"Softening into Discomfort": A D'var Torah for Kol Nidre
10/28/2024 09:54:38 AM
Kol Nidre 5785, October 11, 2024
Watch Rabbi Faryn's D'var Torah here:
Read along with Rabbi Faryn's D'var Torah here:
I realized many years ago that I struggle to look people directly in the eyes.
“But it's so intimate,” I was told. That intimacy, under the right circumstances, should be desirable. Or, at least feel safe.
But it didn’t feel safe. It was enticing–alluring, even–yet also utterly terrifying. I could sneak glances, out of the corner of my eye. Hold partial contact for a few seconds, only to look away. But, the vulnerability of allowing another to see me, fully, without pretense… the sense of overwhelm it brought on teetered right on the edge of total system shutdown.
That sensation, I believe, is the intended felt sense of Yom Kippur.
I feel that we have been led to believe that the function of religion is to be a balm. To make us feel better. The opiate of the masses, as Karl Marx famously said.
And yet, why then, is that so often not the feeling-sense with which we leave a religious experience? Why, then, is the Torah full of flawed characters and a flawed Gd doing atrocious things? Why, then, is so much of the Yom Kippur liturgy seemingly inciting a sense of fear?
Because, I believe, the goal of religion is not pleasure. Or soothing. Or sedation. The goal is purposeful discomfort.
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Over one hundred years ago, a German Protestant philosopher, Rudolf Otto, visited a humble Moroccan synagogue on Yom Kippur. It was there that he had his first experience of what he termed “the numinous,” from which his entire philosophy of religion flowed. Otto is famously known for his pivotal work “The Idea of the Holy,” which completely transformed the field of Religious Studies. In it, he describes “the numinous” as the excess of the holy which is beyond both morality and rationality, and the primary experience of the numinous as something he titled “mysterium tremendum.”
I have been utterly obsessed with the concept of mysterium tremendum since I was an undergrad. It is a term that, Otto admits, is nothing but a gesture, for it attempts to explain a feeling state that is beyond language. But it consists of two parts: 1) mysterium– the hidden and esoteric elements of our universe and lived experience that can’t be understood, but simply felt, and 2) tremendum–a metaphorical (or perhaps quite literal) quaking in the encounter with that mysterium. Mysterium tremendum is like fear, but it is beyond fear. Like awe, but it is beyond awe. Like terror, but less horrifying. Like wonder, but less euphoric. As Otto cites in his book, “I shutter in the sense that I’m unlike it, and I glow in the sense that I am like it.” It is the feeling of encountering something wholly other than yourself and simultaneously being enraptured, stupefied and horrified. It is that feeling you get when you are entirely outside of your comfort zone, terrified, yet captivated. Left wanting more.
In Biblical Hebrew, we have a similar term, which Otto acknowledges in his book (and perhaps, it is from whence his term and philosophy sprang). This is the term yirah. Yirah contains notes of both fear and awe and everything in between. It is where the term Gd-fearing emerges from, and the directive to “fear Gd.” But when we simply translate the word as fear, we are missing the point. Fear, I believe, is a quite human sensation we experience to warn us of impending danger or to help us triumph over danger. Yirah, rather, connotes a hybridized state of awe&fear that leaves us incredibly uncomfortable in the moment we are experiencing it, but which can radically transform us for the better, if only we would allow it to do so.
I have heard from many people that, for them, as children, Yom Kippur was utterly terrifying. The image of a Gd, sitting on high, judgemental, vengeful even. One slip-up and we could go directly in the Book of Death. However, I feel that the religious leaders of old designed services in this way out of a fundamental misunderstanding of the word yirah. Of the state of mysterium tremendum. Of the goal of the religious experience.
In response to this terrifying version of Yom Kippur, Gd and Judaism that many of us were raised with, there has been a course correction in liberal Judaisms. From a terrifying Gd to a loving one. Or perhaps, to no Gd at all. Just to a sense that all is love. However, I believe this is an over-correction, for, as we know, Gd is not all good. The universe is not all good. And to sit in the discomfort of that truth is what Yom Kippur and, I believe, Judaism at large, asks of us.
I will be the first to admit the ways in which I contribute to a culture that asks Judaism to be a balm. To anesthetize us to the pain of the world. That uses prayer or Torah study as some form of escape. To provide uplift in too heavy of times. For, I do, sincerely, want that for you. Comfort. Uplift. Joy.
But this Yom Kippur, I am asking something different of you. I am asking, as Franz Rosensweig, an early 20th century Jewish theologian said, for you “to confront the eyes of [your] judge in utter loneliness as if [you] were dead in the midst of life, a member of the human community which, like [your]self, has placed itself beyond the grave in the very fullness of living.” By this, I mean, stare into the eyes of that which terrifies you most–your own mortality, your own righteousness (or lack thereof). And let yourself quake inside of that honesty. Move outside of yourself and stare into your own eyes with the entirety of your life-force, as if this is your last chance to do so. As if your life depends on it. And allow the discomfort of what you see to catapult you into the fullness of living.
This Yom Kippur, let us allow in mysterium tremendum, and let us allow it to transform us.
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Yom Kippur is a day where pain and agony fill our holy spaces to the rafters in mournful melody. And yet, it is not just any pain with which we are engaging. The pain we are immersing in is our own complicity in the pain of others, which in my opinion, is the most painful pain one can experience.
I remember, years ago, asking a former partner to apologize for the ways they had hurt me in our relationship. I told them exactly what I wanted them to apologize for. I just needed to hear them say the words. And they flat out refused. Rather than apologizing, they argued with me. Told me that they, in fact, had not hurt me in the ways that I said. That all of their actions were justified. I was utterly taken aback, enraged and horrified that someone could be so unaccountable. My ask, I thought, was so simple.
That is, until I noticed that, when faced with similar asks, I act the same.
Since then, I have paid attention to my reaction when I am told that I have hurt someone (or when I perceive that someone feels hurt, even if they have not told me so). And, let me tell you, I am defensive. Not every time. I have worked hard not to be. But in particular circumstances, with particular accusations, the instinct for self-preservation is so strong that I feel a part of me roar to life that is otherwise entirely dormant. A part of me poised to fight, claws out, mouth snarling. Never do I fight anything harder than when asked to admit that I was wrong. And I think I fight because admitting to myself that I hurt someone I love is one of the most agonizing sensations in the entire world, and one which I would go to the ends of the earth to avoid.
Yom Kippur asks us to take accountability for harm we’ve caused on personal, interpersonal and collective scales. And it has us do so by having us admit to this harm, aloud, again and again and again and again.
One such confessional prayer is the Al Chet.
The traditional Al Chet is a series of 44 confessions of wrong-doing, stated in the first-person plural. Al Chet shehatanu lefanecha–For the wrongs we have done before you… A common drash on this is that we speak in the plural because none of us has committed all of these wrongs alone, but collectively, we have, and we are responsible for the collective. But one year, when I was feeling particularly guilty, I decided to grapple with each and every one and ask myself, “are there ways in which I have engaged in that form of harm this year?” Turns out, I had. Every. Single. One.
Being with this truth was painful. The ways it led me to doubt myself and my character was excruciatingly uncomfortable. Yet, it also felt cathartic. Taking accountability for the harm I had caused felt like a relief. It felt like the tension I had been holding inside of me released. All the energy I had been expending to absolve myself of any responsibility, even if only in my own head, was freed to be directed toward bigger and better things. I was freed.
I speak often of the Rambam’s steps of doing teshuvah–the task of accountability that we are called into this High Holy Day season. These steps begin with the internal recognition and renunciation necessary to start a teshuvah process, and move from there to outward confession and repair. And while it may seem that the work begins once we’ve spoken aloud the harm, I think 95% of the work is in the first step. Is in admitting to ourselves, internally, that we caused harm. Many of us could live in that discomforting place of reckoning forever. But, from my experience, when we are able to move through that discomfort to the other side, the rest of the teshuvah process flows easefully from there.
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Psychologists speak of the comfort, stretch and panic zones. The comfort zone is exactly what it sounds like–a zone of experience in which we feel totally safe and comfortable. By contrast, the panic zone is when we feel so challenged that we perhaps go into shut-down, or fight-flight-freeze response. But there is a whole world of possibility between the comfort zone and the panic zone–a world known as the stretch zone. When in the stretch zone, we are uncomfortable, but not to the point of shutdown. What is happening in this zone is new, but there is enough familiarity and protection that we feel safe to push ourselves to grow.
I think something about contemporary American society–and even contemporary religiosity–has left us with the expectation that the world should be our comfort zone. And, because of this, we often perceive anything that pushes us even mildly beyond our comfort zone as danger. We jump straight from comfort to panic, with all of the accompanying trauma responses.
This year, I am asking us to slow down. This year, I am asking us to stretch our muscle that is the stretch zone. And, as the Creator stretched the skies over the Earth, I ask that we stretch our stretch zone wider and wider and wider, making the space between comfort and panic as far as the eye can see. For these are not comforting times. But perhaps, we do not have to be afraid. Perhaps, if we allow ourselves to truly be with the discomfort, we may just grow.
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The Al Chet is not a series of 44 confessions of wrong-doing straight. Rather, we confess 20. And then we pause. And we sing:
V’al kulam eloah selichot. Slach Lanu. Machal Lanu. Kaper Lanu.
And, then another 12 confessions.
V’al kulam eloah selichot. Slach Lanu. Machal Lanu. Kaper Lanu.
And another 12
V’al kulam eloah selichot. Slach Lanu. Machal Lanu. Kaper Lanu.
“For all these things, Divine entity of forgiveness, forgive us, pardon us, allow us to make it right.”
A mantra, of sorts. For, our sages of old were wise. And they knew, far before psychology was an imaginative possibility, that discomfort alone would not transform us. We also need the possibility of redemption.
So I invite you to close your eyes.
And, I ask you. Just for today. Just for these next 25 hours. When you are feeling uncomfortable. Defensive. Angry. Self-righteous. Challenged beyond measure. Seeking someone to blame. When every bone in your body is screaming toward you to turn away. I ask you to ask yourself: What is the mantra you need that will allow you. To teeter on that edge. Just a little bit longer. What is the mantra... That will allow you... Through the fear... To Turn toward... Toward the discomfort, The pain… Your own complicity… Your own wrong-doing… That will allow you to look directly into the eyes of the true judge that is none but yourself, and soften… And soften... And soften…? For in your eyes, there is redemption.
Gmar Chatimah Tovah.