Yom Kippur: For Shame
Sermon by Rabbi Sim Glaser
2014/5775
A few years ago a woman named Mary Bale was filmed on a security camera petting a stray cat, then picking it up and putting it in a trash bin. Within hours Mary Bale’s name and address were published on an internet forum. In practically no time at all she became an object of global, yes, global derision. Hundreds of hate pages popped up on Facebook calling for her imprisonment. One declared “Death to Mary Bale.” In response to all this an NYU Professor noted: “Social Media can be easily exploited for shaming. It is a good platform.” The judge who ultimately fined Ms. Bale, and prohibited her from henceforth owning any kind of pet whatsoever, took her international vilification into account in the sentencing.
My wife Barb just finished reading Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter for a book group. I recall my own journey through The Scarlet Letter in my undergraduate English studies some time ago. The horror of public shaming. The pillory. The accused adulteress Hester Prynne, forced to stand on a scaffold before a self-righteous jeering crowd with a red capital “A” sewn onto her dress. That story takes place 350 years ago.
Each generation has had its way of dealing with shame. And somehow each generation has also found a way of transferring their own shame onto someone or something else in a voyeuristic manner.
The ancient Jewish tradition of sacrificial guilt offerings ended thousands of years ago with the fall of the Temple in Jerusalem. We don’t do that anymore. Sometimes when Christian groups tour our sanctuary I invite them up to the bima, and they ascend cautiously. I comfort them not to worry, the Jewish people gave up human sacrifice decades ago.
The Torah, however, does relate a rather bizarre tradition associated with this holiday of Yom Kippur, in which the ancient Israelites would seize a hapless goat, called the Azazel and attach their sins in the form of ribbons onto its horns, drive it out into the wilderness and chase it over a cliff’s edge where it would die, and, presumably, their sins would die along with it.
We’re going to (we tried) try this at the tot service this morning and see what happens (it was a disaster!) Crying. Pacifiers falling out of mouths. (Don’t ask). Maybe not.
At any rate, this Azazel would come to be translated in future English Bible translations as the “scapegoat” – a word we are today all too familiar with.
I’d like to believe that societally we have done away with this weird vicarious atonement ritual. We are, after all, blessed with this magnificent Yom Kippur day, also called: Shabbat Shabbaton, a Sabbath to end all Sabbaths! Rather than dealing with some surrogate atonement offering, we offer up our very selves, forecasting our own death. For ten days we have sought to make amends with those whom we may have hurt. And now we come, as a repentant community, before God to address our shameful deeds and ways.
Shame, in Hebrew busha, is the most ancient of human emotions. In the first chapters of the Torah, Adam and Eve find themselves naked in the Garden. Read the story closely and you will see that even as they are aware of their nakedness they feel no shame. It is only when their eyes are opened to the knowledge of right and wrong that their nudity becomes a problem. And what do they do about it? The cover it up in the flimsiest way. A couple of fig leaves. Clearly humankind will require thousands of years more to develop a proper ritual for dealing with shame.
Note the first homicide in the Torah… before there were commandments, before there was ritual atonement, before there was a Yom Kippur and a way of dealing with shame… Cain slays his brother Abel and he’s marked for life! The story horrifies us for many reasons, not the least of which is the very real fear of never being forgiven for something we have done.
On Yom Kippur the fig leaves come off our most private of parts, and the mark is taken off the forehead. On this day we acknowledge the burden of knowing right from wrong, and pledge to mend our ways. It is only in acknowledging our shame that we are able to move on.
Imagine if there was no way out of our shameful circumstances. Today Hawthorne’s Scarlet Letter is having a renaissance of sorts among teenagers who are studying it, and who totally get the notion of a well-publicized stigma that will not go away. The electronic pillory of internet shaming is all too real. This past year saw yet more completed suicides by young people who found images of themselves entered into cyberspace and seared into the consciousness of millions. Nobody gets marginalization like a shamed teenager. The Talmud teaches us that humiliation is worse than physical pain. It appears the scarlet A is alive and well.
Indeed, our vicarious atonement is at an all-time high. It is stunning to watch as people react to the viral on line spread of celebrity misdeeds. Hundreds of children and their parents lining up to return their Ray Rice Jerseys after the video of him slugging his girlfriend circulated on the web. The response to the news of running back Adrian Peterson’s violence to his child. The Jewish communal cringe at Donald Sterling’s unrepentant racist remarks causing him to “Foul Out” in a big way. The Beit Din, “The Court” of public opinion heard Sterling’s words, ruining his name and ending his tenure as owner of the Clippers Franchise. As though he now is branded with the mark of Cain, wherever he travels or when his name is spoken.
How easy it is for us to sit back smugly and observe other people’s lives thrown into the public arena as spectacles for our entertainment and our judgment.
As Jews we should know better than to be party to that kind of voyeurism and deflecting of our own shame that should have ended eons ago with Hester Prynne and the Azazel.
We have been gifted this holy day of repentance and forgiveness. For today our shame is not an indelible badge of dishonor, but rather a necessary element of our atonement process. Without shame we would never be driven to come clean. On this day we are given the Divine “out” by a God who understands human error and the potential for teshuva – for return and human growth.
Shame is powerful. It is real. But it was never meant to be a protracted experience. Yes it is supposed to hurt. Yes, we are to be consumed by it for a time, but ultimately each of us, and we’ve all been there, needs to work our way out of being shamed. This is the gift of Yom Kippur to humankind.
When we recite the viddui, the al cheit shechatanu l’faneicha – for the sins we have committed, note that we are required to do it as a group… in the first person plural. We do this for two reasons – first, lest we think the recited sin is not ours but someone else’s, we say it anyway, including ourselves just in case. And second, because we want those who just don’t get it to be included in our communal admission. Yes, in some cases we need to bring the light of atonement into someone else’s dark shame.
This summer we stood up for Israel’s right to defend herself against vicious rocket attacks. We were sickened at the wartime behavior of an enemy who would use children as human shields, and the abduction of innocent schoolboys. But when, the young Palestinian boy Mohammed Abu Khadeir was burned alive at the hands of vengeful Jews we all knew a terrible sin had been committed. Whether the individuals who perpetrated that crime understood their actions as sinful, or felt the slightest regret, we may never know. But this, we knew in our hearts, is something Jews don’t do. And thus the communal al cheit shechatanu l’fanecha.
On this day we don’t have to hold it inside any longer and after the gates close tonight our transgressions will no longer have to consume us.
True atonement comes when our shame moves us beyond the darkness toward actual change. If shame brings no change, then the shame is useless. And if changing our ways doesn’t bring about and end to the shaming, it is a personal disaster.
In Judaism our sins are neither original nor are they eternal. I think this may be connected with the Jewish tattoo taboo. People change. Why would you label yourself eternally on a momentary whim?
I have often marveled at the fact that right next to the only kosher restaurant in town, on Minnetonka Boulevard, there is a tattoo removal parlor. Like if you want that Knish, you’re gonna have to get that thing taken off.
Hester Prynne’s scarlet A sewn upon her dress was removable. The padlocked pillory of the stocks is at some point to be opened. But shaming that never goes away? Deeds for which we have atoned but threaten to live on for eternity? Honest self-assessment that becomes the judgment of thousands, maybe even millions of pairs of eyes that can never get enough of shining the lamp of shame on someone other than themselves?
I sometimes wonder if William Faulkner foresaw this period of human history when he said: “The past is never dead. It’s not even the past.”
This is not the Jewish way. Yom Kippur calls upon us to acknowledge that what is done is done. Yes, our actions of this last year, whether immortalized on line, or emblazoned on the cranial hard drives of our friends and loved ones, are out there. But contrary to the endless hell that the web seems to fix upon people who have erred and been called on it by “holier than thou” eyes in cyber space, Yom Kippur proposes a conclusion. The gates really will close this evening. There is, for all of us, a very real opportunity to start over.
In Judaism our sins are neither original nor are they eternal. The consequences of our behavior have always had the potential to be painful, but the atonement was never meant to be forever. We are meant to make mistakes, over and over perhaps, but to learn from them and to grow. My office overlooks our Early Childhood Center and in between appointments and preparations for events such as this I will occasionally go over to the window and watch the kids. The other day as I was watching them I was reminded of the story of the Chassidic Jew who once asked his rebbe this question: “Why bother praying for forgiveness on Yom Kippur, he said, when inevitably we know we will sin again?”
In response the rebbe asked him to look out the window behind him. He did so and saw that outside was a toddler learning to walk. "What do you see?" asked his rebbe. "Well, I see a child, standing and falling," replied the disciple. Day after day the Chassid returned to witness the same scene. But at the week's end, the child stood and didn't fall. And in that moment the observer saw in the child's eyes that unique expression of the achievement of having attained the impossible. "So it is with us," said the rebbe. "We may fail again and again, but in the end, a loving God gives us the opportunities we need to succeed." L’shana tova.