Yom Kippur and the Bridge of Forgiveness

Gary lit my cigarette in the mild breeze. My lighter wasn't working again. He was always helping me out in one way or another, and I tried to return the favors in disproportionate ways whenever I had the chance. He was one of those friends with whom I felt real kinship. We liked so many of the same things, and yet he was my junior by seven years. He was always the wiser of the two of us, in my mind.

Between our computer repair jobs, we enjoyed the pleasure of a shared smoke along with the usual epistemology: smoking philosophers sharing the pleasure of each other’s company. Our conversations had to have substance, and to reach it quickly. After all, we only had one, possibly two cigarettes we could enjoy before we had to get back to the hectic pace of computer support. I got right to the point.

"I’m not looking forward to tomorrow," I said. "Tomorrow is Yom Kippur, and I really can’t stand Yom Kippur."

Gary was not Jewish, so he asked, "What happens on Yom Kippur?"

I took a drag before answering to keep my emotion down. "Yom Kippur literally translates as the ‘Day of Atonement’. It’s considered the holiest day of the Jewish year. Even barely observing Jews usually go to synagogue on Yom Kippur," I exhaled.

"You don’t seem too thrilled about it," Gary said.

"No, I’m no fan of the holiday," I replied flatly.

"Why?" Gary asked thoughtfully. "It sounds like a good idea. Have a holiday where you atone, and if I understand correctly, that means a Jew would use that day to make up for all his sins that year."

I shook my head. "It’s not exactly like that. You see, for as long as I’ve been going to temple, I’ve been worshipping as an Ashkenazi Jew. Those are the Eastern European Jews," I added in explanation.

"Okay," Gary nodded, registering the detail.

"And Ashkenazi Jews on Yom Kippur are busy bowing and practically wailing ‘Shlach lanu’ which means ‘forgive us,’ by the way. They spend the whole day paging through the prayer book, practically begging God to write them into the Book of Life for another year. It’s really depressing."

Gary let out a quick snort of amusement, and looked down thoughtfully as he took another drag. He shook his head slightly, as if he understood something subtle in what I just told him. "You know, Neal, I can relate a little, having been brought up Catholic, but I don’t have your unique perspective on the Jewish way of meeting forgiveness."

"You mean, meting," I quipped, "as in meting it out."

He chuckled at the pun. "Same thing," he said dismissively.

"Look, Gary, I have to tell you that while I love my heritage, and I love the sound of Hebrew," I began in my itemization, almost counting on my fingers, "and the fact that Judaism really embraces both the Torah and the Earth, and that God is thanked as often as possible …"

"Okay, Neal, I get it!" Gary cut me off in his sharp but inoffensive way. "You love your heritage. Go on."

"But I grew up in a mostly Jewish community and, you know what?" I said with just a little more edge in my voice than usual. "The community, particularly the wealthy and influential, would commit all sorts of power mad acts to suit their own ends all year and then show up in the synagogue on Yom Kippur, kiss God’s ass in supplication, and then strut out of there satisfied that they were written in the Book of Life for another year!" I took a sharp drag on my cigarette and let myself calm down.

Gary’s attention was more focused and intensified. He was a good listener, even when he was not trying. At that moment, he had the concentration of a priest taking open faced confession.

"And you know, what torqued me off was the fact that the rabbi of my synagogue gave most of these members of the community such an endorsement because their greed and elitism meant larger donations for the temple." I stamped out the butt of my cigarette and deftly grabbed another without thought or effort. In my head, I could see the snowy headed rabbi, now passed away for some years, giving his benediction at the end of that long, often senseless day of Yom Kippur. He was not a bad man at all, and he stuck up for my family more than a few times, but he often excused the community members who threw their weight around because of the hefty donations these people gave the temple. Under this rabbi, the temple got so much in donations that the rabbi got a street near the temple named after him.

"Funny you should say that, Neal, because what you’re saying is part of the reason I stopped being Catholic."

"Oh?" I said, soberly, "Did your rabbi do the same thing?"

"Wise ass," he said, grinning. Gary and I often passed ironic jokes to each other like condiments at a dining room table. As a point of fact, this conversation was atypically lacking the usual banter, being strangely sober.

"Gary, if that wasn’t enough, it is a day of repentance, so we fast all day." I felt my eyebrows furrow, in thought. "And since Jewish holidays start at sunset, you typically see people stuff themselves the afternoon before the evening services," or Erev Yom Kippur, I thought in Hebrew, reflexively, "and then waddle into temple and bow and sway for three hours." I didn’t add that the congregation typically would rise and sit nearly two dozen times in an evening at appropriate points during the service. I remembered from childhood the stale air in the synagogue by the end of the evening as the well dressed but somber members of the congregation readied themselves to leave. Some traditional Jews, the older ones typically, took no water and did not even brush their teeth during their fast.

Gary found the image amusing. Smiling, he said, "Neal, if you hate it so much, why do you do it? I mean, you’re not exactly a religious Jew."

"No," I said, "but it’s very much a part of my identity. It’s part of me. Traditions make up a large part of who we assume ourselves to be." I tried to sound wise, but humble, but I knew it was a debatable point.

"You know, Neal, this is very interesting," Gary said, lighting another cigarette. I could tell from his tone that he was getting ready to go into one of his expositions that would likely be of no small significance. "It sounds like the holiday of yours is based on the concept of deeds creating a spiritual result."

I smiled broadly. "Gary, Judaism is a religion of deeds!" I said as if I expected this was to be a revelation for him. "I mean, why do you think there are so many Jewish lawyers and doctors?" I paused to let the question sink in, and also to see if he saw what I thought was a glaringly obvious answer. After a few moments, I answered myself, "Because those professions require a memorization of information. Those professions are taxing and cerebral!"

"And they pay well," Gary added with a nod and assertive point of his cigarette, as if his joke was totally salient.

I blurted a chortle, mostly because his joke was ironically correct and humorous at the same time. "That, too!" I pointed back, as if he had underscored a major point of fact. "But what better profession can you think of for people of a religion that is rooted in the adherence and interpretation of so many rules?"

"I see your point," he said, softly.

But I was always in the habit of beating the dead horse when I was on a roll. "Jews have dietary laws, laws regarding our holidays, laws pertaining to when to circumcise their children ..."

"OKAY, I get it," Gary said, voice raised slightly above mine to cut through my rant. "Neal, deeds do not get someone closer to the spiritual part of our selves." He split his pronunciation of those last words. "I mean, look at what man has done in his short time on the planet. He’s built incredible wonders all over the world, like the Pyramids, and he’s gone to the moon, but it doesn’t last."

"No, I know that."

"Neal, it's like that old mathematical problem where you want to get close to the speed of light, but you can only get halfway there each time you try because you only have enough energy to go halfway between your current speed and the speed of light." He lurched into an exaggerated step forward onto his right leg, bringing his left leg alongside, to show the distance he covered. His right hand was extended far from his torso as he did this, his palm horizontally facing him to show how much distance remained to be covered. "Each time I expend all this energy, I keep going half the distance remaining to be covered, each time. But I can never get to my destination because even though I am moving progressively closer and closer, I'm only covering half the distance each time." He took successively shorter mincing steps to illustrate the ridiculously impossible challenge of what I learned later is known to philosophers as Xeno's paradox.

I nodded in ascent. "Yeah," I answered thoughtfully.

"The same thing applies to getting closer to God through deeds!" he exclaimed. Then, just as suddenly, he calmed his tone. "Look, Neal, would you agree that whatever we call this Creator, be it God, Jehovah, Allah, whatever, that this creator is infinitely perfect compared to us?"

The answer to his question was, in my mind, indisputable. "Of course," I answered.

"I mean, even if you just compare relatively, not absolutely, God is infinitely closer to the spiritual ideal that man."

"Yes, I see your point."

"So how can you reach infinity as a man?" he concluded logically. "No matter how advanced we become, or how evolved we get, we are still a universe away from that true spiritual connection. We are denied the connection we desire as seekers because we are imperfect."

I was no longer conscious of the animation and delight that probably showed, unmasked, in my face. I was delighted with the point Gary was defining. "Okay, fine!" I concurred. "So that crystallizes something I have been trying to wrap my mind around for … oh, half my life!" More cerebrally, I continued, "So then what gets an imperfect creation connected with its Creator?"

"Well, you need a bridge," he started, making the same hand gesture with his right hand of the distance needed to be traversed, while his left hand arched in the air from his heart to his other hand. "Something has to bridge the distance between yourself and God, no matter if you have to cross a small distance or a great distance. It needs to be the same in how it connects you to your destination, which is God."

"Ahh, I see where you’re going with this." Gary was unabashed in taking opportunities to communicate his love of his Christian truth. "And the sacrifice of Jesus is that bridge."

"More than that," Gary interrupted sharply as I had apparently missed his point. "Being forgiven is that bridge. Without forgiveness, you are stuck in the hell of trying to get closer to God through deeds. It’s like that guy in Greek mythology always pushing the boulder up the mountain in the underworld, only to have it roll back down just as he gets it to the top."

"Sisyphus," I said.

"Yeah, him," he went on, not missing a beat, "he’s never going to get there, hard as he tries. It’s like being forgiven versus deeds. Deeds can get you so far, but spiritually speaking, they don’t translate very well when we’re talking about eternity. I mean, in a billion years, who’s going to care about the pyramids?"

I had, at that moment, the strangest tickling feeling inside of me, like something was coalescing in more than my thoughts. Gary had not merely spoken analogy to me. He hit upon some kind of grand unified theory for my spiritual questions. I was suddenly more than slightly perplexed and thrilled. Self-consciously, I tried to rein my emotions in so that the experience had that detached, intellectual character to it that helped keep one’s composure and put the matter into a philosophical and lofty perspective.

I also realized, simultaneously, that the idea of being dispassionate in the face of a possibly great idea, a great truth, was dishonest and beneath my being human. Philosophy was not entirely, I believed, a matter of intellectual exploration. By its very subjective nature, the supposition of a Creator begged the human heart for attention. No matter what kind of scientist I wanted to be, I knew this was something that required more of a leap of faith in order to grasp that final piece.

And that was when it dawned on me that the leap of faith and the bridge to spiritual closeness and being forgiven were all one and the same in this equation. I had spent a lifetime trying to see this tenuous, elusive detail with my mind, but never really with my heart. I had been a Jew, a Buddhist, a pagan, a Taoist, and I even gave Christianity a try in my high school years. But I was condemned to roll my boulder up the epistemological mountain fruitlessly as long as I clung dogmatically to my logic.

Yet, I realized logic was perfectly fine side-by-side with faith. I saw Judaism and Christianity as two religions, not too dissimilar except for a single point. The religions were strikingly complementary. One had the discipline of intellectualism, while the other’s strength lay in the intense power of love from the plane of an Almighty Creator.

My head reeled in those nanoseconds of deciphering the confused jigsaw pieces. If I supposed that Christianity was a logical evolution of spirituality, then it was a necessary evolution in Man’s connection to God. But if Christianity was a deliberate fabrication of Jews hoping to overthrow the established rabbinical autocracy of 2000 years ago, why would it carry with it such a potent and consistent theme that God’s forgiveness and the letting go of the material were the pillars of this new faith? No, to found a religion based on something so antithetical to the "might makes right" idea was equally futile. That religion could never have a chance in the shadow of all powerful Rome and established Judaism. Therefore, Christianity could not have been a construct of this kind.

What if Christianity was a remarkable stroke of luck? If it was merely lucky, the entire chain of events should have, by that logic, experienced some kind of fatal breakdown. After all, you might be able to drive with your eyes closed for a little while, but the odds are overwhelmingly against you that you will crash if you are depending solely on luck.

What if Jesus was a madman, as depicted in The Last Temptation of Christ? That argument, I thought, breaks down as well because of the luck factor being impossibly strong in that scenario. Many argue that it is the detail that Jesus was the Son of God and not a man that makes his sacrifice divine and unique. Is that the only real characteristic of divinity? Did it really matter what made Jesus divine if it was about the bridge created by being forgiven in such an absolute way? Could I ignore the fact that here was someone who had elected to die for an entire world and its descendants? And how many times throughout history since that time had there been great people who gave similar sacrifices? No, I realized, Jesus was no more mad than those who understood the idea that forgiveness and being forgiven were the keys.

Deeds shrank to insignificance in the face of eternity. I could not deny the power of that statement. I had spent many hours wrapping my comprehension around eternity. To me, the Universe was young, but I knew as young as twelve that the planet I loved as my home had, at best, another 6 billion years before the Sun died. Deeds could never be preserved, and the quest for spiritual connection could easily be a futile exercise if it was just an activity. No, I realized. Deeds, great or small, are ephemeral. Nothing we do lasts. Deeds are a step, but cannot be a means to an end.

The synthesis was too much to contain, and I started to feel a wave of intense emotion of the kind I felt only a few times in my life. I asked Gary if I could sit down, as we were still outside. I felt no desire to smoke; rather, I had to breathe. I remember telling him that so much made sense now, but I admit now, in hindsight, that I remember less of what I said than what I was feeling. The world seemed very far away compared to what I just figured out for myself. I probably managed to tell Gary exactly what had started to happen to me when he said something that I would never forget:

"If you truly understand what I have just told you, if you accept the gift of Christ as I accepted it, then, Neal, you and I will be truly brothers."

Logic rebelled inside me. No, I thought. This is ridiculous! I cannot be something I am not! Like many Jews, I was raised to think that Judaism and Christianity are mutually exclusive. But I felt an inner voice inside me, and it was strong but gentle. This is personal and it is a gift to you. Gary did not give it to you. It has nothing to do with him! That was the moment I realized this was between me and my Creator, and no one else.

I trembled. I sobbed softly, fighting to keep myself composed, and realized that some time during my transformation — it could be nothing else — I had managed to make it to my desk inside the building. It was why I could sob at all without drawing the attention of my co-workers. I muttered apologies to Gary, aware of him only in his arm around my shoulder in fraternal support. My senses reeled and I lost any semblance of control as I cried heavily at my office desk, feeling utterly vulnerable and lost.

The forgiveness and unconditional love of one’s Creator, realized, is devastatingly intense at first. I felt many emotions and sensations simultaneously, the most glaring one being a sense of receiving instruction. It was almost perceivable, but not entirely. I felt comfort and assurance, and the absence of physical pain. I felt something that I never felt before, that I can only describe as a feeling of being loved. No metaphor could describe the experience, no matter how I might choose to vivisect the moment. I was in a tranquil whirlwind of acceptance, and by now, I was faintly aware that Gary had moved to his desk to give me time and privacy to take it all in. I recall the distinct feeling of gratitude that he had permitted me some privacy and dignity to make this my own moment of uninfluenced revelation and unsullied rebirth.

It was many minutes later when I had regained enough practicable composure to speak as myself again to Gary. "You know, I hate the expression ‘born again’, but I understand why it’s called that now."

Gary just nodded. He looked subtly awed and even humbled. I was used to working with Gary as the embodiment of humorous cockiness. Seeing him so subdued was another reminder that I had experienced something dramatic. He and I spoke about details, about what I might want to do to take this experience to the next level, and we did everything we could do to return to normalcy. We were, after all, at work, of all places, and we both shared the ethic that work was the time to get work done.

I thanked him many times after that, but I endeavored that each time was in gratitude of him caring to tell me, and not in his telling me. I realized he was not the originator of this great message, but merely a messenger. He was often happy that I did not incorrectly credit him with the content of the message. He did admit, though, that he was glad he could put the details in a frame of reference that I could understand.

That was October 6, 2000. It was a very nice day for what I now remember as my "birth" day. I have not had a cigarette for many months, and I no longer work in the same team as Gary. I still fall into the habit of thinking deeds are a means to creating spiritual results. But the experience is still fresh and profound, and I accept my place in the Universe as a seeker and a child of God. It keeps me humble and helps me through the harder moments.

I did not accept Christ because I wanted a kingdom after I died. Nor did I make the choice because I needed a new religion. I still think of myself as a Jew. I accepted Christ because logic, love and my heart told me it was my calling to do so. I do not even agree with some of the New Testament, especially the rules that came from Peter and Paul, but that’s okay, because that’s between Him and me.

You see, it’s personal.

Amen.