Yom Kippur

Dear Team Joy,

What does it take to actually begin again?

I have a strained relationship with New Year’s Eve. I always want it to be more than it is. I want there to be someone to kiss, revelatory friendship, and laughter through the air. On this random night, in the middle of winter, I try to shove all my paradoxical desires into an evening (depth and spontaneity, challenge and comfort, new possibilities grounded in meaningful relationships). I want to feel connected to the people around me and closer to the version of myself I know is possible- yet is always slightly out of reach.

With these loaded expectations, the night itself usually falls short. But even so, over the next few days I ground myself in goals for the year, and set about climbing that mountain with the eagerness of someone who has bought all the right gear and has yet to take their first step. For most of us, we quit somewhere up the mountain (usually February) in a heap of sweat, frustration, and defeat. Our imagined ambitions were far bigger when we were on the ground. The reality of chasing them gets more and more difficult with every step. When we do quit, we try to comfort ourselves, thinking, “that mountain wasn’t really worth climbing anyways,” or “turns out I didn’t have the right gear after all.” We leave the mountain, stow away our gear, and go back to continuing as we were before.

For the first time, thanks to Yom Kippur, I think I am beginning to understand why so many of us fail in that transformation.

---

We just passed the Jewish New Year, Rosh Hashanah, which is the wholesome, unsexy version of New Years Eve. We sit together as a family, reflecting on the last year, celebrating a new year of life, eating apples and honey, and going and singing together at Temple.

10 days later comes Yom Kippur, the holiest day of the Jewish Calendar. The two go together to make up the High Holy Days. Like many of us when it comes to religion, I would find myself going through the motions with my family as a kid, doing what I was supposed to do. Which, on this day, is repenting for your sins and fasting, so that you can be sealed for another year in the book of life.

Yes, the book of life. If you tell a kid they need to do something to be sealed in the book of life, chances are they will do it.

Yom Kippur has traditionally been my least favorite holiday. It involves fasting all day long, “repenting for my sins,” and distracting myself from the fact that I am fasting. Growing up, I felt the heaviness of the day in the intensity of the rituals being observed around me… almost like when you stumble into a room laughing and realize everyone around you is serious. You absorb it and try wearing its weight, but it’s not a reflection of your authentic feelings. I mostly just wanted it to be over.

But this year touched my heart differently. I celebrated Rosh Hashanah with the Adventure Rabbi community in Boulder. Rabbi Jamie spoke to us about forgiveness. We speak about forgiveness and forgiving at this time every year, but this formula stuck with me.

Forgiveness: Acknowledging the pain (that you feel or perceive). Acknowledging the moments you fell short + doing something to make it right.

I never understood the importance of Yom Kippur’s work. I thought it was about reducing guilt and being perceived as good (cue striving to be written in the book of life).

During Yom Kippur this year, I didn’t fast (with food) or go to Temple, but I did keep all technology off and pull my journals out from the last year. I read through all my journal entries to try to understand what was top of mind and top of heart over the last year. Who did I need to make amends to? What were the moments I fell short? What pain did I feel and perceive?

As I really wrestled with these questions of trying to forgive and asking for forgiveness, I began to understand some new wisdom from my ancestors.

I think Yom Kippur is about the annual ritual of taking the trash out that is eroding our hearts, so we can move forward in a different story.

When we don’t forgive, we build callouses around our hearts, hardened with hurt. And when we don’t ask for forgiveness, we close off our hearts to the warmth of repaired connections.

When we hurt others, even unintentionally, we are more likely to let those relationships die. We are afraid to acknowledge and see who we really were in them. It’s easier to slink away in shame, instead of recognizing the pain we may have caused and doing the work it takes to show up and repair the relationship.

During the last year, I have ghosted people instead of delivering a hard, weird, or imperfect message about how I was feeling. I tried to ignore my own hurt in service of the relationship, but overtime, I let resentment build, slowly pulling away and letting the relationship crumble. I have also refused to forgive, using my anger as fuel to continue to set boundaries.

These actions kept my heart shut, in ways I hadn’t even really understood. I shut people out.

As I sat with my own shortcomings, I began to take the second part of the work to heart - doing something to make it right.

I slowly began sending apologies, and I found it really uncomfortable. There’s never a good time to sit with and acknowledge our shortcomings, and asking for forgiveness is scary. What will the other person say? Especially if the hurt was months ago, and you let it slip bye, but you can’t really bring the relationship back into integrity without acknowledging it? It’s hard work. By really looking at my actions, and putting words to them for someone else, allowed me to begin to own them.

As I wrote them out, however imperfectly, I began to feel lighter. Like the trash really was being taken out, and I was creating more space for love to regrow in its place.

This beautiful annual practice is what I believe is going to allow me to move forward with less shame and guilt, and more honesty, openness, and connection in my life this year. To truly become closer to the person I imagine myself being.

New Year’s Eve is about visions of who we can be. I love visions, don’t get me wrong— they are a fantastic practice for imagining who we can be.

But I sense the work of imagining needs to be balanced with the work of making amends and offering forgiveness for who we have already been.

We can’t move forward, if there are rocks holding us down.

Even if you do not observe Jewish holidays, I encourage you to reflect on the things that you have let harden your heart. Is there someone you need to forgive? Someone you need to apologize to? We all have them, and they don’t go away in a day. BUT, by being willing to search our hearts for that hurt and shame, we can loosen their grip a bit, find more space, and ideally let go of some of the loops we are stuck in. We can begin to live into a new story.

It’s always a good time to begin again.

Much love,

Isabel