Text of Rabbi Abby's Yom Kippur sermon 2024
“Atem nitzavim hayom”—“You stand this day, all of you, before the ETERNAL your God—your tribal heads, your elders, and your officials; the entire body of Israel; your children, your wives; even the stranger within your camp; from woodchopper to water-drawer—to enter into the covenant of the ETERNAL your God.”
Those are the powerful opening words of Parashat Nitzavim, which the Arnstein family so beautifully read for us a little earlier in our service. We have probably all heard them before—Reform Jews have been reciting them at Yom Kippur morning services for quite some time.
But, as you may know, Parashat Nitzavim is not actually the traditional Torah portion for Yom Kippur morning. That distinction goes to Parashat Acharei Mot, which details the prohibitions to be adhered to and rituals required for the proper observance of Yom Kippur. Given its subject matter, it is easy to see why Acharei Mot is a logical choice for Yom Kippur, even if not all the practices it describes are still observed today. It is less obvious why we would replace it with Parashat Nitzavim, in which Moses adjures the Israelites to remember their covenant with God, insists that the Torah is readily accessible to all, and implores the people to “choose life” by choosing to remain faithful to the covenant and the Torah. These are stirring and important ideas to be sure, but why choose them to supplant the more traditional reading about how to observe Yom Kippur?
I asked Rabbi Noah why he thought the change was made, and he said, “in a nutshell, [the early Reformers] wanted to show the primacy of ethical conduct that is articulated in Nitzavim over ritual atonement in Acharei Mot.” That sounds exactly right to me: the themes of personal and communal freedom and responsibility, among others, that are explored in Parashat Nitzavim have enduring relevance and resonance for us, especially during the High Holy Days. As Reform Jews, who are generally more concerned with upholding the values that underpin the mitzvot than with the commandments themselves, it makes sense for us to choose a parashah like Nitzavim over the more arcane and difficult Acharei Mot.
Overall, I support our movement’s choice… and yet, I do miss the presence of Acharei Mot in our Yom Kippur services. I miss it because, while the rituals it describes are not necessarily ones I would wish to perform, I am moved by the rich symbolism they convey. It seems to me that Parashat Acharei Mot has just as much to teach us today as does Parashat Nitzavim, though we may need to dig a little deeper to unearth its wisdom.
Together, these two parashot teach powerful lessons about the nature of inclusion. This is a subject close to my heart. When, just after my bat mitzvah, I moved from Long Island to Seattle—from one coast to another—I caught an early glimpse of what it feels like to be on the outside looking in. Over time, I made friends, I settled in—we joined a synagogue that became a second home for my family and me—but I never forgot that feeling of being uprooted and transported to an alien place, of being lost in a sea of unfamiliar faces. I also know firsthand how affirming it can be to be warmly welcomed into a new community, as I have been welcomed so many times, including here at Shalom. And, I know that welcoming newcomers is not always easy, especially when we do not yet know who they are and what they need.
Inclusion is essential, and it is challenging. Both Parashot Nitzavim and Acharei Mot explore these truths. They complement each other, offering very different, but equally compelling cases for striving to be inclusive, while at the same highlighting some of the challenges that ideal poses for us.
In Parashat Nitzavim, there is a clear focus on inclusion, as well as empowerment. Moses insists that the Torah, relationship with God, a life of goodness and meaning—all of these are ours for the taking. He famously declares: “Lo bashamayim hi”—“What I am telling you is not hidden from you, or far away; it is not up in the heavens, or way out across the sea; it is near to you, in your mouth and in your heart, so that you can do it.” It is an inspiring message: that the Torah and mitzvot are available to us all, and can guide us toward better, more satisfying lives.
At first blush, Nitzavim seems to be conveying this message in a radically inclusive way. Moses explicitly states that his words apply to everyone: high-up officials and menial laborers; men, women and children; even the stranger in the midst of the camp—all are invited to participate in God’s covenant, and all are invited to reap the rewards of a life of Torah.
But is Moses really being all that inclusive? A deeper examination of the text calls that notion into question. It is true that Moses mentions many people, but we must ask: to whom is he actually speaking? All of those people are described using the word “your”—as in, your women, your children, your stranger in your camp—suggesting that they all belong to someone, who is “you.” Who is this “you”? We can answer this question by process of elimination: Moses singles out officials, but not the people they represent; women and children, but not men; strangers, but not native citizens. In other words, it seems most likely that Moses is addressing the rank-and-file adult men of Israel—they are who are actually being spoken to, and everyone else is being spoken about.
Now, this is not to say that Nitzavim is not inclusive for mentioning all those people—it is, and much more so than many parts of the Torah—but it is not quite as inclusive as it looks on the surface. The reality is, as usual, more complicated.
Inclusion is also complicated. Even when we want to be inclusive, and we try to be, it’s hard to get it right. Imagine, for example, that we are throwing our child a birthday party at an indoor trampoline park, and we decide to invite their entire class, rather than just their close friends, so that no one will feel left out. Then, we discover that one of their classmates has physical mobility challenges that make it impossible for them to participate. We haven’t done anything wrong by inviting them—we have tried to do something right!—but we have missed something important, and, in so doing, we have inadvertently made someone feel excluded and singled out.
Of course, it is impossible to perfectly anticipate everything that might make someone feel excluded, but this example highlights the importance of gathering as much information as we can about the people in and around our own communities—ideally from those people themselves—and using what we learn to make the most inclusive choices possible. To be truly inclusive, we must continually ask ourselves who we might be leaving out, and be willing to admit to and learn from our mistakes.
On the other hand, there are times when the last thing we want is to be inclusive; or, perhaps I should say, to be included. I am thinking of times when something goes wrong, and our first instinct is to separate ourselves and avoid blame, often by assigning it to someone else. In the words of the ancient Roman philosopher Tacitus: “Victory is claimed by all, failure by one alone.” When people fail or do wrong, most of us tend to run the other way.
This is where the “traditional” Torah reading for Yom Kippur morning comes in. In Acharei Mot, we learn that the central ritual of Yom Kippur involves taking two male goats and casting lots—in other words, leaving it up to chance—to decide which goat will be offered up as a sacrifice to God. Interestingly, though, that goat is considered to be the lucky goat; the unlucky goat is the one upon whom the High Priest symbolically places all the sins of the community, and who is then sent away to wander in the wilderness, and also, presumably, die. Needless to say, should the Third Temple someday be built in Jerusalem, I am in no hurry for this practice to be reinstated.
This ritual is the origin of the term “scapegoat”: someone we all (unfairly) blame so that we don’t have to blame ourselves or each other. It does seem cruel and unfair to pile up all of our sins onto one little goat and banish it (let alone to sacrifice the other goat), which I suspect is a part of why Reform Jews generally do not read this text on Yom Kippur.
When you look at this ritual from the people’s perspective, of course, it is liberating: not only is each person able to rid themselves of their sins, but they also combine them with everybody else’s sins, so that they become one undifferentiated mass of sin that can no longer be connected to any one person. Instead, we all share equally in all of them. In this way, Acharei Mot is more inclusive than Nitzavim: it gives no more or less weight to any one individual’s sins—or to the pardon they are granted after the ritual is complete. And that is the part of the scapegoat ritual that I actually like: it forces us to think about our wrongdoings as communal, rather than individual, and to understand that just as society has some responsibility when we do something wrong, so, too, do we bear some responsibility when our society, or a member of it, does something wrong.
The confessional prayers we say on Yom Kippur reflect this understanding. All of them are in the plural: we have sinned, we have done wrong, we ask for God’s forgiveness. We read through long lists of sins and confess that we are guilty of them, whether we personally have committed them or not. The Talmud teaches, “kol Yisrael aravim zeh b’zeh,” which is generally understood to mean that all Jews are responsible or guarantors for one another, but can also be understood to say simply that all Jews are connected with one another. I would argue that the truth is somewhere in between. And we acknowledge this truth every time we feel pride in the good deeds of Jewish people we do not know personally, and every time we feel shame at their wrongdoings. We understand not only that others may see the actions of our fellow Jews as reflecting upon us, but that they actually do reflect upon us, insofar as we all help to hold our fellow Jews accountable, create Jewish culture, and uphold Jewish values.
The same is true on a societal level, even a global level: all human beings share a degree of responsibility for one another. Every time we speak publicly or post online; every time we show kindness to a stranger, or mistreat someone as a way to ease our own frustrations; every time we cast (or do not cast) a ballot, or make (or do not make) a purchase, we exercise our power to shape one another’s lives and our society as a whole.
None of this is to deny the importance of personal responsibility. Each one of us makes choices, and those choices carry consequences that it is often appropriate for us to bear. But there is a reason why, when judges impose sentences on people who have committed crimes, they take into account those individuals’ circumstances. They, and we, understand that no one sins in a vacuum: all of us influence and are influenced by one another.
Together, Parashot Nitzavim and Acharei Mot, along with the liturgy of the High Holy Days, encourage us to think in collective terms. They remind us of both the benefits and the pitfalls of including others, and they demand that we include ourselves in the bad as well as the good. They encourage us to stop and ask questions before we assign blame. If we believe someone has done wrong, our first question should be: have I gotten this wrong before, too? Why did I get it wrong? And, is there any way I might have contributed, knowingly or unknowingly, to this person doing wrong? The answers to these questions should inform how we respond.
We can even build little rituals into our daily lives to help reinforce a more collective way of thinking. One habit I have tried to cultivate is that when I am driving, if someone suddenly cuts me off or otherwise does something I think is stupid and unsafe on the road, I take a breath and say to myself: “al cheit shechatanu lefanecha”—“for the sin we have committed against You,” a phrase borrowed from our Yom Kippur liturgy. I am reminding myself to ask: …Could this person’s sin be my sin, too? Have I acted similarly in the past, or might I have contributed to it now, perhaps by sitting in their blind spot or not giving them enough room to maneuver? Might this person be dealing with an emergency, or just making an honest mistake? In addition to bringing down my blood pressure a little, these questions help me to respond in a more considered and compassionate way.
Inclusion is complicated, and it is very difficult to get right. Our Yom Kippur Torah readings and liturgy remind us of how important—and how challenging—it is to include everyone who is a part of our community. And, we also see how easy it is to exclude ourselves from things we would prefer not to be involved with. The scapegoat ritual lays bare the depth of our desire to send our collective sins away, to distance ourselves from the mistakes we and others have made. But we know that merely casting our sins aside will not truly bring about change. Instead, Yom Kippur calls us to do teshuvah: to take responsibility for our wrongs, and to transform ourselves through action. Only then can we truly be relieved from our burden.
And yet, to paraphrase Moses, all of this is within our grasp: we can build a more inclusive, more accountable, kinder and more respectful society; and when we inevitably get things wrong, rather than wringing our hands, we can do teshuvah and move forward. The truth is, we are all standing here together: young and old; female, male, and non-binary; a mix of racial and ethnic backgrounds; attending different schools and pursuing different professions. We are a diverse group, each one of us unique… and yet, we have come together on this day, as one community, to observe Yom Kippur, to reflect and repent and pray, to support one another in trying to live up to God’s exhortation to us to be a holy people.
We know that we all share some responsibility for everything this community does wrong, and everything we do right. In this new year of 5785, may we allow that reality to push us to be better. May we strive to care for one another as best we can, to celebrate each other’s accomplishments, and to help each other recover and learn from our missteps. May 5785 be a year of spiritual and moral growth for us, not just as individuals, but as a community, one where we work to transform ourselves and our world into a place where we, and everyone else, can feel proud to be included. Kein yehi ratzon—may it be God’s will.
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