It’s never been just about us

On Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, for whose well-being in the coming year do we pray — (a) each of us for ourselves, (b) for ourselves and for all Jews everywhere, (c) for all people everywhere, not just Jews, or (d) for all creatures within whom there is the breath of life?

The answer is “d,” we pray for all creatures within whom there is the breath of life. In other words, we pray for ourselves and for all of God’s creatures great and small, human and non-human. As the British theologian and scholar Rabbi Jeffrey M. Cohen once noted, this is confirmed by one of the most significant prayers in the High Holy Days liturgy — the U’netaneh Tokef K’dushat Hayom (“We attest to the holiness of the day”), when it says that “all who have come into the world pass before [God]” to be judged, “as would a flock of sheep.”

(For the record, on Rosh Hashahah, especially, we also pray for the rest of Creation — the air we breathe, the water we drink, the blades of grass and the trees of the field, etc. — because “today is the birthday of the world,” as we will say six times over the two days.)

All of God’s creatures are judged at this time, not to sentence them to death, but to give them a chance to live. As Ezekiel quotes God as saying, “Do I want an evil one to die…; what I want is for him to return and live…[b]ecause he took note of his wrongdoings that he has done and returned from them.” (See Ezekiel 18:23-24; better yet, read the entire chapter; it is most instructive).

Because that is what God intends by judging all creatures, we who are commanded to “walk in God’s ways” must pray for them as well (see Deuteronomy 28:9). As the 13 Attributes we recite over and again during our prayers, especially during the High Holy Days, tell us, God is “compassionate and gracious, slow to anger, abounding in kindness and faithfulness,” and so must we be.

Our sacred texts reject the view that these attributes extend to Israel only. In the words of Psalm 145, “The Lord is good to all, and God’s mercy is upon all of God’s works.”

Keep in mind, too, Jonah’s complaint to God, which we will read about on Yom Kippur during the afternoon service. Jonah was sent to the Assyrian city of Nineveh to announce its imminent demise because of its evil ways — an assignment he did everything he could to avoid fulfilling because he feared that he might succeed and he had no desire to save anyone in Nineveh.

Jonah’s fear was well founded. Because the people of Nineveh “were turning back from their evil ways,” God “renounced the punishment…and did not carry it out.” This displeased Jonah so much that he preferred to die. “Please, Lord, take my life, for I would rather die than live.” (See Jonah 3:10-4:3.)

If God cares for the people of Nineveh (and everywhere else) and even “the many beasts,” as Jonah 4:11 tells us, so must we all care for them.

Bluntly stated, then, on Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, all of those identifiers we humans adopt to keep us apart from each other — religion, race, skin color, nationality, language, gender, politics, and so forth — are declared nonsense, artificial constructs that have no basis in the reality of God’s world. After all, “God created ha-adam [the human]…; male and female God created them.” (See Genesis 1:27.) God created all of humanity, not just one segment of it, and not just the male of the species. There is no “man” called “Adam” in Genesis 1.

As for the so-called “lower life forms,” Genesis 2:7 and 19 tell us: “The Lord God formed ha-adam from the dust of the earth [ha-adamah]…. [as well as] all the wild beasts and all the birds of the sky.” In other words, as the biblical commentator, grammarian, and philosopher Joseph ben Abba Mari Ibn Caspi explained it, all creatures — in the sea, in the air, on the ground, from the smallest to the largest — are “k’ilu avoteinu,” meaning “they are like our ancestors.” (See his comment to Deuteronomy 22:6-7.)

So, yes, we do pray on the High Holy Days for the well-being of every creature within whom there is the breath of life. Praying for them, however, is not enough. We have to spend the rest of the year actually working to improve life for every creature — human, animal, or avian — which also means we have to spend the rest of the year improving the natural world in which we all live — the rest of the year, not just its first 10 days.

We call the period from the start of Rosh Hashanah to the end of Yom Kippur “The 10 Days of Repentance” and “The Days of Awe.” As the U’netaneh Tokef puts it, this is a time of “fear and trembling.”

Such descriptions distort the reality of these days, however. To be sure, as we also read in U’netaneh Tokef, “on Rosh Hashanah, it is written and on Yom Kippur it is sealed…. who shall live and who shall die,” and so forth. That is very scary stuff — but not if we understand what these words actually say. Consider how this “who shall live and who shall die” litany ends: “But through repentance, prayer and deeds of kindness, we can avoid the severe decree.”

In other words, these verses are not about the terrible things that will happen to us. They are about the things that will not happen to us because we know the formula for avoiding them. We need to do the soul-searching required to identify our character flaws and vow to change them (t’shuvah), then we must pray for the strength we will need to make those changes (t’fillah), and finally we integrate those changes into our lives (tzedakah).

That is not something to tear out our hair over; it is something to dance in the streets about.

All the moaning, and the groaning, and the crying, and the breast-beating we will engage in between Monday evening and Wednesday evening, and from next Wednesday evening through the end of the next day are so unnecessary, because we know the secret formula.

So few people see anything joyous here, though. We are so conditioned to see this period through a much darker lens that we lose the true sense of these days. There is a genuine lack of understanding about these 10 Days of Repentance, what they really are, what they really mean, and how we really should relate to them.

In any year, calling the Rosh Hashanah-Yom Kippur period the 10 Days of Repentance is a bit weird, in any case, because it suggests that these are the only days when repentance is achievable. T’shuvah is a year-long process, not a short-term event. In 5786, there are “354 days of t’shuvah,” not 10. They may be the most propitious days, as our sages taught, but they are not the only days. T’shuvah can be achieved at any time of the day or night on any day of the year. All that is required is a sincere desire to change for the better and then doing what it takes to make that change happen.

These 10 days are not about obtaining instant absolution for our sins. They are for completing the task we should have begun a month earlier, at the start of Elul, of taking stock of our lives and planning to improve ourselves. Only after these 10 days end do the true “days of repentance” begin, and absolution comes only after the year has ended and we have demonstrated in concrete ways that we truly changed our ways.

These days should not be seen as days of great sadness, but of great joy. Fear and trembling are not required for repentance; only sincerity is needed — and that sincerity is measured by what we do and how well we do it during the year ahead to change the flaws in our character that we identified during the High Holy Days. Fear and trembling are meaningless emotions; only our actions count. Besides, fear and trembling violate the spirit of the period, especially so on Rosh Hashanah. Rather, we should heed the advice of Nehemiah, Ezra, and the Levites, who told the people on “the first day of the seventh month” how it really should be celebrated:

“This day is holy to the Lord your God: you must not mourn or weep….Go your way, eat fat foods and drink sweet beverages, and send portions to those for whom nothing is prepared; for this day is holy to our Lord; do not grieve, for the joy of the Lord is your strength….”

May we all pray for ourselves, for our loved ones, for our people (and especially for the hostages still being held by Hamas), for all people, and for all creatures with a breath of life, that 5786 is the year we all come to realize that the world will only become a better place if we all work together to make it so, and then may we act in every way we can to make it so.

Shammai Engelmayer is a rabbi-emeritus of Congregation Beth Israel of the Palisades and an adult education teacher in Bergen County. He is the author of eight books and the winner of 10 awards for his commentaries. His website is www.shammai.org.

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