Although the high holy days are over, what we learned and gained from them ideally stays with us as we travel through this New Year.  With that in mind, for this month’s article I offer you the mini-drash that I gave on Yom Kippur morning.  I am wishing us all a thoughtful and beautiful year:

Well, here we are again, 9 days later, and the un’taneh tokef is waiting for us, calling us to go deeper into our prayer and contemplation.  The same text invites us, challenges us, to think about how we may have grown in just the last week:

~Did your insights from Rosh Hashanah stay with you throughout the week, transform you in even a small way?
~Were you kinder to yourself?
~Did you have any of the hard conversations you needed to have?
~Have you forgiven someone you love?
~Have you asked for forgiveness?

For me, one big difference between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur is that Rosh Hashanah is buoyed by the sweetness of the New Year, while Yom Kippur, in its starkness, brings us to the true depth of the high holy days.  What felt to me on Rosh Hashanah like a longing behind the un’taneh tokef, becomes on Yom Kippur an almost desperate plea that takes everything we are doing here to the next level of intensity.

If only God--and our yearning for the Divine--could be so close every day.

On Rosh Hashanah we began the process of forgiving ourselves by letting some of this heavenly proximity into our hearts.  Now the real work begins.

What are we are doing here, dressed in white, hungry, thirsty, longing for connection?  And how do we find it?

Last year I offered a teaching that I learned from Rabbi Alan Lew, an interpretation of Yom Kippur that resonates so deeply with me that I re-read it every year.  He explains that on Yom Kippur we imitate death: we wear white like a funeral shroud; we abstain from life-affirming activities like eating and drinking; and we recite the vidui, the last confession that is said on our deathbeds.

We do this NOT as a form of punishment, but rather in order to bring ourselves to a psychological and spiritual state that will makes us open to the big questions that many people don’t ask until they are at the end of life.  On Yom Kippur, the un’taneh tokef is not meant to make us question our beliefs about God’s role in determining who will live or die this year, but rather to bring ourselves to a point of existential crisis, to the point of asking,

“If today really was my last day to be alive, would I be able to look back at my life and choices and be happy with them?”

Are you living your life with integrity?  Are you clinging to things that are ultimately worthless? Vanity?  Envy?  Anger?  Judgment?  Competition?

Do you search for a diving spark in people you meet, especially in people you don’t like, or who challenge you?

What do you want people to say about you after you die?  Are you living those qualities today?

THIS is what Yom Kippur is about.  This day is a gift, a chance to reflect in ways that many people won’t until they are taking their last breaths, when it is too late to make a change.

I once had a dear friend and mentor who was sick for a very long time, many years, with chronic and severe intestinal problems.  Sometimes she could go about her life relatively normally—eating, drinking, working, traveling—but a lot of the time she was so sick that she stayed in bed and had people visit her there.

Our visits often took place by her bedside, where she would listen to me talk about my life and share wisdom with me about hers.  She really never knew what day would be her last, so it always felt to me like she was trying to live every moment with integrity, honesty and joy.  It is that kind of raw introspection that our tradition is encouraging us to dive into today, while we sit with our hunger and thirst and discomfort, but we are not, God willing, close to death, and we therefore have a chance to do something about what we discover.

“V’chotam yad kola dam bo”: “The seal of every person is in it”

This is the last line of the first paragraph of the un’taneh tokef.  Each of us signs the book ourselves; we are each responsible for what kind of person is remembered in the book.  We are not puppets.

Today, Yom Kippur, the un’taneh tokef, is our reminder that we can be the people and live the lives that we hope to look back on with pride and joy and satisfaction.

“V’chotam yad kol adam bo.”  The seal of each and every one of us is in the book.