Page 16 - HaMizrachi Australia Rosh HaShana Yom Kippur 5781

GLOBAL RELIGIOUS LEADERS

Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks

The Challenge of

Jewish Repentance

he Ten Days of Repentance And at the end of a long and humans have in common with G-d
are the holy of holies of wrenching day, we finish as we is freedom and moral responsibility.
TJewish time. They begin with began 10 days earlier, with the
Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New sound of the ram’s horn – this time The Jewish drama is less about
Year, and culminate 10 days later not with tears and fears but with character and fate than about will
with Yom Kippur, our Day of Atone- cautious yet confident hope. We and choice. To the monotheistic
ment. At no other time do I feel so have admitted the worst about our- mind, the real battles are not “out
close to G-d, and I suspect the same selves and survived. there,” against external forces of
is true for most Jews. darkness, but “in here,” between the
Beneath the surface of this long bad and better angels of our nature.
These days constitute a courtroom religious ritual lies one of the more As the religion writer Jack Miles
drama like no other. The judge is transformative stories of the human once pointed out, you can see the
G-d Himself, and we are on trial spirit. The sociologist Philip Rieff difference in the contrast between
for our lives. It begins on Rosh pointed out that the movement Sophocles and Shakespeare. For
Hashanah, with the sounding of the from paganism to monotheism was Sophocles, Oedipus must battle
shofar, the ram’s horn, announc- a transition from fate to faith. By against blind, inexorable fate. For
ing that the court is in session. The this, he meant that in the world of Shakespeare, writing in a mono-
Book of Life, in which our fate will myth, people were pitted against theistic age, the drama of “Hamlet”
be inscribed, now lies open. As we lies within, between “the native hue
say in prayer, “On Rosh Hashanah powerful, capricious forces person- of resolution” and “the pale cast of
it is written, and on Yom Kippur, ified as gods who were at best indif- thought.”
it is sealed, who will live and who ferent, at worst hostile, to human-
will die.” At home, we eat an apple kind. All you could do was try to The trouble is, of course, that faced
dipped in honey as a symbol of our propitiate, battle or outwit them. with a choice, we often make the
hope for a sweet new year. This was a culture of character and wrong one. Given a second chance,
fate, and its noblest expression was Adam and Eve would probably pass
On Yom Kippur, the atmosphere the literature of Greek tragedy. on the fruit. Cain might work a
reaches a peak of intensity on a day little harder on his anger manage-
of fasting and prayer. Repeatedly we Jews came to see the world in a ment. And there is a straight line
confess our sins, whole alphabeti- completely different way. The book from these biblical episodes to the
cal litanies of them, including ones of Bereishit opens with G-d making destruction left by Homosapiens:
we probably had neither the time humans “in His image and likeness.” war, murder, human devastation
nor the imagination to commit. We This phrase has become so familiar and environmental destruction.
throw ourselves on the mercy of the to us that we forget how paradoxical
court, which is to say on G-d Him- it is for the Hebrew Bible since G-d That is still our world today. The
self. Write us, we say, in the Book of has no image and likeness. As the key fact about us, according to
Life. narrative quickly makes clear, what the Bible, is that uniquely in an

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