This week’s Torah commentary, written by Hebrew Seminary rabbinical student Helena Dryjanski, has been sponsored anonymously.
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Yom Kippur is our last chance to have our names sealed in the Book of Life, before the Gates of Heaven close. We supplicate ourselves before God fully, in a plea for atonement. In the Grand Aleinu, we proclaim just a little differently these words recited year-round:
וַאֲנַֽחְנוּ כּוֹרְעִים וּמִשְׁתַּחֲוִים וּמוֹדִים לִפְנֵי מֶֽלֶךְ מַלְכֵי הַמְּלָכִים הַקָּדוֹשׁ בָּרוּךְ הוּא.
“We bow in awe and thanksgiving before the One who is Sovereign over all, the Holy and Blessed One.” (Translation from Mishkan T’filah.)
In this moment, we reaffirm the foundation of our faith. Throughout the year, we partially bow at the knees to show how thankful we are to HaShem. The theologian Rabbi Dr. Eugene Borowitz (1924-2016) states: “We seek God as a partner in every significant act, we invest our deciding and doing with direction, worth, hope, and in failure, the possibility of repair.” (Mishkan T’filah, p. 587.)
However, during the High Holy Days, we take this further; during the Grand Aleinu, we no longer bow partially; we fully prostrate ourselves on the floor of the synagogue in an act of supplication to the Divine. In this moment of vulnerability, with our foreheads on the floor, we expose our souls to God because we need and are commanded to have this moment of extreme weakness. Since the fall of the Temple, we are told to provide this sacrifice of praise rather than physical sacrifice. Hosea 4:13 declares “וּֽנְשַׁלְּמָ֥ה פָרִ֖ים שְׂפָתֵֽינוּ” (“instead of bulls, we will pay the offerings of our lips”). On Yom Kippur, we link together sacrifices, praise, and prostration.
In Yom Kippur morning’s traditional Torah reading in Leviticus 16, God tells Moses of Aaron’s High Priestly duties; however, this takes place only a short time after Aaron has lost his two sons who were burned in an alien fire after getting too close to God’s presence. (Leviticus 10:2.) Aaron, who had been silent upon discovering the death of his sons, did not cry for them; he remained silent. (Leviticus 10:3.)
In Leviticus 16, as God details the sacrifices that Aaron must perform on Yom Kippur, God alludes to the death of Aaron’s sons in noting that malpractice in the Holy of Holies could lead to death. (Leviticus 16:2.) The Iberian 12th century commentator Nahmanides, contemplating this moment, suggests that this instruction emerged the same day as the deaths, while Aaron was still grieving, even though “the Holy Spirit does not manifest itself in a situation of sadness.” (Translation from Charles B. Chavel.) In Duties of the Heart, the 11th century Jewish Iberian judge Bachya ibn Pekuda cites this moment as a testament to Aaron’s wisdom and readiness to make that sacrifice:
His calmness overcomes his shock, and he humbly accepts the Creator’s decree, and justifies the Divine judgment—this attests to good submission and to his lowliness before God. (Sixth Treatise on Submission, ch. 7; translation by Rabbi Yosef Sebag.)
Ibn Pekuda argues further that, to act more ethically, we must focus on our beliefs and not just our outward practices. He forcefully states that, to submit fully to God, we must accept whatever God decides in a given moment. Following this line of thinking, as we prostrate ourselves on the floor of our synagogues today, we must imagine ourselves not only as Aaron in the Holy of Holies, but also as Nadav and Avihu.
Yet Aaron must have been overcome with grief, an emotion that carries over into the Book of Jonah, traditionally read on the afternoon of Yom Kippur. In chapter 4, Jonah cries out to God, stating that he fled to Tarshish because he knows that God would destroy the Ninevites if he delivered the Lord’s prophecy. He asks God instead to take his life. To this, God twice asks Jonah: “Are you that deeply aggrieved?” Much like Aaron, Jonah is so deeply moved and vulnerable in this moment that he faltered in his duty as a prophet, and God spared the people of Nineveh. Ultimately, God says: “You cared about the plant, which you did not plant and which you did not grow… And should I not care about Nineveh?” (Translation based on Revised JPS Translation.)
In the final moments of the Grand Aleinu, as the music builds and we fall to our knees, we know that God will take care of us for the coming year, ensuring that our names are in the Sefer HaChayyim, the Book of Life. We can take comfort in God’s abundant love and glory, even after we have returned to our feet, ready to face the New Year.
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