c. 2005 Religion News Service

(UNDATED) It’s a good thing the Jewish High Holy Days _ Rosh Hashana (the Jewish New Year) and Yom Kippur (the Day of Atonement) _ will soon be here. The two-day observance of Rosh Hashana begins Monday evening Oct. 3 and Yom Kippur, Judaism’s most sacred day, starts at sunset on Wednesday, Oct. 12 and concludes the following evening.

The central theme of both Rosh Hashana and Yom Kippur is intense introspection followed by tangible acts of contrition and repentance. Special jam-packed synagogue worship services contain specific prayers and music recited only during the two holy days. This year, even more than in the past, I need Rosh Hashana and Yom Kippur as a ten-day period to reflect upon both my personal life as well as the extraordinary stress, division and trauma our nation is experiencing.

Although the ancient rabbis who created the demanding High Holy Day liturgy were not familiar with the term “spin,” as we currently use it, they certainly knew all about self-deception, reckless arrogance and dangerous pride. To crack through the defenses we humans have erected to avoid introspection and an honest reckoning of our lives, a central requirement of Yom Kippur is a daylong fast by adult Jews. Fasting, especially as its physical impact is felt toward the end of the Day of Atonement, compels us to honestly examine our deeds and motives, as well as the series of lies we tell ourselves, our families and friends.

Too bad there isn’t a national Day of Atonement in the United States to confront the spinning that is so commonplace. As a nation, Americans are engaged in continuing wars in Iraq and Afghanistan that have at least one similarity with the Vietnam War. Today’s armed conflicts are dividing Americans from one another at a moment in history when authentic unity is required to successfully meet the threats of lethal Islamic terrorism and the natural catastrophes like Hurricane Katrina that are certain to recur.

My recent visit to the Katrina evacuees in Houston’s Astrodome was a painful reminder of the universal truth embedded in one especially insightful High Holy Day prayer. Because no human is capable of predicting the future, Jews believe God opens a symbolic Book of Life on the New Year, lists the names of those who will survive the New Year, and then closes it on Yom Kippur. Hopefully, during the High Holy Days, acts of repentance, prayer and charity will avert the stern decree and will permit our names to be entered into the Book of Life for the coming year.

But the always realistic rabbis were fully aware of life’s grim uncertainties and they prayerfully wondered during Rosh Hashana and Yom Kippur about the coming year: “How many of us shall pass away and how many shall be born, who shall live and who shall die, who will finish our allotted time on earth and who will not, who will perish by fire, who by water, who by hunger and who by thirst, who by earthquake and who by plague, who shall be at rest and who shall be wandering, who will remain tranquil, and who will be disturbed.”

Clearly, that ancient prayer could have been written about the recent Asian tsunami or Hurricane Katrina.

Both terrifying natural disasters proved again how thin is the veneer of what we like to call “civilization” and “public order.” Once we lose electric power, gasoline, food, drinking water, civil and police authority, transportation, medical care, communications and sleeping facilities, civilization rapidly disintegrates, followed by ugly results that are filled with agony and suffering.

In such chaotic situations, many of us in the coming year will indeed “pass away … die, perish by fire, water … hunger and thirst … will be wandering and disturbed.” And no amount of “spinning” and staged photo-ops by political leaders can conceal that grim reality. In a profound way, the synagogue on Rosh Hashana and Yom Kippur provides a healthy corrective to the sin of excessive self-love: a spiritual “no spin zone.”

MO/JL END RNS

(Rabbi Rudin, the American Jewish Committee’s Senior Interrelygious Adviser, is Distinguished Visiting Professor at Saint Leo University.)

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