The Other Vidui

The Other Vidui

Today, on Erev Yom Kippur, I find myself thinking about a line from Ha’Azinu, the Torah portion we just read yesterday.

Ha’Azinu is the song Moshe sings to the people at the very end of his life. These are among his final words to them—the things he most wants them to carry with them as they go on without him. And near the end, he says:

כִּי לֹֽא־דָבָ֨ר רֵ֥ק הוּא֙ מִכֶּ֔ם כִּי־ה֖וּא חַיֵּיכֶ֑ם וּבַדָּבָ֣ר הַזֶּ֗ה תַּֽאֲרִ֤יכוּ יָמִים֙

For it is not an empty thing for you, for it is your life; and through this thing, you will lengthen your days.

What does it mean to lengthen our days?

The Torah uses this language in a few other places. We are told that sending away the mother bird before taking her eggs or chicks will lengthen our days. We are told that honoring our parents will lengthen our days. And in the second paragraph of Shema, we pray:

לְמַעַן יִרְבּוּ יְמֵיכֶם וִימֵי בְנֵיכֶם

So that your days, and your children’s days, will be many…

And yet we know, from our experiences as human beings, that doing the right things doesn’t necessarily lengthen one’s life, at least not in a literal sense.

The Talmud grapples painfully with this reality. It tells the story of a boy whose father asks him to climb a tree to fetch some eggs from a nest. The boy climbs the tree for his father and makes sure to shoo away the mother bird—but then he falls and dies. He did both mitzvot for which the Torah promises long life—sending away the mother bird and honoring one’s parents—and in that very moment his life is cut short.

The sages offer one answer: “lengthening your days” refers not to this world, but to Olam HaBa, the world to come.

But I wonder if there is another way to think about what it means for our days to be long.

Not how many days we are given, but what we are able to see in them.

When Yaakov, after all the years of separation from his son Yosef, comes down to Egypt, Pharaoh asks him how old he is. Yaakov answers:

מְעַט וְרָעִים הָיוּ יְמֵי שְׁנֵי חַיַּי

Few and bad have been the days of the years of my life.

Yaakov had lived through so much—including losing his beloved Rachel and then, for so many years, his beloved Yosef. And perhaps because his days had been so difficult, they felt to him like they were too few.

How do we look back at the days we have been given?

Yom Kippur gives us a very particular way of looking back.

Again and again, we say וִדּוּי, Vidui, Confession:

אָשַׁמְנוּ. בָּגַדְנוּ. גָּזַלְנוּ

We have done wrong. We have betrayed. We have stolen.

We look honestly at what we have done, where we have failed, what we regret, and what we need to repair.

But a few years ago, I came across another kind of Vidui, originally by Rabbi Binyamin Holtzman, and a later version by Rabbi Avi Weiss, variations on the Yom Kippur וִדּוּי, the confession in which we list, in alphabetic acrostic, all the ways we have done wrong:

אָשַׁמְנוּ. בָּגַדְנוּ. גָּזַלְנוּ.

We have done wrong. We have betrayed. We have stolen.

But this new Vidui, הַוִּדּוּי הַמַּשְׁלִים—a “Complementary Confession”—in perfect mirror form, lists the ways we have done good:

אָהַבְנוּ. בָּכִינוּ. גָּמַלְנוּ.

We have loved. We have cried. We have given back.

We have believed. We have tried. We have remembered. We have embraced. We have created. We have yearned. We have fought for justice. We have supported one another.

I immediately fell in love with it. I shared it with my husband and kids and announced that I was printing out copies for everyone to paste into the backs of their Yom Kippur prayer books.

But my family wasn’t so sure.

The purpose of Yom Kippur, my youngest said, is to do teshuvah! Teshuvah, my middle child said, isn’t about announcing what we did right. It’s about reflecting on what we did wrong and what we need to improve. Maybe if this were in the future tense, my oldest said—we will love; we will bless; we will grow—then maybe. But to congratulate ourselves on having done all these things didn’t seem to be in the spirit of teshuvah.

Well, I had already spread the glue-stick all over the back inside covers and was prepared to defend it.

First of all, I said, it’s a prayer, not a literal list of what we did; it is a prayer to help orient our hearts. It reminds us what really matters.

Second, it’s collective—just like we say the Ashamnu, we have sinned—not just for ourselves but for all of us as a community and as a people—this too is collective: We have loved. We have blessed. We know that so many people, near and far, have done so many good things, and we are singing about them—not just our individual selves.

But then I realized the literal and personal list was important to me.

This is a list of all the ways God has blessed us with a נשמה, a soul. This is a list of the best things we, as humans, are able to do. A list of ways we partner with God. His greatest gifts to us. The reasons He created us.

There is something about listing them—acknowledging and appreciating them—our loving, our blessing, our growing, our yearning, our embracing, our words, our compassion—listing the doings of our neshamot during the past year—which seems spiritually important. In fact, it seems to me there is something spiritually wrong about not stopping to deeply acknowledge these things.

That word, וִדּוּי, Vidui, is important. To be modeh is to acknowledge, to admit. It is the same root we use when we say Modim anachnu lach—we thank You—or Modeh Ani. Vidui can be an acknowledgment of where we have failed. But perhaps we also need to acknowledge what has been given to us, what we have managed to do with it, and how we have grown.

Sometimes on Friday night, after I’ve lit the Shabbat candles, I look out at the twilight sky and silhouetting trees—a minhag I learned from my mother—and think about my week. I think about the people in my life, about things I managed to do and things left unfinished, things that made me bless God and things left unknown.

There is no script or liturgy for this thinking I do, so religiously, every Friday night. But perhaps if there were a liturgy, it would be:

אָהַבְנוּ. בֵּרַכְנוּ. גָּדַלְנוּ

We have loved. We have blessed. We have grown.

There is a minhag on Erev Yom Kippur to say the Ashamnu Bagadnu Vidui during Mincha, even before eating the seudah hamafseket, the last meal. We are aware that life is precious and fragile: What if something should happen before Yom Kippur begins? What if we did not have the chance to do Vidui, to confess our sins?

But… what if we missed the chance to do the other Vidui, to recognize and appreciate how much we loved, how much we blessed, how much we grew?

My mother-in-law likes to share this Torah on her father’s yahrzeit, from a midrash in the Talmud.

The Talmud imagines a feast that God will someday make for the righteous. After they eat and drink, they ask Avraham if he will lead the benching over a cup of wine. Avraham declines: he does not feel worthy, because Yishmael came from him. They turn to Yitzchak, but he declines because Esav came from him. Yaakov declines because he married two sisters, something the Torah would later forbid. Even Moshe declines, because he did not merit to enter the Land of Israel.

Each, when asked to bless, seems to look back at his own life and see a reason that he is not worthy.

But when they ask David, he says:

אֲנִי אֲבָרֵךְ, וְלִי נָאֶה לְבָרֵךְ

I will bless, and it is fitting for me to bless.

And he quotes his own words from Tehillim:

כּוֹס יְשׁוּעוֹת אֶשָּׂא וּבְשֵׁם ה׳ אֶקְרָא

I will lift up the cup of salvation, and I will call upon the name of God.

My mother-in-law loves this Midrash because it reminds her of her father, who was always ready to bless, to be thankful.

לִי נָאֶה לְבָרֵךְ

People disagree about whether this Midrash is intending to be critical or complimentary. Some hear a critique of David’s arrogance: Avraham, Yitzchak, Yaakov, and Moshe could each find something in their lives that made them feel unworthy—and David, who had committed even worse sins, says, “I’ll bench!”

But my mother-in-law hears something different. David is not claiming that he is without sin. He knows the failures and struggles of his own life. But he does not allow them to make him feel that he is unworthy to bless. Despite all of it, he can still say:

לִי נָאֶה לְבָרֵךְ

It is fitting for me to bless.

He can still bless. He can still be grateful.

Like many disputes, there is probably some truth to both interpretations. But I am with her on this one.

David had known very low places. And yet, he could still say: I will bless.

It’s not about congratulating ourselves. It is about not missing the opportunity to appreciate where we are and how far we’ve come. It is reminding ourselves what we are capable of; reminding ourselves of what is most important and meaningful; being thankful for the most holy parts of being human.

The Ahavnu, Beirachnu Vidui does not replace Ashamnu, Bagadnu in any way. We all have things we need to admit, regret, and repair, individually and as a community and a people.

But perhaps on Yom Kippur, when we are doing the difficult work of looking honestly at our lives, we need to be able to see all of it.

The places where we failed. And also the places where we loved, and blessed, and grew.

At the end of Birkat Kohanim, the priestly blessing we recite on Yom Kippur, there is a prayer that asks God to lengthen the days of those closest to us:

וְתַאֲרִיךְ יָמַי וִימֵי אָבִי וְאִמִּי…

But the request finishes with the words:

בְּטוֹב וּבִנְעִימוֹת, בְּרֹב עֹז וְשָׁלוֹם

With goodness, and pleasantness, and strength and peace.

The number of our days we can’t control and can’t really know.

But perhaps we can ask God to help us lengthen our days by helping us fill each day with goodness, strength, and peace.

We can love, and bless, and grow. We can care and we can try. We can notice and we can embrace.

וּבַדָּבָ֣ר הַזֶּ֗ה תַּֽאֲרִ֤יכוּ יָמִים

And through this thing you will lengthen your days.