Thoughts on the Structure of the Yom Kippur Services.
 
                           by Jonathan Baker
                             4 Tishrei 5758
 
I heard an interesting idea in the name of the Rav, Joseph B. Solo-
veitchik zt"l (quoted later).  The following is extrapolated from it.
 
    Yom Kippur is many things, a day of introspection (cheshbon
hanefesh), a day of repentance, a Day of Judgement.  The day's prayers
compel us to consider our past actions, and the actions of the whole
community of Israel.  We commit to bring ourselves closer to the ideal
life that God has laid out for us, in this world and the next.
    The set prayer services influence and reflect our emotional states,
and our relationship with God around the clock and around the calendar.
The Yom Kippur services play especially strongly on our emotions,
inspiring us to examine ourselves and our deeds, to repent, to change
our ways, to ask for forgiveness, We need another chance to be good in
God's eyes and our own.  The emotional impacts of specific prayers, such
as Unetaneh Tokef, Kol Nidre, and the cantor's Hineni are well known.
Globally, however, how do, or should, our emotions change during the
services on Yom Kippur?
    We start with a series of declarations: "A light is sown for the
righteous, and joy for the upright of heart."  "In the Upper and Lower
Courts, we declare it permitted to pray with sinners."  "Kol Nidre- All
vows...  we declare to be null and void..."  Pretty assertive, for
people who are supposedly begging for forgiveness.  Who are we to grant
such permission, arrogating power from angelic and human courts?  We are
Jews, who have a special relationship with God.  We are so sure that we
will be forgiven, with all our tools of prayer, that we can set the
stage ourselves for the coming day.  This mood continues through the
evening service.
    Consider the piyutim of the evening service.  Ki Hinei Kachomer,
where we instruct God to "heed Thy pact, heed not the accuser", is
usually sung in a majestic, even peppy tune.  Sure, it talks about how
God made us and can do what He wants, but we're telling Him, You made a
covenant with us, so You have to stick to it.  In Salachti, again we
tell Him to pronounce, "Forgiven", even though we know we're stuck in
sin.  And we have the tools to get God to do this: we have both the
confessional and the magic formula, the Ashamnu and the Covenant of the
Thirteen Attributes: if we say the 13 Attributes, God has to forgive us
(B.  Rosh Hashanah 17b).  The confessional is part of, and symbolizes,
the process of repentance.  The Covenant of 13, however, is a formula
that gives us power over God: if we use it, He *has* to forgive us,
after all, He said he would.  So we use our tools, over and over again,
invoking the Thirteen, confessing twice (in the silent amidah and in the
repetition), asserting our power over ourselves and over God to get
things done, to accomplish the goal of forgiveness on this Day of
Judgement.
   Our attitude moderates as we get into the Morning Service.  Now we're
into the serious repentance.  During Shacharit and Musaf we only use the
Vidui, the confessional.  This emphasizes our penitence, our
acknowledgement of personal and communal wrongdoing, our promises to do
better, as we are subjects of the Almighty.  The piyutim reflect this
change, speaking of God's majesty and power over us, His power to make
us and to forgive us.  We pray that God acts properly from His position
of strength and please, please forgive us.  The community asks the
cantor to get up and plead for us before the Dweller on High.  We tell
of the majesty of God in Imru L'Elokim, Maaseh Elokeinu, Haaderet
Veha'emunah.  We tell of His special relationship with, and power over
us in Al Yisrael Emunato.  We acknowledge our sins, our poor position,
asking for mercy, "Please, don't hang our sins over us that we have
done!  We have sinned, our Former!  Forgive us, our Maker!"  We invoke
the merit of the Fathers.  We say the confession, "we and our fathers
have sinned."
    Then we do it all again in the Mussaf.  We keep glorifying God in
another set of Imru L'Elokim and Maaseh Elokeinus, describing the
judgement process in Unetaneh Tokef, and praying for forgiveness from
God's position of strength.  Then things start to change.
    It's getting on towards 2 o'clock.  The fast is really biting down,
we're starting to get a little light-headed, less sure of ourselves.
Maybe this approach has been all wrong, glorifying God and praying for
forgiveness, and thinking that we could really accomplish true
repentance and forgiveness through our own efforts.  Let's play a
possible trump card.
    According to the Sages, saying the order of sacrifices will count as
if we had done them.  So we say the order of the highly elaborate and
symbolic service on Yom Kippur in the Temple. This involved extra
sacrifices, the scapegoat, the High Priest's prayers for forgiveness,
the red string that turns white, etc., in a long poem (either Atah
Conanta or Amitz Koach, depending on nusach).  Maybe saying the Avodah
(order of the sacrifices) will atone for our sins, as doing it did in
the days of the Temple.
    But the Machzor has a cruel answer for us.  YOU DON'T HAVE THE
TEMPLE ANY MORE.  Right after describing the luminous visage of the High
Priest when he knew his prayers were accepted, we get a series of kinot,
elegies for the loss of the Temple.  The service tells us, we can try to
play this trump card, but it won't help, because *our* sins and the sins
of our fathers caused the Destruction and keeps the Temple unrebuilt.
We remember the Ten Martyrs, and know that even their personal piety and
learning didn't save them.  So we're thrown back on our own devices, and
have to try yet again, to say the confession and really mean it this
time, really try to change ourselves.  Trump cards don't help.
    Then we get a break.  We use the time off to gather our strength for
one last try at changing ourselves, begging forgiveness, etc. At Mincha,
the Torah reading warns us against sexual immorality.  This is still a
big problem, even if we don't murder and worship idols as we did before
the First Destruction.  The haftarah, the book of Jonah, inspires us to
know that indeed, God does accept true repentance, even if limited human
beings like Jonah can't understand why God stayed His decree.
    At Mincha, we get another plain, bare-bones shot at dealing with our
sins through confession and promise to do better.  We say it twice
again, without piyutim, just us and God, trying again to make it work.
    Then comes Neilah.  By Neilah, we're getting pretty desperate.  We
don't know if our efforts have succeeded.  By now, we have used up our
ability to confess, so we are limited to the short confession.  Instead,
our effort goes towards acts of desperation: God, please, keep the gates
open, give us another chance!  The confession doesn't help much, but you
promised that you would forgive us if we used the Formula of Thirteen,
so we'll say it over and over, pleading, hoping, no longer even really
believing that we can accomplish our goal through our own confession and
repentance.  God, please, please, crush sin and transgression, since we
can't do it ourselves!  The day is darkening, the gates are closing,
hear our last desparate cries!  Let the offerings of our lips please be
acceptable, O God!
    We get even more desperate as the service continues.  If You won't
do it for us, if You won't do it for our promises to change, if You
won't do it for our calling on You to uphold the Covenant of 13, then do
it in the merit of the Fathers!  Do it for Your own Name's sake!  We
confess again, the short confession, as if that will do any good at this
point, but we're getting pretty hopeless.
    Finally, we come to the limits of our resources.  If we can't
convince You to forgive us in our own merit and hopes of change, if we
can't convince You to give us another chance in the merit of the
Fathers, we will declare our allegiance to You and throw ourselves on
the mercy of the Court.  We scream out "Hear O Israel, the Lord is Our
God, the Lord is One"!  Three times the response "Blessed is the Name of
the Glory of His Kingship forever and ever"!  Seven times the simple
ultimate declaration of His Unique Existence and our nullification
beside Him: "The Lord is the God"! ... but we start to break out of it,
into kaddish, but we can't break out of it, we have to continue, we have
to try yet again ... and finally, as Rav Soloveitchik said, when even
words won't work any more, the primal scream of the single shofar blast,
bringing it all to a final cry of pure emotion...
    ...and crash down into the mundanity of the rest of kaddish and
maariv.  Life goes on. Now we put into practice the repentance that we
promised to God. We get on with the life of a religious Jew, praying,
eating, sleeping, learning, and dedicating our lives to Him, albeit at a
lower pitch than on this one intense day.
    The teshuvah experience remains with us, as we remind ourselves each
day in the morning service: What are we, what our lives, what our mercy,
what our righteousness?  At least we are happy that we can spend another
year saying twice each day, "Hear O Israel, the Lord is our God, the
Lord is One," and really mean it.

Copyright 1997 Jonathan Jay Baker

	Jonathan Baker
	jjbaker@panix.com