{"id":4178,"date":"2009-09-11T06:30:00","date_gmt":"2009-09-11T11:30:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/pbs-wnet-preprod.digi-producers.pbs.org\/wnet\/religionandethics\/?p=4178"},"modified":"2013-09-04T10:57:13","modified_gmt":"2013-09-04T14:57:13","slug":"september-11-2009-rabbi-irwin-kula-interview","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/pbs-wnet-preprod.digi-producers.pbs.org\/wnet\/religionandethics\/2009\/09\/11\/september-11-2009-rabbi-irwin-kula-interview\/4178\/","title":{"rendered":" Rabbi Irwin Kula Interview"},"content":{"rendered":"

Read more of the Religion & Ethics NewsWeekly September 8, 2009 interview about the meaning of the Jewish High Holidays with Rabbi Irwin Kula, president of the National Jewish Center for Learning and Leadership in New York City:<\/strong><\/p>\n

This period is called either the High Holy Days, the High Holidays, the Awesome Days, and they incorporate the days of Rosh Hashanah, the New Year, and then ten days in between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, which are called the ten days of repentance, and then Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement. There really are three basic questions that these ten days invite us to think about. One is can I change as a human being? Can I really become better? I think that\u2019s a really hard question to ask. Can I become better or is this the way it is and I\u2019m doing the best I can, and that\u2019s it? And the second question is, is forgiveness possible? Can I forgive other people, and can I feel forgiven? I think that\u2019s also a very difficult question. We talk a lot about forgiveness and wanting to be forgiven and to forgive other people, but it\u2019s really hard. And the third question that runs through all of these days is am I accountable for my behavior? And whether you believe in a God in the sky or the cosmos or reality or the universe or whatever it is your belief system is, do you actually believe that you\u2019re accountable for how you behave? And I think those three questions and themes run through the entire High Holy Day period.<\/p>\n

\"post01-jewishholiday\"Can I really change? Can forgiveness be real in my life, and can I be accountable? You just can\u2019t answer those questions. You actually have to practice answering them, and so it turns out that the 30 days before Rosh Hashanah\u2014really the 40 days before Yom Kippur\u2014are days devoted to practicing in those three areas. So, we actually practice asking what changes in our behavior do we have to make that would be more aligned with who we imagine we ought to be, who we think God wants us to be. We practice forgiveness. In other words, you can\u2019t come on Yom Kippur, on the Day of Atonement, and expect some spiritual forgiveness experience without first preparing by asking people for forgiveness for things that you\u2019ve done and by granting forgiveness to people who have done things to you. And, finally, unless you actually begin to think about your behavior and what you are accountable for and what have been the consequences of the previous year\u2019s behavior, you\u2019re not going to have a Yom Kippur experience.<\/p>\n

The practice amongst the many practices in the forty days prior to Yom Kippur, first and foremost, [is] what I call a kind of spiritual, moral, or ethical inventory, and that is to go through one\u2019s life, the different areas in one\u2019s life. First, the family, family relationships, the most intimate relationships, extending out to friendships, then work relationships and how one is operating at work with other people and the work one is doing. Then the larger community, world, nature\u2014to actually go through those areas. My practice, and the practice that I suggest, is to take two things. Take your checkbook and take your Day-Timer or Blackberry calendar and to look\u2014how did I use my time this year? Because that says a lot about who we are. And how did I use my money this year? So there\u2019s that piece, which is part of the practice in preparation, and then to actually recognize about where one is and ask people for forgiveness, and that means literally picking up the phone and saying \u201cHey, you know what? Earlier this year, I know, I dissed you\u201d or \u201cI did something that was very inappropriate,\u201d or \u201cI took credit for something,\u201d whatever it is, or \u201cI ignored you,\u201d and to be able to come to terms and ask for forgiveness. It turns out the more you practice and prepare for Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, the richer that experience is.<\/p>\n

In more traditional communities, in the mornings of the week before Rosh Hashanah there are penitential prayers. Those are prayers in which one asks for forgiveness, and it\u2019s a kind of asking for forgiveness in general, in the hope that it\u2019ll stimulate where, specifically, I need to ask for forgiveness, and that\u2019s every morning for the week before. There\u2019s also another practice starting the month before Rosh Hashanah\u2014in other words, those forty days prior to Yom Kippur\u2014of blowing the shofar, which is one of the central symbols of the High Holiday experience, blowing the shofar at the end of the morning prayer service, and the shofar is just a blast of the ram\u2019s horn, and it, in a sense, wakes you up. You\u2019re not used to hearing a blast of a ram\u2019s horn, and it is supposed to cause you to become more alert to your own behavior.<\/p>\n

What the Jewish wisdom tradition invites us to think is that before one can actually approach God, or what I call kind of the \u201cvertical dimension,\u201d one has to have the horizontal dimension in order. I would say it this way, that the moral alignment between us as individuals is a necessary component and base for the spiritual relationship that we want. I once heard a story about the Dalai Lama. He came to the United States, one of his first trips, and they brought him to a meditation center, and what struck him was that people were engaged in spiritual practice who hadn\u2019t developed an ethical practice, and he said this was the first time he ever saw spiritual practice being built and created independent of ethical practice, and I think that most religious traditions and most spiritual wisdom traditions would suggest that the alienation or the disconnection between us and God is actually a consequence and a function of a deep disconnection between us and other human beings, and so the practice in Jewish life is you can\u2019t come to God on Yom Kippur and ask for forgiveness or ask for a realignment in the relationship if you haven\u2019t done the work between you and other human beings.<\/p>\n

Changing your fate for the coming year is a part of a larger question: Do we believe that our behavior actually affects our destiny? Now we have to understand that in a fairly careful way because there\u2019s not a direct cause-effect correspondence that we can generally pick up: \u201cIf I\u2019m good, there\u2019ll be no sickness; if I\u2019m bad, I\u2019ll be punished.\u201d Well, it turns out that we know, most of us, that life doesn\u2019t move that easily, and cause-effect is not that clean. But there\u2019s a deeper sense, I think, at least in my experience, and I think this is most people\u2019s experience, there\u2019s a deeper sense that there\u2019s a relationship between my behavior and my destiny, in how I feel about myself, in how I approach the world, in that whatever happens to me somehow I\u2019m capable of dealing with what happens to me at a higher, more evolved level if my behavior is correct and aligned with the things and values that I hold most deeply. So there\u2019s a sense on Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur in which thousands of people gather together and go through many, many prayers in which we ask ourselves, \u201cHow have I done?\u201d For illuminating and actually elucidating the variety of potential sins, and the word for sin in Hebrew is \u201cchet,\u201d which means \u201cmissing the mark,\u201d the places where I\u2019ve missed the mark and the sense that if I can discover some of those places and begin to correct them that my destiny will actually be better.<\/p>\n

No matter what path you\u2019re on, the path is always filled with unpredictability. The path is always filled with things that we can\u2019t control and places that we can\u2019t control. But what we can really control, as best we can, is our behavior up front and our responses to other people, and responses to the unpredictability and vulnerability and fragility in life. And Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur invite us to think about that. One of the most important prayers on both Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur comes right at the center of the worship service, when the most people are in the synagogue, is a prayer \u201cWho shall live, and who shall die?\u201d And that\u2019s a question that we don\u2019t often ask ourselves, and I don\u2019t think we should ask it every day; if you ask it every day, it would be a little crazy. But once a year to come clean, to look around and say, \u201cYou know what? There\u2019 are no guarantees here. There is a fragility to our lives. Given that, how do I want to live?\u201d If I look at my job, I look at my spouse, I look at my friend, I look at my parents, and I say \u201cWow, what is really true about life or death is that I don\u2019t know, no matter what I do, no matter how good I take care of people, I don\u2019t know if next year at this time everybody\u2019s going to be here.\u201d Well, given that, what are my obligations? How do I want to treat the people both close to me, and how do I want to act in a world in which I may not be here a year from now? Now, confronting our mortality up front and surfacing the anxiety that that does produce, and then asking who do I want to be\u2014given that, generally speaking, helps us become more ethical human beings and much more sensitive to life.<\/p>\n

We know that we\u2019re not going to be able to change everything, and, of course, the paradox is that we\u2019ll probably be here the following Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, probably saying the exact same prayers and probably, for most of the things that we tried to change, having not been so successful. But part of what it means to be a human being is to stay in that game, to believe that yes, we can change, that the change happens incrementally, to not imagine that your life is over because you haven\u2019t made those changes, and that\u2019s part of the message of Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur. When I get to the service on Rosh Hashanah morning and get to those prayers that I know I said the exact same prayers\u2014I\u2019m 51-one years old\u2014I remember saying them probably consciously since I\u2019m about seven or eight. And it\u2019s funny, pretty much for the last 25-30 years it\u2019s the same ones that I\u2019m still working on, you know? How to be a little bit more patient with the people I care about, how to be a little less oriented towards being in conflict with the people with whom I deeply disagree, how to be a little bit more generous and a little less ego-centered. So, you know, these are the ongoing dilemmas, and I think that if you have a regular, set time in a year, or even in a week or in a day, but here we\u2019re talking about the High Holidays, if you have a regular, set time in which a community comes together by the thousands to do a little introspection and ask how am I aligned with other human beings, how am I aligned with God, and how am I aligned with who I deeply want to be, chances are we\u2019ll be a little bit better.<\/p>\n

The central activity of Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, the activity that defines almost everything that\u2019s happening, is the word \u201cteshuva.\u201d Teshuva comes from the word, \u201cshuv,\u201d which means \u201cto return,\u201d and there\u2019s this sense that deep down, deep, deep, deep, deep down, you know, in the privacy of your own heart and your own soul and mind and spirit, we know we want to be good people, deep down. But what happens in life is things get distorted, and we get hurt, and we become fearful and filled with anxiety and scared, and so we don\u2019t act in light of what deep, deep, deep down we know we can be and want to be. Teshuva is this process over Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur in which we return to that place deep, deep down of who we really want to be, and so everything having to do with Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, all the prayers and all the liturgical readings and all the readings from scripture and the variety of practices, whether it\u2019s blowing a shofar, or on Yom Kippur it\u2019s fasting and staying in synagogue for most of the day, all of the practices are designed to help us make teshuva, return to that deepest path that we know we want to be on.<\/p>\n

\u201cRepent\u201d would be a more Protestant or Christian term for the word for teshuva. We don\u2019t actually have\u2014there\u2019s no word \u201crepent\u201d that way. But repent means to try to make up for what you do. We have a process in Jewish wisdom, and Maimonides was the most important articulator of this, we have a process of gaining forgiveness that I call the four R\u2019s, and the first is to realize what one has done. You know, until you realize what you\u2019ve done wrong, you can\u2019t do anything about it, and realization is really hard. You know, you can tell a person they\u2019ve done wrong, and a person can tell me \u201cyou did something wrong, you did something wrong.\u201d But until you see it and realize it, you\u2019re not in the game, the forgiveness game. So the first is to realize. The next is to regret, actually, that I did it. The next thing is to attempt to repair. Sometimes that repair is in a conversation. Sometimes that repair is in financial remuneration. Sometimes that repair is in actually diminishing myself a little bit to allow a realignment in the relationship and changing my behavior, and only then is there the fourth R\u2014reconciliation, and it\u2019s those four R\u2019s together, which is the process of forgiveness, which for us, for Jews, is what we mean by repentance.<\/p>\n

The last thing on Yom Kippur is a final long blast of the shofar, and at that moment I should feel two things exactly at the same time. One is I am really perfect and loved just the way I am, and I can do better, and to hold those two things together\u2014I\u2019m perfect and loved just as I am, and I can do better\u2014is the process of teshuva working.<\/p>\n

On Rosh Hashanah afternoon, after having been in synagogue most of the day and then coming and having a festive New Year\u2019s meal, a practice developed called Tashlikh, from the word, l\u2019hashlikh, to cast away or to throw away, and it is, like all ritual, a theatrical re-enactment, and we go to a brook or a river or a stream or an ocean, a body of water, and we symbolically, either taking bread or something, cast away our sins into the water, and, of course, the water carries them away, and having been in this process of teshuva, this process of spiritual and moral inventory, over the last thirty days, and now anticipating the next ten days to actually physically remove and cast away and stand at water that is a cleansing symbol to begin with, that carries away, in a sense, our sins is a very powerful interior, in a sense, re-enactment together as a community. So, literally, you just stand at the water and from young to old take a crumb of bread and throw it into the water. And there\u2019s a passage that says \u201cCast away my sins, cast away my sins.\u201d And then, very often, since it\u2019s done kind of late afternoon and the sun is beginning to set, very often birds will come and they\u2019ll take the bread away, and it has a wonderful theatrical feel and a sense of liberation, that my sins are being removed from me. And what that\u2019s really saying is that I may sin, but I\u2019m not sinful. And I think that\u2019s a piece of the Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur experience. Very often, for ourselves and for other people, we confuse doing bad things with being bad people. And I\u2019m not sure, really, if we can evolve and grow morally and psychologically and spiritually as long as we think we are bad people. We\u2019re people who, very often, do bad things, who very often sin but have the capacity to cast away that sin, to work through those mistakes and become better people.<\/p>\n

One of the interesting things about Rosh Hashanah in general and about the High Holiday period is that the celebratory aspect, which is Rosh Hashanah and the celebration of the New Year, actually comes before the atonement focus, which is Yom Kippur. One would expect that first I have to atone, first I have to make sure I\u2019ve come to terms with who I am, and I\u2019ve realized and regretted and repaired and gotten better, and then I get to celebrate. In fact, the Jewish calendar runs it in reverse. First we\u2019re going to celebrate the New Year. Now in the context of celebration of a New Year, the change really is possible. Now let\u2019s get down to the business of change. And I think pedagogically and methodologically and psychologically that\u2019s a very, very important move. First, everything\u2019s going to be okay. Now let\u2019s work on things, as opposed to let\u2019s work on things and see if everything\u2019s going to be okay.<\/p>\n

On Yom Kippur, five times during the day there\u2019s a confessional, there\u2019s a list of \u201cfor the sin that I did with my mouth, for the sin that I did with my eyes, for the sin that I did by stealing, for the sin that I did with arrogance,\u201d and there\u2019s five times during the Yom Kippur service one goes through, one goes \u201cAl Khet\u201d for the sin. It\u2019s a practice of hitting one\u2019s heart, kind of to get the heart going, that type of idea, and what\u2019s interesting is almost all of the sins recognized are between human beings. They are not between the human being and God. On Yom Kippur, this intense, spiritual, introspective day, the vast majority of sins that are evoked or attempted to bring to consciousness are between human beings, which is a way of saying that if you really want to know God, you\u2019d better start with the most visible symbol and image of God available, which is other human beings.<\/p>\n

Atonement is really just a fancy word for the forgiveness process. The word Yom Kippurim, from the word \u201ckappare,\u201d really means to be engaged in this forgiveness process. Atonement is just a fancy word for \u201cat one.\u201d If you engage in forgiveness, if you do the introspection that is required during this period you will feel more at one with yourself, at one with other people, at one with the cosmos, or reality, or the universe, or God, whatever it is you call it. And that \u201cat-one-ment,\u201d that alignment is the goal of the Rosh Hashanah-Yom Kippur period.<\/p>\n

In the central prayer of Rosh Hashanah Yom Kippur, \u201cWho shall live and who shall die,\u201d in that prayer it says on Rosh Hashanah it is written (in other words your fate, your destiny is written down, is inscribed), and on Yom Kippur it\u2019s sealed. And there is this sense, and again, whether one believes it literally or as a deep metaphor, the only issue for me is, do you take it seriously, and that our behavior does affect the nature of our life. I don\u2019t know if it affects whether we literally live or die, but it surely affects whether we live or whether we die in life. In that respect, there\u2019s the sense that on Rosh Hashanah, who we are going to be based on, how we make this assessment, is written down. And, yet, then you have another ten days in which to really go through that process even more deeply of asking who you are, and then it gets sealed. And \u201cgets sealed\u201d doesn\u2019t mean that it\u2019s closed forever, because of course, the paradox, or the joke, or the irony, or the, you know, in Jewish wisdom there\u2019s as many traditions that say but it\u2019s really not sealed until the end of the whole holiday period, or three weeks later, at the end of the Festival of Tabernacles and Simchat Torah, that it\u2019s really not sealed. And even then it\u2019s really not sealed, because every morning you go through a practice in which you ask for forgiveness. So \u201csealed\u201d is a way of saying something does happen if you spend a full day on Yom Kippur and you spend full days on Rosh Hashanah, the forty days and the process of engaging in teshuvah and forgiveness, something does happen, and there\u2019s a feeling that if I\u2019ve missed that or not done it right, that it does affect who we are. It does affect our destiny.<\/p>\n

The focus of the High Holiday period is not on death. The focus is on life. It turns out that one of the great ways to focus ourselves on life is to think about death. That just turns out to be the paradox. So if on Yom Kippur we fast, if on Yom Kippur we deny ourselves certain bodily pleasures and engage in a kind of deep introspection on the moral, psychological, and spiritual level, well, it turns out we will become better people. I mean, that\u2019s just what happens, but again there are no guarantees. You can go through everything on Yom Kippur and go through the motions, and on the other hand you can sit in Yom Kippur and never use a prayer book, but just really think about who you are, and it can make a difference in your life.<\/p>\n

Part of the ritual on Yom Kippur is by denying yourself these variety of bodily activities, eating, making love, washing, one begins to simulate in a way one\u2019s bodily death, and, you know, by the end of the day on Yom Kippur, that hour before the final shofar blowing at sunset, people, you know, their faces are a little more craggy and their beards a little bit\u2014and they\u2019re running on empty a little bit, and one discovers that there\u2019s a deeper life than simply the physical life. And if we can tap into that life, which I think every religious and spiritual wisdom tradition tries to do, to tap into that deeper dimension of life beyond just the material and physical and body, there is a deeper or new life that emerges, and that final blow of the shofar, and the shofar blow is only dependent on one\u2019s breath; there\u2019s no notes, you know, it\u2019s just the breath of life. Sometimes I call it a kind of mouth-to-mouth resuscitation for us. You know, you hear that sound and there is a rebirth and in that respect confronting one\u2019s own mortality, at least for me confronting my own mortality. My mother passed away between last Yom Kippur and this Yom Kippur, and I know that, for me, that will be central in my mind. One of the major prayers in Yom Kippur is what\u2019s called Yizkor, \u201cto remember,\u201d and the community as a whole remembers people who they loved and who\u2019ve passed away, and you take that twenty minutes in the middle of the day and you remember someone who died and a lot of thoughts go, like, how did I really operate with that person and what do I need to do differently, and with time being so short, how do I want to love, and how do I want to be more compassionate, and how do I want to be there? And so it turns out confrontation with death is one of the great methodologies to make us appreciate life.<\/p>\n

The central ritual on Yom Kippur, besides prayer itself, that\u2019s most well known is fasting. Every single tradition has fasting. What fasting does is it says I\u2019m not going to concentrate on my physical body right now. I\u2019m going to concentrate on a different kind of food. Rather than nutrients for my body, I\u2019m going to concentrate on the nutrients for my spirit, my heart, and my ethical way, and that surely does help. We know there\u2019s physical aspects to this, too. If you don\u2019t eat, certain ego structures begin to loosen up and you\u2019re a little bit more open. I mean, it turns out there\u2019s a lot more tears Yom Kippur afternoon when we talk about our lives than there are Yom Kippur morning, because in the end when one doesn\u2019t eat, one\u2019s a little bit less in control of all of the structures we build to defend against difficult truths, to defend against insights and illuminations that are going to cause pain and will force us to think about our lives in different ways. So we fast as a way to become more in tune with our spiritual and our inner life.<\/p>\n

The most visible, really the only symbol of Rosh Hashanah, is the ram\u2019s horn, which is blown\u2014100 different sounds or times is it blown. There are three basic sounds to the Rosh Hashanah. One is a longer sound. That sound then is broken up into three, and that sound is broken up into nine, and each sound stimulates a kind of call. One is more plaintive, one is more a little bit frenzied, with more anxiety, and those calls together are to evoke and to wake us up. \u201cArise from the slumber\u201d is what Maimonides says the shofar sounds are supposed to do, and there\u2019ll be 1000 people or 2000 people in the room, in the synagogue, and it is perfectly silent except for the sound of the shofar that\u2019s piercing through all of the armor, so to speak, the internal armor that we construct to avoid hearing the deepest call of our life, which is to be decent human beings.<\/p>\n

On Yom Kippur, there\u2019s no shofar blowing until the very, very last act at sunset. The sun is set, Yom Kippur ends. The ending of Yom Kippur is the reciting of \u201cHear O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one,\u201d \u201cGod is God,\u201d and that\u2019s recited one time, another thing is recited three times, another thing is recited seven, but at the end of Yom Kippur the very final act is the longest blow of the entire High Holiday period, and it\u2019s just one long blow.<\/p>\n

Kol Nidre is the first prayer of the Yom Kippur service, which begins at evening and extends to the next night at sunset. Kol Nidre means \u201call my promises,\u201d and it\u2019s a paragraph in which the congregation comes together and says all the promises, all the obligations, all the bonds that I have made this year, all of them should be dissolved. Now, what that is really about is it\u2019s making a claim that if I\u2019m really going to assess who I am, I have to look at every promise, every obligation, every commitment that I\u2019ve made, because that\u2019s what defines us\u2014our promises, our obligations, our commitments\u2026.It\u2019s very frightening to imagine that we have no obligations\u2026Now, once one has that experience, by the end of the Kol Nidre, which lasts about 10-15 minutes, it\u2019s sung three times by the cantor in a very dramatic way, at the end of that all of my promises, all of my obligations are nullified. The rest of Yom Kippur, in a sense, is taking back the obligations, reassessing them\u2026.And as Yom Kippur unfolds, one takes back one\u2019s promises in new commitments\u2026.So Kol Nidre is a very profound method and technology for stripping us of all promises and obligations that may distort us so that we stand there naked, just us, with the ability to take back promises, take back obligations over the next 25 hours\u2026.You\u2019ve got no responsibilities now. You have no promises, no obligations. They\u2019re all null and void. Now, who do you want to be?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Read more of the Religion & Ethics NewsWeekly September 8, 2009 interview about the meaning of the Jewish High Holidays with Rabbi Irwin Kula, president of the National Jewish Center for Learning and Leadership in New York City: This period … More →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":56,"featured_media":16679,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[1368,4599,6209,17918,6252,6246,6250,6033,6034,6248,2165],"class_list":["post-4178","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-fasting","tag-forgiveness","tag-high-holy-days","tag-jewish","tag-kol-nidre","tag-rabbi-irwin-kula","tag-repentance","tag-rosh-hashanah","tag-shofar","tag-teshuva","tag-yom-kippur","topics-belief-and-practice","faith-jewish","spotlight-jewish-high-holy-days"],"yoast_head":"\nSeptember 11, 2009 ~ Rabbi Irwin Kula Interview | September 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