Yom Kippur Neilah 2020 Edgware and Hendon Reform Synagogue
Making small steps
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From 1973 until 2003 the Yom Kippur services that I attended were conducted not out of the Days of Awe Machzor– but out of the Machzor – Gates of Repentance. For me it was the Machzor which I grew up with – a valued friend to my burgeoning spirituality. From around the age of 12 I became used to spending the whole of Yom Kippur in Synagogue – often a combination of Northwood and Pinner Liberal Synagogue and Harrow and Wembley Progressive Synagogue. I don’t know how much this was about piety and how much this was because being rather fond of my food I knew that at least if I spent the day at shul I wouldn’t be tempted to break my fast too early!
I was always aware of the passing of time on Yom Kippur. Time measured by the passing of the pages of Gates of Repentance – by the thousands and thousands of words that we say over this day – said by the reader, by the Rabbi, sung by the choir, read responsively, chanted from the Torah, read together. Jews are truly people of the book – the prayerbook, Siddur or Machzor, as much as the Bible and the Talmud
Jewish prayer is expressed in thousands of words. I knew from the age of 12 that the service in Gate of Repentance ended on page 412 with the final shofar blow of Neilah, the concluding service. So many thousands of words to get there, at times inspiring and moving, at times washing over me almost as a meditative mantra. Now, members of this Synagogue know I am sure that Yom Kippur ends on page 664 in Days of Awe and we still have a few hundreds of time honoured or freshly created words to share before we get there whether you remain in the Classic Neilah service or choose to join me later at our Meditative Neilah.
Will they move us? Will they change us? Are we ready to be responsive to them? Have they any chance of being as effective as the most effective piece of prophecy any where recorded in Judaism. The thousands of words of Isaiah, Ezekiel, Jeremiah, Amos, Joel, Malachi the prophets of the bible, none of them has the simple and essential power of the five words spoken by the unlikely prophet Jonah in the Haftarah portion that we hear every Yom Kippur afternoon– od arabaim yom v Nineveh nehpachet – Yet forty days and Nineveh shall be overthrown.
Instantly Jonah says these words the whole of the city of Nineveh changes their ways, ceases to be the evil city under God’s decree of destruction and returns to the way of good.
But what actually happened? How did the people of the city, in the words of the portion, “turn from their evil way.”? How did they make the change quickly enough to escape from the destruction that Jonah was sent to warn them of?
Did they all of a sudden manage to take on everything that we heard in our Torah portion this morning in Leviticus 19 – did they suddenly stop defrauding each other, begin to leave a corner of their fields for the poor to glean, stop cheating each other with inaccurate weights and measures, stop stealing, stop making life difficult for the blind and the deaf, start respecting the elderly, start treating their employees properly, apply justice properly and impartially to all and take the strangers in their society into their hears – did they in sum change right away to love their neighbour as themselves?
Surely not. Surely five words from Jonah couldn’t manage it any more than 664 pages’ worth of the best of Reform Jewish liturgy is not going to make us suddenly tomorrow wake up as utterly reformed people, able to conform to all that would be the best we are capable of.
No. Chances that what actually happened in Nineveh when Jonah’s words struck home was much more like this: when they were offended by friends or relatives or work colleagues the people of Nineveh became a little more forgiving a little less likely to fly off the handle. When they found themselves stuck behind a slow moving ox cart, instead of pulling up really close and intimidating the driver they remembered that once they were learner ox cart drivers too. When they caught themselves treating shopkeepers in the shuq or the Nineveh equivalent of bus conductors as impersonal machines they gave them a smile and said a friendly word. Rather then being quick to condemn others they remembered that the Rabbis said that we should not judge others until they found themselves in their position (Pirkei Avot 1:6) (by the way if you are thinking hang on he is getting a bit anachronistic sorry but it is going to get worse). They just tried a bit harder to see the point of view of others. When they heard unsubstantiated rumours they would not jump to conclusions that they were correct, they would hang on and investigate the facts.
The people of Nineveh probably did not make huge changes in their behaviour – they just started going in the right direction – and that was enough for God to relent from the destruction which threatened them. It wasn’t good enough for Jonah, who probably couldn’t see the big difference and so got very upset that the city wasn’t being destroyed, but actually it is these small steps that we can take from today onwards. That is the response we need to make to the High Holy Days for it to much more than hundreds of pages of words.
We can’t bring world peace tomorrow – but we can be more civil to the people we encounter throughout the day. We can’t create equality between all of the peoples of the earth just now – but we can look for a fair trade label on the food that we buy. We can’t steward the earth out of global warming in a week – but we can walk instead of take the car for a short shopping trip. We can’t find the vaccine against Covid-19 tomorrow – but we can phone the person who is feeling on their own in the coming day and chat or ask if they need a little help. We can’t comfort the loss out of those who mourn in a month or two but we can stay with them in their journey of grief, checking in with them regularly.
As Rabbi John Rayner wrote “in all these and countless other matters it is only a relatively small effort that is required of us; we only need to give ourselves a push sufficient to cross over the boundary from one set of attitudes which are diminishing, stultifying and destructive to another set of attitudes which are enlarging, enhancing , and redemptive: from pride, anger, harshness, abrasiveness, meanness and selfishness to humility, conciliatoryness, gentleness, courtesy, generosity and concern for others.” (Jewish Understanding of the World p173)
The Rabbis said “mitzvah goreret mitzvah” (Pirkei Avot 4:2) one little mitzvah leads to another – a wave of good pushes on for good – you just need to start with one mitzvah.
The prophet Ezekiel was not able to get his message out in the five words of Jonah – but among the 48 chapters of his book Ezekiel wrote (Ezekiel 36:26) – “ A new heart I will give you; a new spirit I will put within you. I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and I will give you a heart of flesh.” A small change just to be more human is what gives us this new spirit. Though the world around us asks so much of us today as we cope with more change than we could ever have imagined when we were together here in the building from which this service is being broadcast to thousands, the message of Yom Kippur and how we respond to it has not changed.
There is a wonderful Jewish tradition to get to work on building the Sukkah the moment that Yom Kippur ends. We are going to do it so that there is an EHRS Sukkah to host you in small groups all of next week.
It’s the same with the work of Yom Kippur itself. Get to work right after these services on the small changes that will create the beginnings of a better world – do not give up the struggle because we cannot achieve everything in one day. Just make the environment around yourself that little bit better and ‘’Mitzvah goreret mitzvah.” One good thing will lead to another.
May it be that next year we will be able to safely come together in person for Yom Kippur, helped in that progress out of Covid 19 by our kindness to each other, our respect for each other’s’ health, and our kinder world built mitzvah by mitzvah.
