Thread by @Delafina777

Thread from last year on being angry with God during the HHD--there is space for that, too.

(I love this prayer, which blossoms like a flame being lit from changing one Hebrew letter from a song of praise.

We give You leave to slack off. WE will fix things, then.)

https://twitter.com/Delafina777/status/1310659793934118912

Toward the end of the Yom Kippur service, there's the following reading:

You are our Beacon;
we are Your burden.
You are our Enigma;
we are Your frustration.
You are our Call to Conscience;
we are Your critics.
You are our Touchstone;
we are Your loyal opposition.

And I appreciate how the liturgy gives space to anger at God, and when it moves us on, it's not to "you're wrong to be angry, and actually God is right."

It's to having compassion *for God*, which sometimes feels like a radical concept.

It starts from a place of anger at what God has done or let happen to the world and its creatures and goes to a cry that some years sounds furious to me, some years smug, some years despairing--"fine, DON'T do anything! WE'll fix it, then!"

"Fine, praise US, then, the ones who clean up after You!" (a recurrent theme in the Torah is Jews protecting people FROM God)

https://twitter.com/Delafina777/status/1310658465086414850

And it moves from goading us into that defiant commitment--to step in where God has failed--to a push not just to survive, but to truly *live*.

Life is what is left of it.

https://twitter.com/Delafina777/status/1310665628114509825

And that's the point here. Not repentance because we need to apologize to God, but repentance because we need to decide what we want to make of what is left of our lives, because we need to move forward.

https://twitter.com/Delafina777/status/1310665951730216960

Yom Kippur is not about self-flagellation. It's about forcing blood back into the parts our soul that we've clenched so tight that they've gone numb.

https://twitter.com/Delafina777/status/1310669276739547137

And what happens then? Not necessarily being forgiven, but forgiving:

https://twitter.com/Delafina777/status/1310669777250078720

And the underlayment to all of this is a shift in perspective. We go from anger at God to tenderness and compassion for God.

Because sure, maybe there is an all-powerful being out there that COULD fix all this. But we can't know that for sure.

A thread in Jewish thoguht is that since God is not anthropomorphic, we can't actually know anything about God. Anything we can comprehend isn't God.

We can't see God. We can only see God's effects.

And the main effect we can see is the world and everything in it. Creation.

And the world is both this incredible gift--this paradise that perfectly supports our existence, full of incredibly good things--ripe fruit! sunshine! trees! animals! water! mountains! sunsets!--

and it's something that is suffering, crying out in pain and in need.

And the point of Judaism is to sensitize us when the way is difficult and we've become desensitized.

To open us back up so we can hear that cry, and respond.

And to open us to see all those good things.

The honey and the sting; the bitter and the sweet.

The gift, and the cry for help.

And compassion for the world becomes compassion for God. (And that, as far as I can tell, is what holiness actually is.)

A lot of us, I think, come into Yom Kippur feeling empty, especially the last few years, feeling used up. I often feel like "I can't do this, I'm just going to go through the motions this year, I don't have anything left.)

And it starts out by feeling like the tradition is designed to beat you down.

It's actually designed to break you open. Like, you will end up tearing up at some point, and then it asks, if you're empty, where are the tears coming from? And what else is in there?

And it's not fun. Like I said upthread, it's like forcing blood flow back into a limb that's been too tight for it. At first, it's profoundly unpleasant.

It comes at the turn of the seasons, when we go from the dry season back into the rainy one. Summer's the season of bounty, but it's also the dry season. It's the season when the earth is giving and giving and giving, but not really getting back.

So I don't find it that paradoxical that at the end of it, we can feel both sated and empty. We spend a day fasting, we feel hunger, so we can be open for the rain to come.

(Soon after, we'll be in Sukkot, which is all about being vulnerable to the weather.)

So we feel again, so we can be open to having seeds planted, so we can stop focusing on producing and spend some time focusing on nurturing.

And, as Rabbi Rami Shapiro says, the clenched fist of our heart can open, and we can forgive.