A Word of Torah for Yom Kippur

!זֶה הַקָּטֹן, גָּדוֹל יִהְיֶה — This little one will someday be great!

Whenever I attend a bris, that line is always the one that gets me. Just as someone is starting their life, we already start wondering about that person’s potential achievements. In a bizarre way, the same idea pops into my mind in the opposite direction. When I encounter someone who is particularly amazing or particularly mean, I think about how they were once a baby and wonder about the process in which they went from being a baby to who they are today. Yom Kippur is the only day that I can think of where so much of our focus is on life and death. In fact, we are supposed to spend our entire day in a state that represents something entirely outside of our normal understanding of life or death. For one day, we see ourselves as angels. We wear white, we don’t eat, we stand with our legs together – all emulating aspects of angels that appear in our traditional texts. We even recite out loud “ברוך שם…” (baruch shem) – a verse that we believe should only be recited out loud by angels.  

However, just as we are about to end Yom Kippur and return to our regular lives, we have one last addition to our service. What makes this most noteworthy is that the addition is the end of the וידוי שכיב מרע (viddui shachib mere) – the Confession Before Death. As we are about to die, we are supposed to recite “ברוך שם…” (baruch shem) three times. We recite “ה’ הוא האלוקים” (Hashem hu elohim) seven times. And we recite the Shema once. As such, our closing tefillot for Yom Kippur can feel very dark. They can feel pessimistic. We just spent a season trying to establish ourselves as remorseful and hoping to be granted atonement, yet we end with our deathbed ritual. 

Having said all that, there is a particularly subtle tweak made by the Rabbis. The order of the verses is mostly reversed.  Instead of ending with the Shema like we do on our deathbeds, we begin with Shema. Instead of going from life into death, we are heading in the opposite direction – we are being reborn into life! 

We are coming out of a year where the cloud of death has hung over us in an ever-present manner. We are still struggling daily with the continuing toll of the war as well as the precariousness of the lives of the hostages still being held in Gaza. But it was also a year where many people lived up to the prediction made at their births – they went from being small to being great. There were the heroes who put their lives on the line – and in some cases sacrificed them – to protect others. There were those who have galvanized entire communities to fight for the release of hostages, to support those who are suffering, to provide services to those in need. As we are reborn at the end of Neilah this year, let us all remember our potential to go from katon (little) to gadol (great).  And then let’s make this a year where it happens!

Wishing everyone in klal Yisrael a גמר חתימה טובה (g’mar chatimah tovah) – to be sealed for only good things this year!