Judge Dennis Davis
The Liturgy of Yom Kippur

Judge Dennis Davis - The Liturgy of Yom Kippur

- to everybody, and I hope this will be a wonderful, peaceful, joyous year for all of us. I suppose given the bleakness of the particular year that’s just gone by, one wouldn’t want to tempt fate by saying it can’t get worse, but one can only hope for the best. Now, the lecture I’m giving tonight is essentially a double one, if you want, because tonight I was asked to talk to you about just the structure of the Yom Kippur prayers. And then tomorrow night I’m going to play for you some of the music of Yom Kippur, variety of different , and also others. Surprising guests who are going to enter the fray in relation to tomorrow. But this will prevent me tomorrow from having to give long explanations about the various prayers because to some extent, I want to concentrate my fire this evening. And I suppose my purpose here is to give you some guide as to the broad structure of the prayers of Yom Kippur. I know many of you know this. I’m in a massive disadvantage because if I was in a room, you know, I’d ask a whole series of questions and we would know what level I should pitch the thing. Whereas here I am sitting in my miserable hotel room in Johannesburg because I wanted to get back to Cape Town this evening but couldn’t because I had to do the selection and I wouldn’t have been able to otherwise, which is not your problem but mine, and here we are. So, apologies I’m going to start very simply, and I’m going to go on to sort of drill down to some of the really essence of the day.

The thing that strikes one about Yom Kippur services is that firstly they’re incredibly long, and I’d be very interested in some of your reaction to this because it seems to me that in many shows, mine too, we’ve tried to curtail the services, shorter services, partly because of response to COVID, partly because there’s a sense that people don’t want to sit the whole day in show on a sort of series of prayers that may not be entirely meaningful. But it starts off with the Kol Nidre, and I’m going to come back to Kol Nidre in some detail. But once we’ve done Kol Nidre, we move on to Mirev and the Mirev service, the evening service is different to any other evening service for at least two reasons. One is it’s the only night of the year where everyone wears a tallis. So we all, in a sense, in a community where we wear a tallis, we embrace the spirituality of the day. And the second aspect is that apart from what is normally a very short evening service, we have something, we have a lot of these , liturgical poetry, beautiful music. I often used to say to my father when I was small, listening to the great Hazzan Koussevitsky, it would be so nice that we want to go home and have a meal after this ‘cause the music’s so beautiful. But I know that we’re in for the long haul here. And so the evening service, the Mairev service, essentially is therefore an expanded version of the normal evening service. We then move on to the first morning, and again, the themes of the morning service are the two fundamental ones. Forgiveness and repentance, which come up over and over again.

And throughout the services, we get the , the confession, which starts with an aleph, and ends right at the end of the alphabet, and which ultimately encompasses every possible conceivable sin, and of course we say , the sins that we sin. We do that as a community, but we do it also. The personal confession . We have transgressed in all sorts of manner of means. And then comes the reading of the Torah, always an interesting indication. And the most interesting aspect about the reading of the Torah is of course, the . And I would recommend to anybody either the Hebrew, or if you can’t read the Hebrew, in the English, literally to read that particular . The biblical reading from Isaiah 57-58 and what the prophet does there is to criticise the very superficial religious rituals of the ancient Israelis. When the rites are not accompanied by acts of righteousness, charity, morality. In short, a commitment to change the world. It strikes me forcibly that when you read this particular, . It’s the which ultimately talks to us. It talks to us because it says, alright, so you’ve come to shul and you’ve put on your kittle, and your white kittle and you’ve got your trainers on 'cause you shouldn’t wear any leather, and you’re fasting the whole day, and you’re doing all of the rituals. What does it really mean? Where’s the moral commitment that underpins this? Is this the kind of farce, which in fact God has proclaimed for us? And the answer obviously that Isaiah gives is not, it is in a foundationally important. And then when we finish that, we move on to the additional . Incredibly long service, not because the actual does long, it’s not as long as the . But what is particularly interesting, of course, are two components which mark out the day. Firstly, the whole issue of the martyrdom, which is really a long mediaeval poem that describes in painful, gruesome detail, the deaths of famous rabbis during ancient Roman persecutions. It also includes additions from the time of the Holocaust, and it’s intended as it were, to impress upon us the spiritual devotion of our ancestors to intensify the emotional tenor of the day.

Whenever I read this, I always think of something which we’ve discussed previously in lockdown, which is that remarkable, and I think I did this with David Pima some while back, which was a remarkable trial, which the rabbis conducted, caught, attempting to deal with the question of whether God was guilty for the Holocaust. And of course proper trial takes place, these great rabbis in Auschwitz then find God guilty. And once they found him guilty and the sin is proclaimed, they then all get together and say, okay, let’s drive . Let’s do the afternoon service. And it’s a sense, I think, that when you look at the martyrdom, it’s attempt to instil in us that despite all the gloominess, despite all the vicissitudes of Jewish history, at the end of the day, at the end of the day, there is that kind of tradition of commitments, and the service by looking at the martyrs focuses on that. And then comes a central feature of the entire service, which is the service. The service which essentially was that which was performed during the days of the temple in Jerusalem in ancient times, and in the entire service is based on biblical precedent, and it essentially derived from rabbinical and Talmudic sources, and it describes the highlights of the pageantry, if you wish. And if you guys like the funeral of the queen, well, this is a fascinating discussion here of the pageantry which accompanied the high priest over the Yom Kippur period, and the role of the Levites in the temple.

And of course, you know, this is continuously bowing down. It’s the sort of time where in the sort of early afternoon, one gets a bit of aerobic benefit by jumping literally kneeling and up and down. And it really it describes the entire services as a central part. Then comes we finish off . In some shuls, there’s a break. In the old days, I suspect there’ll be much longer breaks now, and then comes . The additional service. And the thing about , which is particularly important, is that we read the book of Jonah. A most curious text, and we could spend the whole of the rest of this hour talking about the book of Jonah in the sense that what is it all about? Jonah seems to be the most pathetic priest that ever walked this earth compared to the fire and brimstone of Isaiah, Jeremiah, Amos, et cetera. He’s reluctant, he doesn’t really want to be a priest, he’d like to have as a good Jewish boy, he’d like to have some other job not to be a priest. And we all know that when he is instructed to go to Nineveh, he seeks to run away. And of course what is going on here which is so interesting, is there is a destiny that he has been enjoined by God to fulfil, to go to the land, to the city of Nineveh, great city, and warn them about their sins so that they should repent and that the city shouldn’t be destroyed.

Now immediately you read that, there should be one major thought that comes through your mind, and that thought is, the one thought that comes through is this. That what a strange thing we’ve been going on about Jews and Judaism, and we’re worried about ourselves and sons of forthright Yom Kippur. And when we get to late afternoon, exhausted from an entire day of prayer, no eating, of no drinking, and we’ve coming literally into the home straight, we read about our prophet who’s instructed to save the city of Nineveh, not Jews. And this is central to our liturgy at the time, and question is, what’s going on here? Well, many things are going on. It shows that in fact we have to focus our attention on more than our own particular group. That in fact this is something which affects the whole world. That truths here, that prophet has an obligation to save the city of Nineveh from its trials and tribulations. Of course he wishes to hide from this. And we know the story that he goes down to the port, which apparently should have been Tyre. And when he gets there, gets on the boat, we know the story there that the boat gets into unbelievably choppy seas and eventually the sailors have a greater sense of the power of God than he does, and they throw him overboard, he’s swallowed by the whale, and all of a sudden, of course, he’s given a second chance.

And that second chance means he’s then instructed, the whale spews him out to go back to the city of Nineveh, and he doesn’t do so particularly graciously because there are a number of interesting issues. That people don’t need his persuasion to repent. They repent, all of them. And he’s very, very kind of mean spirited about this, he moans and groans about that particular act of the people of Nineveh. And in a way, I suppose the book is focusing attention on one’s moral responsibilities, one’s lack of generosity. The fact that the book is focusing on the saving of humankind, not just of Jews. And it’s really interesting, and if you combine that with in Isaiah where there’s no distinction made about per people, then it does seem to me that there’s a universal image of the universal messenger, which is particularly profound. And it is curious choice, a curious choice to actually focus on this particular book in the services as a dominant feature of the service. And then finally, unlike any other part of our liturgy, we come to , the final service. And here literally means closing. It refers to the symbolic closing of the gates of heaven, and therefore God’s willingness to hear the prayers of us all.

There’s a spiritual urgency motivating prayer at the service. Sun begins to set, and most people lightheaded and exhausted from this long day of fasting and praying, and yet here they are effectively returning in some ways to the early structure of the prayers. The prayers of penitence which begin the entire circle of the 10 days of penitence. And in fact, the whole month as we lead up to Yom Kippur. There’s a kind of circular flow of the prayers, and the doors of the arc remain open. And for those of us who can, we’re supposed to stand throughout this particular period. There’s a sense in which holiness has descended upon the shul, and we are there in a sense, deferring to that spirit, to the as it were, in a desperate attempt to finally lift our spiritual levels in urgent prayer. And you may remember, and the prayer ends quite dramatically. We first do , and I’ll speak about that tomorrow night. And when we finish with , we have a caddish. Generally if we do it in that wonderful way in which the great . It’s really dramatic when you get . You know, everybody cannot resist actually singing in full throat. And then we say, . God is effectively the only sovereign. And we end with seven final points of prayer. It is a dramatic ending to an extraordinary day. And as we say, seven times as a confirmation of our belief in God, and in fact in divine providence.

Now I’ve gone through 'cause I wanted to give you the structure. Let’s start right at the beginning. Kol Nidre. What a service. Have you ever noticed how we begin Kol Nidre? We say with the permission of heaven and the permission of Earth, we are now entitled to pray with the . Who are the and what’s going on here? Firstly, the are those who were excommunicated. There was another group who had converted, but it wasn’t about them. The were the excommunicated ones, who essentially were allowed back into the Yom Kippur service. And we had this formulaic presentation of with the permission of heaven and the permission of the congregation, almost a kind of legal incantation of an invitation to those who essentially had drifted away, and had been excommunicated if they wished to rejoin the community. I’ve always thought that an extraordinary moving beginning to the entire day that I’ve rushed through in describing. Why do I say that? I say that because it seems to me that what we’re doing is embracing every Jew. We really have a say . Each Jew is responsible one for another. We’re not interested in whether somebody is religious, irreligious, reformed, Orthodox, conservative, agnostic. Doesn’t matter. You’re Jewish, you want to come to shul. We’re not going to even ask you questions because even if you’ve been excommunicated and you’re there on Yom Kippur, we say publicly, you are welcome to be here, and I really say this in a sense rhetorically.

I wonder to what extent amongst fundamentalists in particular, of which there’re far too many within our tradition today, do they really grasp the essential core of that particular phrasing, which we say before we begin anything of the five services to which I’ve made reference, and then we begin with Kol Nidre. What’s your most peculiar prayer? I mean, it’s extraordinary. Have you read it? It sounds like a document which seeks to exempt somebody from liability for any kind of oath that they may have in fact sworn to. In other words, it’s almost like a legal document in which we actually all say, oh, well, doesn’t matter the oaths that we have sworn, we are entitled to be exonerated from them. I’ll come back to some of that aspect in the moment, but it is interesting that conceptually, our shul, your shul, all shuls are really nothing more than a courtroom on that night. So next Tuesday night, wherever you are, your shul will be a courtroom, a courtroom in which effectively this will be the plea. This will be the plea of the Hazzan, or the person who leads your service who’s basically your senior council. Your queen, your king’s council now in England, or your senior council in South Africa, who ultimately is arguing on behalf of the entire community presenting a case before the heavenly court and before the entire community as to why that which we swore was ultimately to be annulled. It’s the most peculiar formulation.

It’s not really a prayer, and yet it’s the most famous single prayer in the entire Jewish literature. Everybody knows about Kol Nidre. I was particularly struck as a small child going to the with my father. And in fact, if you talk about tradition, what does the Yom Kippur really mean to me? When I think about it, it means going to shul with my parents and a sense feeling in a small way that I was a cog in this grand tradition. And on that night, I remember . There were all these people who were standing at the back. They were not those of you who remember that shul. It was a whole sort of area where you could walk through. It was packed, and they obviously didn’t have seats. And some of them were relatives of mine, and many of them I remember were members of the South African Communist Party, which many Jews who came out from Eastern Europe during that early period of the 20th century were in fact communists one way or the other. Many of them were central to the South African Communist Party or the Communist Party of South Africa as it was at the time. And somehow there they were on Kol Nidre. They listened to Koussevitsky who did it better than anybody else, and I searched desperately for a recording of his so I could play at you tomorrow night, but I can’t find it. So I’ve got I think a very fine substitute, be that as it may.

And I thought to myself, what are they doing here? And some are even these people who had basically come from Eastern Europe and been and basically knew, but they drifted far apart from the tradition. They were communists. But somehow the call of Kol Nidre brought them in. So what is it about Kol Nidre that has such a mystical, such an extraordinary spiritual significance? And it’s certainly the music is particularly important. We’ll talk about the music a little bit tomorrow, but it can’t be the music. And in addition to which, if you think about it, it’s a very bad PR exercise for Jews. I mean, on the earliest day of the year, we Jews get up and we say, you know, all the oaths that we committed, whoo, they’re annulled. You know, don’t take us seriously. It doesn’t seem to be a particularly advisable proposition. Now, various explanations have been given. Many, many books have been written about the significance of Kol Nidre, and I’m honing in on it because I wanted to emphasise for you just how important this is to the very trajectory of the entire day. And the Kol Nidre, the one . Ah the Kol Nidre is basically there because those who had converted during the Spanish inquisition to Christianity, they could come to shul, and they would then be able, as it were to say, that vow that I committed at the time when I converted from Judaism to Christianity, I want you to know certainly before God and before my community. Well, there are a number of objections, problems with that theory, and the first is that, well, unfortunately we know from the sources that call Kol Nidre appears about 500 years earlier, around about the eighth century. Not the 13th, 14th century.

And even if it did, it’s a strange thing that if you’d converted to Christianity, that you would then rock up and fool on Yom Kippur in a public event and basically say, I’m really Jewish because clearly if you were found out to be that, death was the only consequence that would flow there from. So that can’t possibly be that that was the answer. So what is it about Kol Nidre that ultimately is at the source of the explanation for its importance and its centrality to the entire service and the entire meaning of Yom Kippur? There obviously could be a series of answers, but the one that seems strikes me as particularly interesting is one that I derive from a given by Chief Rabbi Jonathan Sacks. . May he be remembered for always in great blessing. In which he spoke about the following. What is happened on Kol Nidre now. Sorry, on Yom Kippur, the 10th day of Tishrei? Well, what happened was that Moses came down with a second set of tablets, and the Jewish people were saved, and he had gone up, he had negotiated with God. God has basically allowed the Jewish people to survive, and the assured that the background was that as a result of that, the Jewish people were not executed, as it were, or killed, given their sin of the golden calf. They were given a second chance.

Moses come down to the tablets and what is Yom Kippur? It commemorates that very day. It commemorates that very day. In other words, and how do I know that? Well, many ways we know that. But we know that amongst in the book of the Leviticus. “For on this day, atonement shall be made for you to cleanse you of all your sins that you shall be clean before the Lord.” In short, Yom Kippur is the commemoration of the fact that because God centrally forgave us at the time of Yom Kippur, now in a way, we use that day as it were, as the source of our belief that with a great deal of prayer, commitment, giving to charity and reflection, we can in fact be cleansed of that which has put us off the golden path. But there’s more. Rabbi Sacks refers to a Midrash, Midrash Rabba. Fantastically interesting. A midrash which says the following, Moses goes up to heaven, Moses goes up to heaven, meets God, and by the way, this is obviously based on the source of Moses having an argument with God about the fact that God wants to destroy the people. And God says to Moses, I’ve taken an oath to destroy the Jewish people after the sin of the golden calf. And that’s the end of it, goodbye. You know, if you want to stay, that’s fine with me, but that’s as far as it goes. Nobody else is going to survive this apocalyptic event because of the sin of the golden calf.

Somehow, Moses is able to persuade God, then in fact God can actually, as it were, act contrary to the oath that he had sworn. How does Moses do that? What’s the argument? Midrash poses? And the answer is this. Moses says to God, “You told me, you taught me` that if you commit an oath and you feel that that oath cannot be fulfilled, that upon reflection, it’ll be wrong to essentially fulfil the importance of the oath that you have sworn. What you do is you go before a rabbi and you explain to the rabbi that the oath you took really upon reflection should not be implemented, and the rabbi will listen to you. And if necessary, the rabbi will release you from the commitment of that oath.” The Midrash says that Moses puts on a tallis, and he says to God, “Now you come and tell me why in fact the oath should not be fulfilled.” And he then says to God, “Just as a human being can be as it were released from a father he committed or swore before a rabbi, so I release you of the vow which you have committed to destroy the Jewish people because you know upon reflection that that would not be right.”

Now obviously this is a metaphorical kind of explanation, but what it’s trying to suggest to us that Kol Nidre reflects to some extent precisely that. That effectively, that on the day of Yom Kippur, we are able to essentially say, well, we did commit these oaths, but we’ve not been strong enough to fulfil them. They’ve been ill-advised, and ultimately we can change the trajectory of our lives, but we need to be released from these. Just like you, God, were released from yours. And in a sense, it’s therefore a quintessential example of taking what is perhaps a ritual or an event, and trying to develop some lesson from it. And the fundamental lesson that we learned for the entire entire process of Yom Kippur is that what is the whole process of repentance about? It’s about changing the past, it’s about our ability to reflect on that which we’ve done in the past, and to have the reflective power to say that was wrong. I will never do that again and therefore, where I committed an , a sin in the past, confronted with exactly the same circumstances, I will now commit a . And so what the Midrash is telling us is number one, the power of the human being to change the trajectory of his or her destiny, and in a way, the authority of Moses’s ability to change the mind of God, which by the way, has an earlier source when Abraham seeks to change the mind of God when it comes to the people of Sodom and Gomorrah. But he wasn’t quite as persistent as Moshe Rabbeinu was.

The fact is that’s the deal. The deal is that Judaism believes foundationally in the power of the human being to actually exploit their own spirituality to such an extent that confronted with a particular event of the past, we will do exactly the opposite and only for good going things. And that really is the central theme of the whole of Yom Kippur. And that’s why we say Kol Nidre because we essentially are looking at that event and the Midrash tries to tell us why because it commemorates that event when God finally accepted that the Jewish people should continue. He was persuaded, destiny changed because of the intervention of human beings. Now that may well be a but that’s not the point that I’m making. The point is that the power of Yom Kippur, the power of Yom Kippur is essentially our reflective ability to change the trajectory of our lives. And that is really, I think, the foundation of the whole of the in services, and it most certainly is the foundation of Yom Kippur. And of course we are told, if you look at the , which is the chapter of the Talmud which deals with Yom Kippur, we’re told this. Rabbi Yehuda says that for all the transgressions in Torah, whether one repented or did not repent, Yom Kippur atones with the exception of mocking his friend, and interpreting the Torah falsely, and violating the covenants of the flesh i.e . In these cases, if one repents, Yom Kippur atones these sin.

And if one does not repent, Yom Kippur does not atone for this sin. Obviously the point we made that Yom Kippur essentially focuses our own attention. And yes, the sins which commit to God automatically the fact that we are there nulls those. But the rest, no it doesn’t. What it does is it suggests that we try our best to use to return. That’s what is. To return to a more pristine . And it’s a wonderful custom that many people adopt. I try to do it myself, trouble is my list is so long that it takes me years to do it, which is to apologise to everybody that I’ve basically hurt or insulted during the year and to ask them for forgiveness, and it seems to me a very wonderful custom because it reflects all of what I’ve been trying to say. So that’s Yom Kippur, that is… Sorry, that is the Kol Nidre. I want, if I may, to move on to the central prayer of the service. I’ve spoken at great length about the , that is the prayers of which take place in the and the martyrs. But the central prayer of Yom Kippur is the same central prayer that we prayed during , and it’s a very complicated prayer. I’m going to play two versions in the for you tomorrow night. So it will save me from saying a lot more about it. But is a . That means it’s a liturgical poem. Recited only on , and it essentially, there’s a long history about Rabbi Maimon who in the 10th century was very friendly with the governor of the town of Mainz, where he was, and effectively Rabbi Maimon and the governor who were so friendly, the governor said, you know, it’ll be wonderful if you converted to Christianity.

And the Rabbi Maimon said, let me think about this for three days. When he went home, rabbi was so mortified by the fact that he’d even suggested the idea that he could contemplate the notion of conversion, that he was just totally bereft. And he said to the governor, “I’m sorry, I can’t do this, and for that you should cut out my tongue for having even suggested that I should convert and that I would think about it.” And the governor, in a sort of quintessentially cruel way, “We’re not going to cut out your tongue, but I am going to cut off your legs that you refused to come to me, and I’m going to torture you brutally.” And all of that occurred, and on Yom Kippur, Rabbi Maimon was dying and he was brought into shul, and he said, , which I think was basically captured by Rabbi one of the sages thereafter, and became a central prayer of our service. Now whether that is true or not, it’s the traditional way of explaining its history, but it’s a frightening prayer. It’s terrifying. It’s meant to wake us up to the fact that during that year, some will live, and some will die, and some will be enriched, and some will go poor, and some will suffer in all sorts of other ways. It lists many unexpected ways that people can die by fire, by water, by sword, by beast, by hunger, by thirst, by pestilence, by earthquake. Now many of these may be beyond human prevention, it’s true. But it calls on us to think about our lives, it calls upon us to actually think that so much of our life really hangs by a thread.

And whether in fact the idea of God, as the prayer says, sitting in a courtroom, human beings coming past them, he decides what’s going to happen to everyone. that is certainly theologically very challenging for me because I don’t believe in the idea of the , that everything is preordained. I think that that leads us down the garden path to a form of an anthropomorphic Judaism, of a fundamentalism, which actually has no thinking at all about it entire tradition. In other words, does God really reward us automatically for good behaviour, and punish us for bad? When people die in some tragic way, is it God decreeing that that’s based in past actions? I find it very hard to believe that that’s what our tradition says. But the idea, the idea that our tradition effectively holds on to the notion, to the fundamental notion that life is very fragile, and that there we are on Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur thinking about that, thinking about how in fact life can be so fragile, and that we shouldn’t think that we ourselves can be such masters and mistresses about destiny, that we don’t have to care about anything is not an unimportant feature. So I think with all the theological difficulties, and one of my great mentors, used to tell me that he thought the prayer was very goyish, very Christian theology, and wasn’t very happy with it. But I think it does help us to reflect on precisely the fragility of life.

And then please remember one thing. We end by saying, at the end of that prayer, after we said . We are put into the book and we finally inscribed and sealed on Yom Kippur. Remember this, we say it at the end. Repentance, prayer, and charity. But more than charity, righteous acts are those which can avert the evil decree. Again, it comes back to the theme that I’ve been pressing, that for Jews, nothing is preordained because it all remains like this. Yes, we can’t live forever. Yes, it’s true that ultimately we will all certainly pass away. But when that happens and how that happens is not necessarily automatic, and the manner in which we contribute to the world, and to our lives, and to the community at large, well, that depends on our actions, which is why we end this extraordinarily difficult and challenging theological prayer by saying . The notion of prayer of repentance. But more than repentance, the kind of reflective power of reconstruction and of righteous deeds, those are central.

So there’s one other aspect I’d like to just draw your attention to about Yom Kippur, which is peculiar before I end. That, you know, for most of us Jews, we like a good fresh, you know? I mean, . You sit down with a family, you have a good meal, and a long schmooze and probably talk about how terrible the rabbi’s sermon was. I kind of feel this might happen to me tonight, but nonetheless have a good . That’s fine with me. But the interesting thing is Yom Kippur, we fast the whole day and yet what does the Mishna say? There were no greater joys in Israel greater than . That’s the Mishna Talmuds, right? In other words, what he’s saying is that Yom Kippur is perhaps the most joyous day of the year. When the Talmud encounters his Mishna, it reacts simply and naturally. Of course Yom Kippur is one of the most joyous days of the year. For it’s the day when sins are forgiven, it’s the day when we’ve got the opportunity to account. It’s the day when we’re confident that we can account that we have the spiritual path to do so. It’s remarkable. It’s absolutely remarkable that Yom Kippur is not regarded as a day of bleakness, of gloominess.

• It’s a day when we’re absolutely joyous by giving us the opportunity to essentially transcend our past, and to begin a fresh spiritual process. And perhaps for that reason, let me conclude with one of the prayers we say. I’ll just read in English. Our God and God of our fathers, forgive our… If I can get the light here. Forgive our inequities on this day of atonement. Blot out and remove our transgressions and sins from before your eyes. As you said, I alone am he who blots out your transgressions for my own sake, and your sins I will not recall. And you said, I’ve swept away like a thick cloud your transgressions, and like a mist, your sins return to me for I have redeemed you. So Yom Kippur is not necessary return to some person in the sky. It’s the return to our better natures, to our better selves, and essentially it gives us the power to do that. And the fact that we’ve got an opportunity to do that should be a day of joy. How many times have we thought to ourselves, if only I hadn’t done that, that would be so much better. Yom Kippur is a day in which you say, not only I did do that, and now I’m going to make sure I never do that again. It is central to the entire liturgy of Yom Kippur, and I’m going to end there and tomorrow, I’m going to play you a whole series of recordings, different recordings of some of the stuff that I’ve discussed, and a few that I haven’t for your enjoyment, and for the recollection of the tradition. But I’m happy to take questions now if there are any. Let me just get that.

Q&A and Comments:

Q: Dr. Colin literally says, “You mentioned the service, but when exactly were they written incorporated?”

A: It’s a long period, Colin. Over a long period seventh, eighth century and even before. Some of them come from the Talmud, some of them come from the 10th, 11th and 12th centuries I’ve indicated. It’s a long development of the that we have today. Slightly different in and traditions, but there they are.

Carol, “You talk about the fact that Yom Kippur is the only time everyone wears a tallis. Don’t forget that a significant part of the people attending the service are women” I said, everyone wears a tallis, Carol. If you want to wear a tallis, please wear one, and there should be no reason why you shouldn’t. And if you don’t like the shul that you’re in because they don’t allow you to do so, go to one that allows it. There should be no reason why you shouldn’t. Not in the 21st century.

Steven, “The point is that those that normally wear a tallis did not do so at evening. Well this evening they do wear a tallis.. Whether or not women wear a tallis, there’s no bearing what happens.” Yes, I agree, but I actually think that, you know, I come from an egalitarian tradition.

Romian, “Sounds like a bit of a focus and extent of an imitation and regrets. Feels like less of a spiritual message can be absorbed from God in a much needed warning.” Yes, there is a warning, but there is a spiritual message that we have the capacity to change the world. We say, , which is a central prayer to change the world and the image of God. Not that God should change the world, that we should do so. And one of my great heroes, Abraham Joshua Heschel, of course when he says, you know, God in search of man, of course it should be men and women. What he basically says is that the job is ours, not God’s. God awaits us to do it, and that’s what Yom Kippur is really saying.

Q: Francine says, “I’m sorry, I do not understand why we need Yom Kippur, Kol Nidre. Why can’t Yom Kippur today?

A: Well, because I’ve tried to explain to you that Kol Nidre essentially is a symbolic entry, and it is a central prayer because it commemorates that vital moment, which is in our tradition, namely that we were saved on that particular day. And more than that, because if God was prepared to accept the fact that his vows were not necessary to be adhered to, we human beings have a similar entitlement.

In Abraham’s dialogues is Austin with God to persuade him not to destroy the cities of Sodom, he did obtain agreement not to do so if he could provide 10. Moses already the percentage of who did not persuade. Yes, that’s true, but I think the better explanation, Austin, is that Moses in this sense was greater than Abraham because Abraham stopped. What happened if there have been two or three? Moses basically was the one. He said, I’m not prepared to accept any basis by which you, God, are prepared to destroy the Jewish people. I think his argument, let me put it this way. He was an advocate more invested in my case than perhaps Abraham was.

Q: Barbara, "What was said to music? It’s twice as heavy and awesome as the music.”

A: Oh, it certainly is. There are many, many different versions of Barbara, from all over. I think one of the great ones was Yossele Rosenblatt, late 19th century, early 20th century. And of course your question about sending music, I tried to discuss this last time that I spoke, but Cantorial music, of course it comes into its own in the 19th century and some of it I agree. One thing about this, I’ll tell you this. I agree with you. I love to have a great . It has a serious power to it that perhaps most of us can’t have.

Thank you very much, Miriam.

Evan, we all try to turn from our sins and hope we do not do again in the future. Most of the time we sin again. Yes, we do because we’re fallible, but Yom Kippur comes around every year just to ask us to do better, and that the best we can.

Thank you very much, Allan, and thank you very much, Mariam.

Steven, “Hasheem has made a vow to Abraham for Israel twice.” Stars in heavens and grains of sand. If God was prepared , then the Brit could be given the same opportunity. Yes, it’s a good point. It’s a good point that Moses… Sorry, that God had made that covenant with Abraham. And most certainly, I don’t want to repeat a sermon I did on second day. Not that anybody heard, but that’s not the point. But essentially the point being that it is true that after the sacrifice of Isaac, or the non sacrifice of Isaac, that essentially sealed the covenant, which continues. That’s why in Rosh Hashanah, when we come to at the end of a long period of what’s called , remembrance, we say . We recognise the covenant. What is the covenant? The covenant stems from the . So it is absolutely true that he would’ve had to go back on that, but his attitude at the time was what was the point of people who themselves had in a sense torn up the covenant? They tore up the covenant with me when they effectively committed the sin of the golden calf. That’s what the tradition teaches us. Sorry, let me put my glasses back on.

Serena, “Hazzan Jacob on YouTube. I shall look for that. I shall look for that. Thank you very much to everybody. I shall tomorrow night, spend with you a time where we can enjoy the music together, and I hope you will. I can’t possibly now do all of the recordings that I’d like to, but I wanted to give you a taste of different recordings, different interpretations, and one or two which are perhaps outliers, which I hope you’ll enjoy.

Have a good evening and again, to everybody.