Beth Lesch: Welcome to Into the Verse, where we share new and unexpected insights on an upcoming holiday … diving deep into the verses to uncover the Torah’s own commentary on itself.

Hi, I’m Beth Lesch, one of the scholars here at Aleph Beta. So it’s the ten days of repentance. Yom Kippur is just a few days away, and I don’t know about you, but I want to show up for Yom Kippur feeling ready… like I’m even excited for the day, if that’s not too much to ask. If you’re feeling that way too, I have something special to share with you in this episode. Rabbi Fohrman is going to take us into the verse and invite us to notice that there are some really strange things about the Torah’s description of Yom Kippur. 

You see, I always thought that Yom Kippur is all about getting forgiven for our sins. But what Rabbi Fohrman points out is that forgiveness doesn’t actually seem to be the primary focus of Yom Kippur, at least as the Torah presents it. And once you see that, it kind of totally changes the way you understand what Yom Kippur is all about. I’ll let Rabbi Fohrman give it over. He’s going to begin by asking us to consider what it means that Yom Kippur is one of the yamim nora’im, the Days of Awe. And his exploration of the essential nature of Yom Kippur will take us to a very surprising place.

Rabbi David Fohrman: Why is Yom Kippur one of the yamim nora’im? The word yamim nora’im is “Days of Awe”: Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year, Yom Kippur… And what exactly is awe anyway? Is it fear? It's not quite fear. How would we define the feeling of awe? And why would we associate awe with something like Yom Kippur?

Now if you've ever been to synagogue on Yom Kippur, you know that the liturgy is very solemn. But if you think about what's actually happening on this day, it's a day when we achieve forgiveness for our sins. That's a wonderful thing; that's a good thing; that's a happy thing. Why should that be associated with fear or awe? Why is Yom Kippur one of the yamim nora’im? 

Put yourself in God's shoes and imagine that you were the writer of the Torah and that you were going to introduce the world to the idea of Yom Kippur. How would you do it? I'd get right down to the point: And God said to Moses, saying, “Tell everyone there's going to be this wonderful day when, once a year, I will purify you and I will forgive you of your sins.” Something like that. You'd give the date, you'd give the time, you'd close with a suitable exhortation. But that’s not the way Yom Kippur is introduced. Parshat Acharei Mot introduces Yom Kippur, and it does not introduce Yom Kippur like that at all. 

Yom Kippur in the Torah

Here is the very strange introduction that we actually get to the day that we now call Yom Kippur (Leviticus 16:2-3). 

וַיֹּאמֶר יְקוָה אֶל-מֹשֶׁה – And God said to Moses,

דַּבֵּר אֶל-אַהֲרֹן אָחִיך – Tell Aaron, the High Priest,

 וְאַל-יָבֹא בְכָל-עֵת אֶל-הַקֹּדֶשׁ –  tell him not to come into the innermost sanctum of the holy tabernacle any time that he wants.

 מִבֵּית לַפָּרֹכֶת – Where is that place? It's behind the curtain. There was a curtain that would separate the holy of the holies from the rest of the tabernacle.

אֶל-פְּנֵי הַכַּפֹּרֶת – As he would go through the curtain, he would come close to the כַּפֹּרֶת (kaporet), the covering over the ark.

אֲשֶׁר עַל-הָאָרֹן וְלֹא יָמוּת – Tell him not to do this all the time, so that he doesn't die,

כִּי בֶּעָנָן אֵרָאֶה עַל-הַכַּפֹּרֶת – because I appear in a cloud, God says, over this covering, over the ark. 

בְּזֹאת יָבֹא אַהֲרֹן אֶל-הַקֹּדֶשׁ – I have a better idea, God says. This is how Aaron should come to the holy of holies… and then the verses launch into this very long and detailed procedure through which Aaron can come into the holy of holies.

Now, did you hear anything about Yom Kippur? Neither did I. At the very end of this long, long list of procedures, we finally find out when all of this happens (verses 29-30): 

וְהָיְתָה לָכֶם לְחֻקַּת עוֹלָם – You should do this procedure forever.

בַּחֹדֶשׁ הַשְּׁבִיעִי – It should take place in the seventh month (that would be Tishrei),

בֶּעָשׂוֹר לַחֹדֶשׁ –  on the tenth day of the month. 

תְּעַנּוּ אֶת-נַפְשֹׁתֵיכֶם – And when you do this, you should fast when you do this.

וְכָל-מְלָאכָה לֹא תַעֲשׂוּ – You shouldn't do any מְלָאכָה – you shouldn't do any work,

כִּי-בַיּוֹם הַזֶּה יְכַפֵּר עֲלֵיכֶם לְטַהֵר אֶתְכֶם – because on this day, God will forgive you, will purify you.

מִכֹּל חַטֹּאתֵיכֶם לִפְנֵי יְקוָה תִּטְהָרוּ – For all of your sins, you will be purified.

Well, one second, shouldn't that have been all the way back at the beginning? Isn't this the main point? Why are you not even getting to this until the end?

The way the Torah introduces Yom Kippur to us seems to be topsy-turvy. “Don't come into the kodesh this way, come into the kodesh that way”... long, long list… and finally, “Ah! You should do this every Yom Kippur.” 

Yom Kippur is a day when you get forgiven of sins! Isn't that what it's really all about? What's the logic in describing Yom Kippur the way the Torah actually does?

The Meaning of Aaron’s Service on Yom Kippur

Maybe the answer is that Yom Kippur isn't really what we think it is about. Maybe it's not primarily about forgiveness of sins. Maybe that's the secondary effect of something else that's primary. 

What's it primarily about? Listen to the very first words and maybe we will see.

וַיְדַבֵּר יְקוָה אֶל-מֹשֶׁה אַחֲרֵי מוֹת שְׁנֵי בְּנֵי אַהֲרֹן – God spoke to Moses after the death of the two sons of Aaron.

בְּקָרְבָתָם לִפְנֵי-יְקוָה וַיָּמֻתוּ – How did they die? They died when they tried to come close before God. That's how they died (verse 1). 

What did they do? They brought incense from the incense altar into the holy of holies, and they died. What does it mean? How were they trying to come close to God? Ah, where is God? כִּי בֶּעָנָן אֵרָאֶה עַל-הַכַּפֹּרֶת – Because I, God, am there. I am in a cloud, hovering over the cover of the ark. 

When else was God in a cloud? Exodus 24, verse 16:

וַיִּשְׁכֹּן כְּבוֹד-יְקוָה עַל-הַר סִינַי – The glory of God rested on Mount Sinai;

וַיְכַסֵּהוּ הֶעָנָן – God's cloud covered the mountain. 

And there too, the Ten Commandments, the tablets of the law… and what's inside the ark? The same Ten Commandments. Now they're inside the tabernacle, and there again is God's cloud, hovering over the ark.

What the children of Aaron tried to do is come close to God. They tried to recreate the Sinai experience. They tried to approach God's cloud hovering over the ark, but they did it in a way that God didn't command. God says: I am going to give you a chance to be able to do, successfully, what they tried to do unsuccessfully. Once a year you can do this, once a year you can recreate Sinai, once a year your cloud can merge with My cloud.

Listen to what Aaron does (Leviticus 16:13):

וְנָתַן אֶת-הַקְּטֹרֶת – He takes the incense,

עַל-הָאֵשׁ לִפְנֵי יְקוָה – he puts it on fire, and there's this cloud of smoke from the incense.

וְכִסָּה עֲנַן הַקְּטֹרֶת – And this man-made cloud of incense covers the כַּפֹּרֶת (kaporet), covers the upper covering of the ark,

אֲשֶׁר עַל-הָעֵדוּת – which is on top of the Ten Commandments.

וְלֹא יָמוּת – And he will not die. 

Where was God? God was in a cloud over the ark, and now there's another cloud over the ark. The human cloud merges with the divine cloud. It's the moment of contact, the most dangerous moment, the moment that you could die. וְלֹא יָמוּת – But do it this way, and you will not die. 

The imperative for this is not forgiveness. You don't do this as a means to some end; you do this as an end in and of itself. Why do we connect to God? Because we connect to God. Because He's our source, because we want our cloud to merge with God's cloud. We don't want the Sinai experience to be a one-off experience in history. We want to recreate it year after year, that direct contact.

The Awe of Encountering God

That's why it's a Day of Awe. To directly encounter your Creator, the One from beyond, the Master of the universe, who made the world? The emotion you have at that possibility is not quite fear, but it very surely is awe. Awe is the sense of being so small in the presence of something so large, so overwhelming. 

Yes, recreating the Sinai experience is an end in and of itself, but nevertheless, that has a byproduct too. כִּי-בַיּוֹם הַזֶּה יְכַפֵּר עֲלֵיכֶם – The byproduct comes at the end. The byproduct is forgiveness. On this day God will forgive you, He will purify you from all of your sins. How is forgiveness a byproduct of contact with the Almighty? Look at the word for forgiveness, יְכַפֵּר (yechaper) – chaf, pey, resh. Where else do we have that word, in this whole story of what you do on Yom Kippur?

That root which we take to mean forgiveness actually was an object in the mishkan (tabernacle), an object which has pride of place in this procedure, in this avodah, which Aaron does on Yom Kippur. Over and over again we hear about this thing in the mishkan. We hear about it seven times in the Torah's account of this avodah. It's the כַּפֹּרֶת (kaporet), the covering of the ark.

The clouds merge over the kaporet. The kaporet is not a forgiveness thing; it's a covering. What if there's another way to read the verse about forgiveness? כִּי-בַיּוֹם הַזֶּה יְכַפֵּר עֲלֵיכֶם – Today, God covers over you. You come into contact with God when the cloud of the Divine merges with the cloud of incense. God covers us; we become enveloped by God Himself. God takes us in לְטַהֵר אֶתְכֶם – and that has a byproduct: It purifies you. We are washed clean by the encounter: לִפְנֵי יְקוָה תִּטְהָרוּ – Before God, you are washed clean.

Forgiveness and Purification

There is a mechanism to Yom Kippur. Forgiveness doesn't come out of the blue; it's not that God waves a magic wand and you are forgiven. You have to let go of your sins. But even after you let go, you are still sullied by the action, you still feel dirtied by it. How do you become washed clean? Through contact, contact with your Maker.

Rabbi Akiva said it (Mishnah Yoma 8:9):

אַשְׁרֵיכֶם יִשְׂרָאֵל – Fortunate are you, O Israel!

לִפְנֵי מִי אַתֶּם מִטַּהֲרִין וּמִי מְטַהֵר אֶתְכֶם – Before whom do you become washed clean, and who washes you clean?

אֲבִיכֶם שֶׁבַּשָּׁמַיִם – Before your Creator in heaven. And he concludes: The way that a mikvah, the pure, clean waters of the mikvah bath, purifies the impure,

אַף הַקָּדוֹשׁ בָּרוּךְ הוּא מְטַהֵר אֶת יִשְׂרָאֵל – so does God purify Israel.

It's exactly the same thing. The mikvah envelopes you. It's like the amniotic fluid. It covers you all over and you emerge reborn, pure. Once a year, God Himself envelops the entire people, like a mikvah. And if we can but let go of our sins, we too can emerge from the encounter unsullied, pure as a newborn child.

Beth: So I love so many things about this piece. It is just such a brilliant read of the Torah text, Rabbi Fohrman showing us how you can set aside what you think you know about something and really read the text and be attentive to what’s being emphasized and what’s not. 

How does it change things for me? Well, to me it means that the holiest day of the year isn’t about beating our chests for having done wrong. It’s about having an experience of intimate encounter with God. Ah, but what if you’ve spent the whole year sinning? Okay, so you need to deal with that before encountering God, because you’re not really going to be able to experience the encounter if you’re not your best self. But all of this forgiveness stuff – it’s secondary. It seems to me to suggest something really fascinating, really exciting, that if we got to some perfected state in which we never sinned all year long, that we would still need Yom Kippur, that God would still ask us to show up, because God would still want to meet with us once a year. 

I’m reminded of something that one of our Aleph Beta fans commented when he first heard this piece, that it kind of takes you back to the relationships that God forged with our forefathers and foremothers. God didn’t reach out to them because they had sins that they needed to atone for, to account for. God reached out because God wanted a relationship. God reached out in friendship, in love. And in a sense, God did the same thing at Sinai. And the surprising idea here, the idea that’s really lingering for me, is the idea that God extends that same gesture, that same contact, to every generation. So I’ll be taking that with me into Yom Kippur this year. 

I hope this piece was meaningful for you. I wonder if it changed things for you, and as always, would love to hear how.

Credits

This episode was written and recorded by our lead scholar, Rabbi David Fohrman. 

When this episode originally aired on Aleph Beta, it was edited by Rivky Stern. 

Into the Verse editing was done by Sarah Penso.

Our audio editor is Hillary Guttman. 

Our editorial director is me, Imu Shalev. 

Thank you so much for listening.