Chavurat Lamdeinu
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Opposites
                      
Yom Kippur Shacharit 5768
Shabbat v’Yom Kippur, September 22, 2007
Chavurat Lamdeinu, Madison, NJ
Rabbi Ruth Gais                                                
                                          Opposites

Remember last week when I began my sermon about the shofar and said that I hadn’
t meant to talk about it again but felt compelled to? My sermon this morning is
another example of what often happens to me when I start to write. It’s not that an
invisible hand guides mine, though I wish it did; rather it’s that I often find that I
thought I was writing about something that was on my mind, only to discover after
awhile that I’m really writing about something else. For example, my working title for
this sermon used to be “Joy.” Now it’s called “Opposites.”  This discovery that I’m
not in control of what I want to say can be a little disconcerting, especially if there’s
a deadline, but I prefer to think that it is a way of going where God wants me to go at
this moment. So that’s what’s happening this morning  and I guess I’m dragging you
along for the ride.  
I began to prepare for this sermon as I do for most of them by letting something hit
me, either a word, or a story, or a line from a poem, or a random thought as it floated
by. This time, it was a sentence from a mishnah, an early rabbinic teaching, that I’ve
been studying for an article, long overdue, that I’m writing. This is that text: there
were no holidays for Israel like the 15th of Av and like Yom Kippur, since on them the
daughters, or sons of Jerusalem go out in borrowed white garments. (m. Ta’anit 6:8)
Keep this interesting statement in mind. We’ll come back to it later. Floating in my
mind were thoughts about joy, what that might mean, and white clothing.
I won’t go through the various stages that led me to the meat of this sermon, but I
soon found myself returning to a mishnah we studied together last year. From this
mishnah (an early rabbinic teaching) about Yom Kippur we learn: “On Yom Kippur it
is forbidden to eat and to drink, and to wash and anoint oneself, and to put on shoes,
and to have sexual intercourse.” (m. Yoma 8.1)
And from there I went to The Kuzari, Judah ha Levi’s 12th century philosophical
poem, and read this about the fast onYom Kippur: “And they fast on this day to
approach a resemblance to the angels, inasmuch as the fast is consummated by
humbling themselves, lowering their heads, standing, bending their knees and
singing hymns of praise. Then all the physical powers abandon their natural
functions and engage in spiritual functions, as though having no animal natures.”(
Kuzari 3.5)

In a comment to the 16th century law code, The Shulkhan Aruch, we learn: It is
preferable to put on white clothing, to resemble the ministering angels (Rama, O.H.
610.4) It is also customary to put on a kittle, which is white and clean, and the
garment worn by the dead, as well. With this example before him, a man’s heart
becomes submissive and broken. (Rama. O.H. 610.4)

We probably know most of these rules and customs about Yom Kippur and if we
haven’t heard the explanations, we could most likely figure out on our own similar
reasons. By fasting and afflicting ourselves in other ways, no bathing, no sex, no
adornment, we deprive our physical selves so we can concentrate on our spiritual
selves instead. We dress and act like angels, who do not need to eat. We even
imitate being dead to chasten and humble ourselves.
Why do we do this? To demonstrate to God that we have taken seriously and with
gratitude the opportunity given to us each year to atone, do teshuvah, and begin
again. Having inspected our souls with the meticulous zeal of a microbiologist
looking through a microscope, and having made the appropriate changes, we are
now ready to approach the throne of Judgment with a contrite and chastened spirit,
hoping that God will accept our prayers and protestations and grant us the great gift
and blessing of a new beginning.
This is the familiar impression we have of Yom Kippur, a day of atonement, a day of
affliction. But listen to this discussion from a Talmudic tractate: “And you shall afflict
your souls on the 9th day…” ( Lev. 23:32). But do we fast on the 9th? Do we not fast
on the 10th? But the purpose of this verse is to tell us that he who eats and drinks on
the 9th and fasts on the 10th  is considered by the Torah as if he fasted on both
days. ( b.RH 9a) In other words, according to the Talmud, feasting and fasting are
equally meritorious and in fact, if one were to try to be super pious and super
ascetic and fast for two days, that person would be most definitely acting against
the commandment. So we are left with the strange thought that feasting a form of
affliction.
Finally,  we’ll go back to the mishnah that started me  on  all this, a mishnah from the
tractate Ta’anit: Rabban Shimon ben Gamliel said: there were no holidays for Israel
like the 15th of Av and like Yom Kippur, since on them the daughters, or sons of
Jerusalem go out in borrowed white garments  …. And the daughters of Jerusalem
go forth and dance in the vineyards.  And what do they say? “Young man, lift up your
eyes and see, what you are choosing for yourself. Don’t desire beauty, desire family.
In other words, Yom Kippur, like the 15th of Av, is a day of joy, not a day of sorrow
and affliction..
This sounds as if we are smack dab in the middle of a Talmudic maklochet – a
dispute. On the one hand, we read passages that tell us Yom Kippur is a day of
affliction and contrition, on the other, the day before as a day of feasting that is as
meritorious as fasting, and, last but not least, a statement that Yom Kippur is one of
the two happiest  days of the year. A day in which, it is implied, wearing white is not a
sign of mourning or death, but clothing for healthy young men and women which
they wear  as a signal that they are ready for marriage and the creation of new life.
This is what the rabbis would call a kashia – a difficulty, a problem.  
.        Here’s one solution to the fasting/feasting contradiction: Joseph Caro, the
author of the definitive code of Jewish law, the Shulkhan Arukh, said:  I call eating on
the 9th fasting. That being so, that man is best who eats and drinks a great deal to
show that he accepts, delights and rejoices in Yom Kippur, because it was given to
Israel as an occasion to make atonement. ( Bet Yosef, Tur. OH 604)
The secret behind all this is that the man who is happy and of good heart in complete
faith that the next day will be a day of forgiveness and atonement for the community
of Israel and that his iniquities will be atoned for among theirs – happy in this faith,
he eats and drinks. It is fitting to consider his feast as much of a virtue as though he
had fasted, for he obtains as much merit from his joy in observing the
commandment of eating as from his fasting on the next day. (Yesh Sakar).
This explanation gets us close to the heart of the matter. We are commanded to eat
and drink. Even if this seems contradictory, the person of faith will joyfully carry out
each commandment. Both the pleasure of eating and the affliction of not-eating are
occasions for joy because we are doing what God wants us to do. .
Opposites, we are told, attract and they also repel. Something about all this, I dimly
remember, is what atomic theory is all about – why electrons combine with each
other or don’t and that how things get made. See what liberal education can do for
your mind!  But details aside, my point is that we need opposites, repelling and/or
attracting; without opposites doing whatever they do, creation would not happen.
Opposites, contradictions, are at the heart of the Jewish mystical view of the world.
In kabbalistic thought God is both male and female, light and darkness, mercy and
justice.There are even two worlds, one the mirror of the other, the upper and the
lower worlds, the good and the bad worlds. We repeat these oppositions in our
prayers, For example, in the first blessing before the Sh’ma we praise God as
“yotzer or u’vore Choshech, Fashioner of light and creator of darkness, a verse from
Isaiah, doctored slightly long ago by the rabbis so that in our liturgy we continue, “
oseh shalom, maker of peace, u’vore et ha col, and creator of everything.” In this
way we can continue to pray tranquilly without having to pause to digest the real rest
of that verse, “oseh shalom, maker of peace, u’vore et ha ra,” maker of peace and
creator of the bad, not necessarily evil, but the bad, bad things, that happen to all of
us. (Isaiah 45:7).
Isaiah and the kabbalists take us towards the secret of living a life of equanimity, of
balance, and maybe, ultimately of serenity. William Blake gets us the rest of the way:
Man was made for joy and woe
And when this we rightly know
Through the world we safely go.
Joy and woe are woven fine
A clothing for the soul divine
Under every grief and pine
Runs a joy with a silken thread.
       (W. Blake, Auguries of Innocence)

Woe, sorrow, pain, grief these emotions are inescapable parts of what makes us
human,  so are their opposites, joy, happiness, peace, these are two sides of the
same coin, yin and yang, both are necessary, one cannot exist without the other.
God, our maker has fashioned us to know both joy and sorrow. Once we know this,
that is to say, once we allow ourselves to accept this truth, “through the world we
safely go.”  Joy and woe are woven fine, they are the clothing, the emotional
experiences that affect us and they are in balance, the warp and woof of our
existence. Feasting and fasting, joy and woe, the white of the shroud, the white
garments of youth may seem to be opposites, but that is all illusion. All experience is
clothing, something that both protects and conceals, the soul divine. We can go
safely through the world, enduring woe, enjoying happiness, we can have meaning in
our lives once we acknowledge that spark of divinity that resides inside of us and
our Creator who put it there.
Man was made for joy and woe
And when this we rightly know
Through the world we safely go.
Joy and woe are woven fine
A clothing for the soul divine
Under every grief and pine
Runs a joy with a silken thread.
       (W. Blake, Auguries of Innocence)

k.y.r.