Are they a chayal or a chatuf? A soldier or a hostage? This is the question that our good friend in Israel says her daughter constantly asks her. If you’ve been to Israel in the last couple of years, you will understand this question. She asks her this question because everywhere you go – at bus stops, rest stops, elevators, malls, restaurants, and even bathroom stalls, you see pictures of hostages and chayalim who have fallen – and for a child, it’s not always easy to know the difference.
The truth is, while I was expecting this summer to see photos of hostages, I had not known about the photos of chayalim, or anticipated the power of seeing them. It’s particularly powerful because it has become a trend – a sad but also meaningful trend – that families of fallen soldiers produce a sticker that they hang up all throughout the country. The sticker has a picture of the chayal who fell, as well as a slogan that captures their legacy. This must be an impossible task – to summarize your loved one’s life in just a few words that will be meaningful to anyone who sees it – but many families summon the strength and fortitude to do so.
Here are just a few examples of slogans we saw on some of these stickers around Israel this summer:
- לַעֲשׂוֹת הַכֹּל בְּחִיוּךְ – Do everything with a smile
- אַל תִּשְׁכְּחוּ לְחַיֵּךְ כְּשֶׁאַתֶּם מִתְעוֹרְרִים – Don’t forget to smile when you wake up
- אֵיךְ אֶפְשָׁר לַעֲזוֹר לָכֶם – How can I help you?
- תִּהְיוּ טוֹבִים – Be good / Be kind
- לִהְיוֹת בֶּן אָדָם – To be a mensch / To be a decent human being
- הָעוֹז לְהוֹבִיל הָעֲנָוָה לִלְמוֹד – The courage to lead, the humility to learn
Seeing these slogans and ones like these, accompanied by a picture of the chayal was a truly inspiring experience. And if I’m being honest, it was also a really challenging experience. On the most basic and tragic level, it’s challenging because every picture is a chayal whose life was cut short, with so much potential and promise now absent from this world.
But beyond that, seeing these stickers makes one think: What are my values? What would they write about me on a sticker? And most overwhelmingly, can I live up to my values? Am I doing a good enough job at doing the things that are most important to me? This feeling of being overwhelmed by our shortcomings, there’s a good word for it: inadequacy. And in many ways, inadequacy is one of the themes of Yom Kippur. If you read through the machzor, it’s so present on so many pages – we have values, but we don’t always live by them
Both Haftarot we read today, which are calls to action, demonstrate this point so clearly. Yishayahu, on Yom Kippur morning, tells us that a fast that is not connected to our values is wasted! הֲכָזֶ֗ה יִֽהְיֶה֙ צ֣וֹם אֶבְחָרֵ֔הוּ – Yishayahu asks, is this the fast Hashem desires – one disconnected from values and only done ritually? And the answer is no! What we really should be doing is focusing on others – פָרֹ֤ס לָרָעֵב֙ לַחְמֶ֔ךָ – feed the poor! In short – our values need to animate us today.
And at least some interpretations of the story of Yonah, read in the afternoon, teach us a similar message. Who was Yonah? A prophet who was burdened by living by his values – in his case, a call to teach others the right way. Sometimes our values can be so overwhelming, leaving us feeling so inadequate, that we simply cannot handle it and we run away.
This theme of inadequacy is no more present than in the viduy, the confession that we say on Yom Kippur. We have five confessions throughout Yom Kippur; but in reality, according to the Mishnah in Masechet Yoma, וִידּוּי עֶרֶב יוֹם הַכִּפּוּרִים עִם חֲשֵׁכָה we only need one confession! So why do we add more? The Gemara is not entirely clear – and the lack of clarity makes one feel that the only reason is that we are leaning in – as much as possible- to the idea of feeling our shortcomings.
But there’s another way of looking at this day. Right before we say each viduy, there is a list of questions
- מָה אָֽנוּ. מֶה חַיֵּֽינוּ – What are we? What is our life?
- מֶה חַסְדֵּֽנוּ. מַה צִּדְקוֹתֵֽינוּ – What are our acts of kindness? What is our righteousness?
- מַה יְּשֻׁעָתֵֽנוּ. מַה כֹּחֵֽנוּ. מַה גְּבוּרָתֵֽנוּ- What is our deliverance? What is our strength? What is our might?
The Gemara in Masechet Yoma asks a question, מַאי נְעִילַת שְׁעָרִים? According to the opinion of Shmuel, these questions on their own are enough to be the entire Neilah service. And at first glance, this makes sense. Because these are questions that might feel like ones that would continue to make us feel inadequate. They are just an extension of the viduy – embracing that we are nothing in this world. They can be read as rhetorical questions – מה אנו? What are we? We are nothing, of course! This is why according to Shmuel, they can actually take the place of Neilah themselves.
But these questions can also be seen as calls to action. There is a well-known kabbalistic idea that חכמה, wisdom, can be separated into two words, כח מה – the power of “what.” – put differently, our potential. Each one of these questions which starts with the word מה (what) should make us feel כח (power) The Bat Ayin, an 18th-century Torah commentary by Rabbi Avraham Dov Baer of Ovruch, applies this idea to these questions in our machzor. He says that these moments of questions teach us about our potential. Without connecting with Hashem, our values, and what is most important to us, אין אנו יכולים לעשות שום פעולה – we cannot accomplish anything. Put differently, each one of these questions is a moment for us to feel empowered by, to feel animated by our values and the power they can have.
The questions themselves can actually be separated into three groups – and I want to read them in a way that will hopefully carry us all through the tefilot – for all of us to feel empowered to ask questions, not to feel inadequate but to have honest conversations with ourselves about what is most important to us.
- מָה אָֽנוּ. מֶה חַיֵּֽינוּ – What are we? What is our life? This is about us. And it’s the most basic set of questions we can ask. What are we and what are our lives? What are we trying to accomplish in life? Can we find ways to live life to the fullest, living a purpose driven life?
- מֶה חַסְדֵּֽנוּ. מַה צִּדְקוֹתֵֽינוּ – What are our acts of kindness? What is our righteousness? This is about what we do for others – what are we doing to help those closest to us, in our families, our communities, for the Jewish people and for the world? Whether that’s through time, through money, or through acts of service.
- מַה יְּשֻׁעָתֵֽנוּ. מַה כֹּחֵֽנוּ. מַה גְּבוּרָתֵֽנוּ – What is our deliverance? What is our strength? What is our might? This is about our place within the Jewish people. Because each and every one of us should always be thinking about how we belong to the Jewish people, and how we act on this. How are we helping to bring salvation to the Jewish people? Are we contributing to the strength and might of our nation?
Each of these questions can be answered with a different value, and we should spend this day thinking of our answers. What are the values – the slogans that would go on a sticker – that can carry us through this day and into the coming year?
One day in particular on our trip to Israel, we saw a large number of stickers on a wall… right on the steps going down to another wall – the Kotel. I took a picture while we were there. There are so many layers to this picture – first, it’s significant that these stickers are leading the way down to the kotel, a makom tefilah, a place of prayer. On one level, this teaches us that our tefilot need to be rooted in our values, in real world, lived experiences.
But what’s most striking to me is that my son is standing taking it all in. I don’t know what he was thinking but I know what I was. I felt the pain of the past two years, and I felt some of that inadequacy, but also inspired and hopeful, as I considered those values on the wall next to me, and the values of the wall in front of me. And in between those two walls was my son, the future – my motivation and my commitment to pass on these values as best as I can.
And this is my hope for all of us this Yom Kippur. That we feel the weight of this day and our shortcomings, but don’t allow it to overwhelm us. That we can have those conversations throughout the next 24 hours, about the things that are most important to us. מָה אָֽנוּ. מֶה חַיֵּֽינוּ. That every time we read these questions the next day – and we will do so 5 times – they sit with us and push us to think. That we can commit ourselves to a value – maybe it’s just one like on the stickers, or maybe it’s more than one. And that we invest ourselves in a vision of the future that is rooted in these values and commitments. Gmar Chatima Tovah.
Daf of the Day
