Standing Before the Judge

Yom Kippur 2005

I don't know how many people here have ever had the experience of standing in front of a judge and waiting for sentence to be passed. It's a frightening experience. I was only there once, and i can attest, once was one time too many. (now that i have your attention, i'll tell you this embarrassing, true story) i had just moved to Cincinnati where i was going to rabbinical school. I was driving home through a school zone, you know, those signs with two blinking yellow lights, and i was clocked doing 29 miles an hour in a twenty five mile zone. There weren't any kids there; the school was on vacation. But, as they should, the police took school zones very seriously. I got a ticket and because the charge was speeding in school zone, i spent a long day in court. I was extremely nervous as i was asked to approach the bench. Now, as it worked out, i was lucky and got off with a lecture and a hefty fine. But that was years ago and that experience, the experience of standing before a judge, still remains vivid. (now, i always slow down in school zones.) It's frightening to stand before a judge.

Another name for yom kippur in our tradition is yom hadin, the day of judgement. On yom hadin, the first judge we stand before is much more knowledgeable about the accused than the third circuit court judge in cincinnati was about me. The judge we stand before today knows us all to well, knows the secrets in our hearts, the times that we got away with things and didn't get caught. You can't fool that judge. I'm not talking about god, (or your mother). If you want to approach yom kippur seriously, the first judge you stand before on this holy day is yourself.

Most people think that yom kippur is a time when we stand in judgement before god, but in fact, the most famous prayer we recite on this holiday, the kol nidre, underscores the fact that judgement on this yom hadin is a two-stage process. At the beginning of kol nidre, we present ourselves for judgement first in the yeshiva shel mata , and then in the yeshivah shel maalah , that is, first we consider how we acted "lamata," here in our everyday life. Only after our own assessment and our response to our actions over the past year, are we judged on high.

In our own judgement, there are many questions to consider. Actually, i believe the entire goal of the service is asking the right questions: when we look over the past year, how did we treat our friends? Did we do what we said we were going to do in our organizations, teams and activities? When it comes to money in our lives, have we acted responsibly? Have we taken our resources, or others' resources, for granted? Did we contribute enough to our community? Did we pay enough attention to the people around us who don't have a safe place to live or enough to eat? It's up to us to put ourselves through the first trial on yom kippur. We have to judge how well we've acquited ourselves in these areas. We have to consider where we've done well and where we've fallen short. The first stage in judging ourselves on yom kippur is an appraisal of our actions.

This task can be daunting because sometimes we think we are judging our worth as a person. When i feel that way, i think about this story, something that happened to me during my first semester, freshman year in college. When i came to school, there was a course that i really wanted to take, psychology of religion, taught by an amazing visiting professor. There was limited enrollment, and the course was mostly juniors and seniors. Somehow, i managed to talk my way into the course, the only freshman. It was a great course but, the fact was, i was in way over my head. I did the work but at the end of the semester, i was mortified to see that i got a b- in the course. Now, i was a very good student in high school: i hadn't gotten a b- in my life.

So, i went to talk to the professor and in my frustration, i remember saying something incredibly silly like, " but i don't get b-'s. I'm not a b- person!" the professor looked at me and said, "mr. Summit, i'm quite sure that your an "a" person. But in this course, you wrote a bunch of b- papers. I'm not grading you on who you are, i'm grading you on what you did."

So too, the first step, even if it's uncomfortable, is grading ourselves on what we did. So, after we've reviewed our year and thought carefully about our actions, what's the next step? I think that once we've assessed our actions over the past year, in the upper court we are judged by what we decide to do in response to the misdeeds, to the transgressions, we've committed. Rabbi shalom noach brezovsky of slonim, the slonimer, a contemporary hasidic master, taught something amazing about sin. He said that no one is without sin. Everybody commits sins. But he stressed, the question is only what you tell yourself after you do the sin (netivot shalom). Do you make excuses for acting badly? Do you always rationalize your actions and blame fights on other people? A musician friend of mine, who plays the drums, says the same thing in a different way. He says, "when you are playing and you hit a wrong beat, the issue isn't the wrong beat that you hit. The most important thing is what beat do you hit immediately after the wrong beat." Because, if you assess the rhythm and hit a workable beat in response, the mistake isn't anywhere as bad.

So the question is how we approach our mistakes? Do you have the courage to confront the people you hurt by insensivity or neglect? Do you have a letter hanging over your head that you should have written months ago? You need to write it. Do you owe a friend a phone call, to clear up a misunderstanding, to give an overdue apology? Make the call, send the email. Do you feel like you haven't grown jewishly? Sign up for a course. Start coming to shabbat, or reading a jewish book (i'll give you suggestions). The mantra in the upper court is -don't come to us with problems, come with solutions.

Our lives, and how we feel about ourselves, are made up of a succession of the small things that we do or don't do. Is there something you have to tell someone you love but you've been holding back. Don't hold back from expressing love and thanks and appreciation from the people who are important to you. Is there a way that you've been acting that's self destructive? Now is the time to take the first step and loose that way of acting. Are you locked into some pattern that's keeping you from being the person you want to be? Now is the time to start a new year.

Changing who we are can seem insurmountable but the key to understanding the power of yom kippur is that we don't have to change who we are. We focus on changing what we do. Our tradition teaches that men and women have free will: changing what we do is constantly within our power. And then of course, as we change what we do, we change who we are. Opportunities for teshuvah, for redirection, are before us at every moment.

We will stand before two courts on this yom hadin, this day of judgement. In the first, we carefully examine and weigh our actions. Then in the second, we submit a plan for action, turning towards a new, better direction. I hope that for all of us, this yom kippur is productive. I hope that we'll all have the strength to look carefully at the year that has past and the courage to put ourselves on trial today. I pray that we'll move in the new year inscribed and sealed for blessing and fulfillment.