Eric Lenefsky: When I saw my name listed for the Yom Kippur dvar Torah, I was rightfully nervous. What can one say of such a lofty and sacred day? Only some time later did it dawn on me that the task was exponentially more daunting than I initially thought. This is no stam Yom Kippur. This is the Yom Kippur following October 7. Immediately upon this realization, I was struck with a question.
Generally, we leave Yom Kippur with a feeling of absolute bliss. We spend a whole day engaged in prayer and penitence, leading to a catharsis of the highest form. This feeling isn’t baseless. The Midrash in Kohelet Rabbah tells us that when Bnei Yisrael leave shul after Yom Kippur, a Bas Kol proclaims, “Go eat your bread joyfully; your tefilos have been heard before me like a Rei’ach Nichoach.” This is how I’m sure many felt after Yom Kippur last year.
Yet, less than two weeks later, the world was turned upside down. On Simchat Torah, aday of unbridled joy, I awoke to sirens warning of Hamas rockets. Only after Yom Tov did Ilearn of the enormity of the Hamas massacre. I remember checking the news constantly thatweek, seeing the death count rise and rise. Around 1,200 dead, 250 taken hostage, the largestmassacre of Jews since the Holocaust. Suffice it to say, any remnant of that Yom Kippur blisshad dissipated.
What happened on Yom Kippur תשפ’ד? Were our tefilos rejected? Was that feeling fake? How are we meant to reconcile our Yom Kippur experience and everything that has happened since then?
It’s impossible to truly know the answer to these questions, but I’d like to suggest a possibility or two, which also touch on the most important question – what should we do going forward?
We see from the Gemara already that even though our tefilos on Yom Kippur have immense power, that power is not unlimited.
The Gemara Yoma 86a discusses four categories of כפרה. A ביטול עשה is absolvedimmediately with תשובה. By a לא תעשה teshuva is תולה and the עיצומו של יום of Yom Kippuratones. For כריתות ומיתות בית דין, teshuva and יוה”כ are תולה, and affictions bring about atonement. For חילול ה׳, all three are insufficient, and only death cleanses the man of sin. We see that יום כיפורseemingly is limited in its ability.
The נטעי גבריאל asks how this fits with the pasuk we constantly chant on Yom Kippur of כיביום הזה יכפר עליכם לטהר אתכם מכל חטאתיכם לפני ה׳ טטהרו, and he answers that yes, כי ביום הזה יכפר, but only partially as mentioned in the Gemara. To achieve a full atonement, עליכם לטהר אתכם, wemust go above regular teshuva and reach for טהרה.
Generally, we think of טהרה as immersion in a מקוה, and for the מקוה to work, one needsto be fully immersed. Perhaps last year we did תשובה, but did we achieve טהרה? Did we fullyimmerse ourselves in Hashem, the מקוה ישראל, without even one hair sticking out? Did we fullyimmerse ourselves in the Torah, which is compared to water? Perhaps we only had a כפרה, but not a טהרה.
We also see the limited ability of תשובה in the well-known Gemara that תשובה only worksfor בין אדם למקום, not בין אדם לחבירו. Perhaps as a nation, we did not do enough to repair ourrelationships with each other. So even though we may have had a כפרה in the realm of בין אדםלמקום, we may not have in the realm of בין אדם לחבירו.
As I mentioned above, this is merely speculation. But the ideas can be used as aspringboard for the future. As we approach Yom Kippur, let us realize that yes, we can doteshuva and have Yom Kippur, but that may not be enough. We need to continue afterwards tostrive for the higher level of טהרה, where we fully immerse ourselves in our relationship withהקב”ה. It is עלינו לטהר עצמנו. Further, let us remember to repair our relationships with the rest ofKlal Yisrael. Not only our relationships with close friends, spouses, or parents. Not only withthose we have legitimately, personally wronged. But let us repair our relationships with all of כללישראל, even those who see the world in ways foreign to us.
May we be זוכה to do so, and may we be זוכה to a year of freedom from the death and sufferingamong klal yisrael, which has become all too common.
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