On a beautiful late August afternoon, I sat down with Rabbi Caryn Broitman for an interview about the upcoming Jewish High Holy Days. People commonly refer to them as the 10 days encompassing Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year, and Yom Kippur, the holiest day of the year, which is devoted to self-examination, repair, and spiritual renewal.
You mentioned that the season of reflection starts 40 days before Rosh Hashanah even begins. Could you elaborate on this?
It starts the month before, which on the Jewish calendar is the month of Elul. The entire month is about preparation for the High Holidays. The prayers change, and we blow the shofar [ram’s horn] in the morning, except for Shabbat. The shofar awakens us to forgiveness, change, justice, and teshuvah, which means “return” in the sense of renewal. During [Elul], you are asking people for forgiveness and thinking about how you want to repair your relationships. It is reflecting on any way you could have caused harm or want to change. It’s to go back to go forward, almost.
It’s spiritually important to do a soul accounting. What work do I need to do to better live up to the values that I hold? How have I hurt people? Whom do I have to ask for forgiveness? How do I help clear the difficulties and repair relationships with family, friends, working relationships, or between people in the community? I think the wonderful thing about the Island is that community is really important to us. So I think a community time of prayer and rededication to each other and working together is a beautiful thing.
Rosh Hashanah itself is also empowering us to be able to think about change and transformation, and making a difference in our own lives and the lives of other people. There is a sense of hope in anything new, and there is also transformation.
What else is essential to understand about the High Holy Days?
Rosh Hashanah has themes of universalism, because it’s the birth of the world and the birth of humanity. Passover is an event of our people becoming free. It definitely has a lot of resonance as a freedom story for everybody, imagining a world where everyone is free. However, it is specific to Judaism. But Rosh Hashanah doesn’t have any of that specificity, because it’s about the one God who is the creator of everything and every being, whether it’s nonhuman, animals, humanity in all our different beliefs and ethnicities, and so forth.
It also has an element that is a critique of human power. There is this metaphor of God as king. So, we don’t give unconditional power to any human being. In Exodus, the pharaoh thinks he is God, and seeks the power of a god, and expects people to treat him as such. The Torah wants to show that human beings shouldn’t have that power. It isn’t legitimate power, and it shouldn’t be accorded to people, or that people obey someone as if they were God.
Forgiveness is a central theme of the High Holidays, and is the most important theme on Yom Kippur. Forgiveness, however, is not something we can just begin and complete in one day. It begins with the first day of Elul, through Yom Kippur, so there are 40 days to think about what we need to ask forgiveness for, and what we need to let go of and forgive. Then we connect with people with whom we have to do that work. Therefore, the New Year can really be a new start. The number 40, of course, is important. Forty weeks of pregnancy, 40 days on Mount Sinai, and 40 years in the wilderness. All these are examples of giving birth — to new life, to a new spiritual legacy, and to a new people. And over the High Holidays, we give birth, in a sense, to a new or transformed self, without the burden of grudges, guilt, and broken relationships.
You mention that there are different levels of concrete things to do to work on renewal and repair. Could you speak more about them?
Three themes are cited to do over this 40-day period. The spiritual would be tafilah, which is prayer. And the concrete practical would be tzedakah, which is giving our resources to share and remedy injustice. It comes from the Hebrew word tzedek, which means justice. Tzedakah often refers to giving money, say, to the Food Pantry. But because it has the root of justice, I think it’s also a transformative justice, as well as giving aid to the most vulnerable among us. Teshuvah is the idea of return, repair, and repentance, and is kind of both [the spiritual and practical] interwoven.
Could you speak a bit more about justice as it relates to the High Holy Days?
There are many powerful ways in which the High Holidays elevate the theme of justice.
Teshuvah, literally translating as “return” but meaning repentance or change, can itself take the form of restorative justice. It can be individual or collective. And tzedakah, or the sharing of resources, again comes from the Hebrew word tzedek, or justice. We give charity, in other words, out of a commitment to justice.
One of the most powerful ways the theme of justice is expressed is through the prophetic reading chosen for Yom Kippur from chapters 57 and 58 of Isaiah. About 18 hours into the fast, when we are feeling a little weak and quite hungry, Isaiah’s words challenge us quite directly about the meaning of the fast. Isaiah seems to be speaking to a group, which could be any of us, who are feeling a little self-righteous about their fast. Isaiah, however, tells them that fasting on one day while oppressing people the next is not the kind of fast God wants. Ritual alone is not enough. It must be accompanied by acts of justice in the world. In addition to the literal fast, the “fast” God desires, Isaiah says, is
To unlock fetters of wickedness,
And untie the cords of the yoke
To let the oppressed go free;
To break off every yoke.
It is to share your bread with the hungry,
And to take the poor into your home;
When you see the naked, to clothe them,
And not to ignore your own kin.
What would you like people to come away with from the High Holidays experience?
I would like people to walk away with the real shared connection of all beings. And because it’s a shared humanity, I think we are called to have compassion for each other, to help each other, to feel like we can make a difference, which is hopeful. And that kindness matters. Essentially, we are one in our many differences, and that means we all have responsibility for each other.