Yom Kippur. What does this day try to tell us? What does it want to accomplish? Why is this day the holiest day of the Jewish year?
It is a day of protest against the most dangerous of all human characteristics: the curse of indifference. It is a protest against taking life for granted when, in truth, nothing backs this claim.
The fact is that life is entirely undeserved.
Nobody can make any claim on life, for we have not done anything to deserve it before we were born. It is not a reward for earlier good deeds or for any previous accomplishment. It is a gift – completely unearned.
Yet we handle our lives as if we do deserve all of it, as if life were an obvious possession to which we are entitled. This is a falsification of reality.
It is not only life itself that is undeserved but also our many faculties and talents. We consider it obvious that we can enjoy food and drink, love music, become artists, read, marry, have children, and receive love. But none of this is owed to us. These are unearned gifts. We can develop them – or, God forbid, destroy them.
We even have the chutzpah, the impertinence, to believe that when things are not going well, we have the right to complain that it is not fair, as though we possess a right to live in an optimal way. On what basis?
Here we should feel great agitation. How can we live with the knowledge that nothing – absolutely nothing – is deserved? How can we enjoy anything while knowing we are not entitled to it?
Nothing should be more painful than this sense of embarrassment. We should be blushing every moment of our lives. And yet most of us do not feel such embarrassment; instead, we are disturbed, upset – even annoyed – when life is disrupted in the slightest way.
There is only one remedy: to realize that we are managers and overseers of our life, not its owners. And management is a difficult and complex art.
We must ask: How can I govern my life so that it does not put me to shame – that the shame of receiving unearned benefits is softened and made less painful?
Gifts obligate. We must discharge some of our debts. Gifts are given for a purpose. They deny the mistaken belief that we may do whatever we want. The more we receive, the more we are obligated to respond adequately.
Gifts delight only as long as we can recompense them and show appreciation by living a life that lives up to the gift. Socrates taught that an unexamined life is not worth living. Judaism teaches that a life without astonishment is not worth being born for.
If we fail to respond, the gift becomes the source of pain, leaving us with inner emptiness that can become traumatic, even our greatest enemy. Much human unhappiness is rooted in this problem. The sense that life has become empty and meaningless is common.
Millions try to compensate by amassing wealth or indulging in food, drink, and sex, only to discover that none of these brings inner fulfillment. Such fulfillment depends on recognizing that these treasures have deep meaning and purpose.
Many wait too long to recognize the dangers. A great Chinese philosopher is reputed to have said “A man whose leg has been cut off does not value the gift of shoes.”
A day of gratitude
This is the call of the hour on Yom Kippur. It is the day that fights apathy by asking us to recognize the faculty of utter appreciation through its specific prayers.
How great would life be if every person – the businesswoman, the artist, the laborer, the professor, the priest, the rabbi – rose each morning and looked in the mirror with total surprise and gratitude. Life would look radically different – and far more joyful.
Even the morning cup of coffee could become an act of wonder. How can any human being eat or drink without pausing to contemplate how wondrous and undeserved this daily gift is? Should one not express it in a moment of exaltation – “Wow, I am able to drink”?
Why is it that I like coffee? That I can taste? That my body and its senses actually work? Science can tell us what happens and how it happens; it cannot tell us why it happens.
Renowned neurologist and Nobel Prize winner Francis Crick (1916–2004) once declared in astonishment: “After all those years of scientific study, I still don’t know why I have only five fingers!”
For this reason our sages instituted blessings before eating or drinking. A bracha is an expression of astonishment. Instead of saying “Wow!” we say: “Baruch ata Hashem… shehakol nihyeh bidvaro” – “Praised is God, King of the Universe, Who created all by His word.”
Indeed, how can any person eat or drink without an expression of utter amazement?
Even a totally secular person should place the cup of coffee before him or her for a few seconds and utter radical amazement before bringing it to the lips. Anything less compromises our very existence.
This is why we go to synagogue, say our prayers, and listen to the awesome sounds of the shofar.
A beit knesset (synagogue) is a place of protest against indifference, where we learn to be utterly astonished.
Shana tova!
The writer is an international lecturer and author of many books, such as the bestseller Jewish Law as Rebellion. Find his weekly Thoughts to Ponder at www.cardozoacademy.org.