Yoḥanan said: One who erred and did not recite the evening prayer, prays in the morning prayer two Amida prayers; one who erred and did not recite the morning prayer, prays in the afternoon prayer two Amida prayers?”
This teaching gets codified later in the law of tashlumim. If you miss saying ma’ariv, you can say two Amidahs in the morning. If you’re running late in the morning and miss Shacharit, you can say two Amidahs in the afternoon. And if you’re running from the dry cleaner to the dentist to the market and forget to daven mincha, then you can say two Amidahs in the evening. The rabbis acknowledge that we are but human; sometimes life gets in the way. And just because life can get in the way, doesn’t mean that we don’t have the space to make things right.
Not only does the concept of “plan B” get codified here, but it gets further clarified in the halachic concepts of “lechatchilah” (“at the start”, the best case scenario) and “b’dievad” (“after the fact”, the less ideal but still acceptable scenario). For example, we are taught that the time for lighting candles before Shabbat, lechatchilah, is 18 minutes before sunset. This is the ideal scenario. However, b’dievad, if the chicken’s being slow to cook and we’re unable to light our candles at that time, we are permitted to do so, if we must, by sunset. The rabbis instituted this in order to make sure that we were scrupulous in our Shabbat planning, and really as a preventative measure to distance us from the possibility of transgression. Plan B is ideally meant to be avoided, but the fact that it’s there as a fail-safe brings me comfort.
I remember in the days after October 7th, it took a while for my own “Plan B” to make itself apparent to me. I remember initially thinking that all my expectations for the year, as a rabbinical student, a Jew, and simply a person all had to pivot. It was uncomfortable. However, because it was uncomfortable, a large part of my “plan B” was simply seeking out those things which bring me comfort. Playing with my children, exercising, settling down with a book- even indulging in the occasional “mental health donut”, as I call it. I realized that my “plan B” very quickly became my “plan A” (minus the donut, at times). Putting my own comfort and mental health first, and setting boundaries to how much news I would consume and allowing time to decompress after stressful situations became my raison d’etre for the last year.
But on Yom Kippur, we make ourselves UNcomfortable. The Torah teaches that on this day, “ve’anitem et nafshoteihem”- literally, “You are to afflict your souls”, or as it’s been interpreted, “You shall practice self-denial.” We don’t eat or drink, wear leather shoes, apply skin creams or cosmetics, bathe, or engage in intimate relations.
Thankfully for us, Judaism largely looks askance at asceticism, and this self-denial is reserved for a select few days. In the Mishnah and Gemara, the name for Yom Kippur is simply “Yoma”, which in Aramaic means simply “THE DAY”. THE day, when we purposefully lean into “plan B” and forsake the things that bring us bodily pleasure. It’s a necessary part of remembering what it means to be human, and live in a community with other people, to acknowledge where we’ve been wrong. In doing so, according to the logic of the rabbis, we are then afforded spiritual comfort.
Rabbi Avi Killip, in an article published this week, writes of her praying for permission during these high holidays: permission to grieve, cry, be angry, worry, and for comfort. She eloquently writes:
“Jewish tradition teaches that during the Priestly Blessing [which we recite as part of the repetition of the Amidah], God looks out at us directly through the hands of the priests. As we close our eyes, for just a moment we get to bask in divine closeness, to feel held and seen. To feel at peace.”
I join Rabbi Killip this year in praying to feel at peace. U’netaneh tokef, which we’ll recite tomorrow, as it enumerates different fates for the year contains the phrase: “who shall be troubled, and who shall be at peace.” I don’t know what the coming year will hold for us individually, but I wish us all peace, in all of its iterations and variations, this coming year. We could certainly all use it. May our best intentions be realized and come to fruition, and may we be smooth in pivoting to Plan B if we need to. May we all be sealed for a good year. G’mar chatimah tovah.