Yom Kippur: God’s House and our home

Yom Kippur was a Temple day during the periods of our national sovereignty, and with the closing of the day, the holy Temple doors would close as well.

By RABBI SHLOMO RISKIN
Jewish worshippers covered in prayer shawls pray @kotel 370 (photo credit: Courtesy Yazel Shavit Communications)
Jewish worshippers covered in prayer shawls pray @kotel 370
(photo credit: Courtesy Yazel Shavit Communications)
The climax of Yom Kippur is its closing Ne’ila prayer when the sun is beginning to set, when the day is beginning to wane and when the opportunity for God’s loving forgiveness is telling us that we are nearing our last chance for this year.
The excitement of these last moments is very palpable within the synagogue. The prayers are at a much higher pitch and the voices are filled with intensity.
Yom Kippur was a Temple day during the periods of our national sovereignty, and with the closing of the day, the holy Temple doors would close as well.
Post-Temple, the very heavens, the pathway to the Divine Throne, symbolized the Temple gates, and with the setting sun it is as if the gateway to God likewise seems to be closing.
“Don’t lock me out,” says the Jew during Ne’ila.
Don’t close the doors or the gates in front of my face as long as there is still time, let me come in.
But there is another way of looking at this, as the very opposite, with the Jew crying: “Don’t lock me in!” Yes, I’ve been in the Temple, or I’ve been in the synagogue, almost the entire day. I’ve truly felt God’s presence and I’ve truly been warmed by His loving embrace. I feel God’s divine and gracious acceptance and His total forgiveness. I’ve spent an entire 25 hours in His house, in which I’ve “seen the sweetness of the Lord and visited in His tent.”
But now, as the doors to His house are closing, I don’t want to be locked in. After all, I began this penitential period with Rosh Hashana, the day of God’s kingship. The prayers on Rosh Hashana taught me that God did not choose Israel to live with Him in splendid and glorious isolation; He chose Israel to be a “kingdom of priest- teachers and a holy nation” to bring the message of compassionate righteousness and moral justice as a blessing for all the families of the earth. We are meant to be a light unto the nations, a banner for all peoples.
It goes without saying that we need our moments of quiet contemplation, of anguished repentance and of personal outpouring to the God who gave us life and Torah. But the ultimate purpose of this magic day of divine fellowship is for us to be recharged to bring God’s message to the world, a world crying out for God’s Word of love, morality and peace. We must leave the ivory tower of Yom Kippur and descend into the madding and maddening crowd in the world all around us.
And so, just four days after Yom Kippur we go out into the succa; indeed, walking home from the synagogue you will be able to hear many people already beginning to build their family succa. And the succa is the next best thing to living within the bosom of nature, feeling at one with the world around you. The walls are usually flimsy and even transparent, and the vegetation roof must enable you to see through the greenery up above to the sky. We pray together with the four species – the citron, the palm branch, the myrtle and the willow, which all grow near the refreshing waters of the earth – and we pray during this week not only for ourselves or for Israel but for all 70 nations of the world. Indeed, we are biblically mandated in Temple times to bring 70 bullocks during the week of Succot on behalf of all the nations of the world.
The succa teaches us one more lesson, perhaps the most important of all. The major place for us to feel God and His divine presence – after the heavy dose of Yom Kippur – is not in a Temple or a synagogue but rather in our familial homes. In order to go out into the world, we must first go out into our family.
The homes we build need not be large, spacious or fancy. You don’t need chandeliers in the bathroom to feel the warmth of your home. It can be an exceedingly simple dwelling place but it must have two critical ingredients. First and foremost it must be suffused with love, love of God, love of family and love of Torah.
The meals must be permeated with gratitude and thanksgiving to the God who gave us food, with words of Torah and with the realization that it is ultimately not the walls of the home that provide our protection, but rather the grace of the God who gives us life. And the major guests in our home are not to be Hollywood idols or sports heroes. We should invite into our home the special “Ushpizin” guests: Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Moses, Aaron, Joseph and David, Sarah, Rebekah, Leah, Rachel, Miriam, Deborah and Ruth (as you can see in my succa we add Ushpizot).
And you will remember that the reading for Rosh Hashana, the anniversary of the creation of the world was not the story of the Creation; it was rather the story of the first Hebrew family, the family of Abraham.
Yes, we have a mandate to teach and perfect the world.
But at the same time, we must remember that the first and most real world for each of us is our own individual family. We must begin the new year of reaching out to the world with a renewed reaching out to our life’s partners, our children and grandchildren – and then to our neighbors and larger community and then to include the other and stranger as well.
Shana tova.
The writer is the founder and chancellor of Ohr Torah Stone colleges and graduate programs, and chief rabbi of Efrat.