Sermon: Yom Kippur Neilah: Again and Again and Again

Written by Writings & Sermons by others — 7 October 2014

Humanity – that’s us.  We have done some terrible things in the past year.  There has been war in many places in the world. There have been violent attacks on individuals at home and abroad.  Big lies have broken trust in business.   Its true – we confessed it all together when we said many times today “al chet shechetanu l’fanecha” the sin we committed against You.  We confessed on behalf of all of us that we hurt others, we hate without cause, we defraud and lie.

What must God think of us at the end of this day of horror – surely anger, just as Rabbi Bayfield urged us to feel last night?

 

But then humanity, has done some wonderful things over this past year.  Take medicine as an example, just since this time last year we have become better at healing our bodies.  This year for the first time a 3D printer printed out an artificial human outer ear that looks and works like the real thing.  Gene therapy for the first time reversed breast cancer in mice.  This year’s developments in cancer immunotherapy show that it may possible to spur the body’s immune system to battle tumour cells directly.  A tiny camera has been developed that can bypass a damaged retina to restore sight to an undamaged optic nerve.     Pharmaceuticals have been found which can turn diabetic treatment from an injection to a pill, an artificial joint that can replace spinal parts, virus traps that capture and destroy viruses before they can infect cells.  All this just in the past year in the work of medical researchers in the US, Europe and Israel.

 

We may pray to God for healing – as Rabbi Josh said earlier today, with all of our doubt and concern as to what that prayer may mean – but we are surely very effective partners in the effort.  God help us that this year we will make great advances in the treatment and prevention of Ebola.

 

But there is an aspect of healing that has made no advances this year.   It is a kind of healing that starts afresh from a clean sheet every year.  That is refuat hanefesh – healing for the soul.

Healing for the soul makes no advances because it cannot be done by others for us.  In healing for the soul God and the religious life is a help for certain.  That’s why we engage ourselves in the rituals new and old which Cantor Cheryl discussed on Rosh Hashanah.   But it only gets us so far. Healing for the soul is work that we each have to do for ourselves.

 

Why is this?  It’s because the hurts and blockages which make us feel that our soul is broken are very ‘sticky.’  They are ways of behaving that we do over and over again even if we know that they get us nowhere.  Perhaps, for example, we take on things that we can’t complete again and again and the knowledge brings us down.  They are ways of interacting with other people which we find ourselves doing repeatedly which we know don’t work or even cause harm.  Perhaps, for example, we bring the least pleasant parts of ourselves home and afflict our families with them and reserve our charm for the workplace. So tough to get out of.

 

A few pages into our Neilah service tonight we will speak about sins, meaning bad behaviours, which are “our familiar and unwelcome companions, riveted to our souls.”     We can’t seem to stop doing them even if we use this day well – if Yom Kippur does make us take the time to question our soul damaging behaviours.

 

There is a shocking story in the Talmud of a man called Rabbi Elazar ben Dordia, which has appeared in Rabbi Josh’s X Rated Talmud sessions.  (Avodah Zarah 17a).  It seems strange that he should be known as a Rabbi until you get to the end of the story.  He visited every harlot in the world that he could find.   You could say he was addicted to vice.

 

Eventually in a seaside town he came to the last woman he had not been with.  He paid an extortionate price to be with her.  It all went horribly and she told him he was such a disgusting person he would never be able to find Teshuvah, a sense of return to God, of healing for the soul.

 

Elazar ben Dordia became desperate and utterly alone in the world. He pleaded with the mountains to pray for him, they wouldn’t.  Then for heaven and earth to pray for him – it couldn’t.  Then for the sun and moon to pray for him – didn’t happen.  Then for the stars and constellations to pray for him – not possible.  Finally Elazar ben Dordia just bent double and wept.  He took responsibility for his own addiction.  The great Rabbi Judah ha Nasi on hearing the story of Elazar ben Dordia immediately conferred on him the title of Rabbi – in taking responsibility for healing his own soul Elazar ben Dordia became our teacher.

 

Towards the very end of the volume of the Talmud (Yoma 86b) on Yom Kippur the Rabbis ask the question – should you keep confessing the same thing Yom Kippur after Yom Kippur?  Doesn’t it just become insincere?  Rav Huna answers the question yes – you must – because “Once a person has committed a sin once and twice, it is permitted to him.” ‘Permitted’? How could you say that?, asked the Rabbis and students around him — “It’s not really permitted. Rather, it appears to him as if it were permitted.”  So you have to return each Yom Kippur to consider even the same behaviours as you considered last year.

 

In this closing hour – as the Gates of Mercy close – as the opportunity to take the peace and undisturbed spiritual space of Yom Kippur to change ourselves continues for just one more hour – take control.  Do what Elazar ben Dordia did to earn the title of Rabbi from the greatest Rabbi of his time, indeed to earn a place in the world to come, as the story tells.  Go in your mind to those ways of behaving which hurt your soul to do.  Those ways of interacting with others which you fall into and say, it’s just my nature.  Those for which you put the responsibility on others, who irritate you, who ‘ought to’ put up with how you are.  Take responsibility for them yourself.  Pray that you will have the strength to change these behaviours which are you could say are addictive.  Ask God’s help to heal your soul.

 

The very last words of the Mishnah (Yoma 8:9), our two thousand year old tradition of meaning for Yom Kippur seem almost not in keeping with the mood of the day.  It’s been solemn today.  In a Shul like Alyth where worship is so often joyous Shabbat after Shabbat, Chag after Chag this solemn day brings us out of the regular mode, as indeed it should.  But Rabbi Akivah ends the section of Yom Kippur saying at the end of this day “feel happy all of Israel.  Feel happy.   Today cleans you.” Done right it is a healing for the soul.

 

On the back page of the Alyth High Holidays leaflet is a photo of the fountain, dedicated to the memory of Alyth stalwart Pat Karet in the garden of our Synagogue which tomorrow morning with your help will be transformed  for the most joyous festival of the year, Sukkot.   Rabbi Akivah says “feel clean after today”.  God has today washed you so to speak in the Mikveh of Israel – put pure water on you.

 

Use that cleanness as you leave today to cleanse that of you which you confess year after year, to address your repeated bad behaviours, to fix those part of you which you must take responsibility for if you are this year to heal your soul.  What does God think of us at the end of this day?  Not that we are mired in horror rather that we have boundless potential if we will only take responsibility to grab it.