It’s a really busy time for God and the Heavenly Court, so He has asked me to reply to the message you sent Him last week just before Rosh HaShanah.
God says He has decided to be big-hearted and not take offence at the tone of your letter.
He assures you that your requests can be met but only if you help Him.
The easy part is what you say about the world’s problems.
God worked out the solution long ago – He made the world big enough for mankind but said that when there’s a good spirit no-one needs vast space in order to hide from their neighbours. The secret is to listen to and try to trust each other, and not constantly look for someone to blame. That’s the miracle you need, and it can come from human beings.
God says He can’t get directly involved in the economy but He gave His creatures enough brains and ethical conscience to find smart and just solutions.
It’s fair enough to ask for life and health but a lot depends on lifestyle and not taking risks with your person. Actually times spent on prayer and ritual reinforce life expectancy, but He knows you are a bit reluctant to become too religious.
He loves Israel like you do. He too worries about the rabbis but would like ordinary Israelis to show more prophetic vision. He would also like Israelis to learn some more politesse.
He has more or less given up on the United Nations with their lawfare and terrorism – but He’s grateful for America. Never mind S & P – in His mind the US still has a high moral credit rating.
He thanks you for wishing Him Shanah Tovah. He hopes you’ll help Him to make it a really good year.
Franz Rosenzweig, who became one of the luminaries of Jewish thought in the interwar years, was hovering on the brink of baptism when after attending Yom Kippur services in 1913 he decided he could never be anything but a Jew. It is not entirely certain what happened to him that Yom Kippur, but there is a hint in his great book, “The Star of Redemption”, where he wrote, “Anyone who has ever celebrated Yom Kippur knows that it is something more than a mere personal exaltation... or the symbolic recognition of a reality such as the Jewish people... It is a testimony to the reality of God that cannot be controverted.”
Note that the word “reality” comes twice in this passage. One reality on Yom Kippur is God. The spiritual tremor that runs through Yom Kippur proves this reality. We encounter Him in the prayers, the music, the mood, the atmosphere, the internal metamorphosis within us. On Yom Kippur Rosenzweig, who had never ceased to believe in God, encountered something extra: the Jewish God.
The second reality he encountered that day was the reality of the Jewish people. Yom Kippur is not the individual soul, though if one is away from a synagogue and has no alternative Yom Kippur is possible and necessary on one’s own. In normal circumstances, however, Yom Kippur is the Jewish people in dialogue with themselves as well as with God. Rosenzweig’s decision to stay a Jew was not only because he encountered the Jewish God but because he found that a Jew cannot sever himself from his people.
One of Rosenzweig’s biographers calls him the Guide to Reversioners (ba’alei t’shuvah – people who came back). In a sense we are all reversioners on Yom Kippur, and what we discover is that we cannot completely break with God or the Jewish people.
The halachic codes have a great deal to say about how to repent. They all agree that confession – viddui – is essential to the process (it has been pointed out that on Yom Kippur the confessions come ten times, since our transgressions have covered all the Ten Commandments). We might have thought that repentance chiefly requires the remorse of one’s heart and soul, and of course this is true and the Torah says, “Purify yourselves before God” (Lev. 16:30) – but what goes on deep inside one’s personality is not enough on its own. It has to be articulated in words. This is the message of the prophet Hosea in the haftarah that we read on Shabbat Shuvah: “Return, O Israel, to the Lord your God, for you have stumbled in your iniquity. Take with you words, and return to the Lord.”
The whole of our lives centres around words. We use them for good or ill every moment of our walking hours. Their importance in confession is, strangely, borne out by a memory from my student days. Our College Administrator told me that some evenings when he got home he said to his wife, “Sit down, dear – I want to talk to you!” She sat down and he proceeded to sum up all that had happened during the day. I asked him, “Does she solve your problems for you?” “Not at all,” was the answer, “But putting the issues into words helps me to understand them!”
So it is with viddui. Putting our thoughts into words helps us to understand our situation. It’s not so much God who needs to hear: we ourselves do. Does God not already know all our actions? Of course He does. We are the ones who need to know what’s going on. When we come through customs at an airport and they ask, “Have you anything to declare?” we need to ask ourselves that question first. That’s us on Yom Kippur too. We have to ask ourselves, “Do you have anything to declare?”