Yom Kippur 5769
In an article about Rosh ha-Shannah and Yom Kippur, R. David Hartman writes,
The call to teshuva, therefore, is expressed not only in the plea to God for forgiveness and in the affirmation of God’s gracious love and reluctance to mete out punishment and retribution, but also, and most poignantly, in the repeated attempts at convincing the individual to believe in the possibility of change. The personal significance of Yom Kippur ultimately turns on the individual’s ability to believe that his or her life can be different. The major obstacle to teshuva is not whether God will forgive us but whether we can forgive ourselves – whether we can believe in our own ability to change the direction of our lives, even minimally.
Teshuva is grounded in the idea of an open future, in the belief that the possibilities for human change have not been exhausted, that the final chapters of our personal narratives have not yet been written. The sense of empowerment felt on Yom Kippur reflects an underlying faith in the power of the human will to break the fixed cycles of the past and to chart new possibilities for the future.
May we all have a meaningful fast and holiday, and the ability to gather the strength to make the necessary changes in our lives.
October 12th, 2008 at 10:49 am
You can see a lot more by David Hartman and other Hartman Institute scholars on our website – http://hartman.org.il – videos, lectures, essays, articles, downloads and more for teachers, students and everyone in between.