Kol Nidre, September 21, 2007

I recently asked a young woman in our congregation to lead part of the High Holy Day services.  She made a face--you know, scrunched up her nose with displeasure--and said, “Well, not if it has any of those prayers about ‘sin.’” 

I knew just what she meant.  I flashed on a long-ago memory of my own, when I was about her age.  A work colleague made a passing comment about “people living in sin.”  That was the expression sometimes used years ago to describe a man and a woman who were not married but were living together.  I remember my reaction.  It was as if I had never heard the word “sin” used in a sentence before, and it was jarring.  I realized some time later that the reason both the word and the concept sounded so alien was because I was Jewish.  “Sin” was not a word that I heard in conversation when I was growing up because it was not, and is not, part of the Jewish theological vocabulary and it is not actually part of our liturgy.  Rather, this word is the unfortunate English translation of several different Hebrew words. 

For example, the prayer we said just minutes ago begins:  Al chet  s’cha-ta-nu  l’fa-ne-cha…  The usual translation is “The sin we have committed against You...”  But the Hebrew word “chet” actually means “missing the mark,” like an archer whose arrow goes off course.  To translate this as “sin” loses that meaning at the same time that it has a disconcerting ring to Jewish ears.  Why?  I suggest it’s because the word “sin” is one of those English words whose meaning has taken on additional connotation through its use in Christian theology. 

I think the concept of “original sin” also affects our feelings about this word, because this concept is so contrary to Jewish teaching.  Judaism teaches that our soul is pure, from the moment of birth and throughout our lives.  We assert this each day with the morning prayer that begins, “E-lo-hai  n’sha-ma  sh’na-ta-ta  bi  t’ho-ra  he,”  “My God, the soul that you have given me--it is pure.”  We may transgress, we may miss the mark, we may make bad choices, but our soul began and remains pure.

Hebrew has another often-used word to describe wrongdoing, the word a-vei-ra.  Aveira means “to cross over.”  So an a-vei-ra doesn’t mean a “sin,” it literally means “crossing a line,” that is, consciously crossing a boundary--in this case between right and wrong.

These Hebrew words in our liturgy are ways of talking about making the wrong choice, about crossing boundaries that should not be crossed, about not being on the mark with ourselves and with others.

I am talking about the word “sin” tonight and acknowledging that it doesn’t sound Jewish so that we can move beyond the translation and any distaste we might have about that word.  I am hoping we can look, instead, at what our prayers and Yom Kippur are really about.

Yom Kippur literally means a day of atonement.  To atone is to make amends for a wrongdoing.  To say it more simply, on Yom Kippur we recognize the wrongs we have done in the past year and we strive to set those wrongs right.  We are not talking about heaven and hell, sin and damnation.  Those aren’t Jewish concepts at all.  We are talking about taking responsibility for what we have done wrong, and setting it right.

The very fact that we have a Yom Kippur is because Jews believe in free will.  Otherwise, why have a day of repentance and atonement?  Although the beautiful music of Kol Nidre draws us here tonight, I believe we are also pulled by something deeper.  We recognize a need to examine our lives, to correct our wrongdoings, and to strive each year to be a better human being.  We not only recognize the need, we realize that it is possible.  We have the power of choice.  When confronting a boundary between right and wrong, the step we take is a choice that we make, that we are held accountable for.

The rabbis say that humans have two inclinations:  the yeitzer ha-ra and the yeitzer ha-tov:  the inclination that leads us toward the bad and the inclination that leads us toward the good.  Both of them reside within each of us.  This is the basis of free will:  we choose, moment after moment, which way we will incline.

Let’s go back to the “al cheit”s -- the list of things that our prayer book translates as “sins.”  “The sin we have committed against You… under duress or willfully.  The sin we have committed against You…openly or secretly, with our words, by the abuse of power, by hardening our heart, by profaning Your name, by disrespect for parents and teachers, by speaking slander, by dishonesty in our work, by hurting others in any way.”

Everything on this list is a way we have stepped over a line through our deeds, through our attitudes, or through our speech.  The English word I prefer over “sin” is “transgression.”  To transgress means to go beyond a limit or a boundary.  We know that physically harming another person is overstepping a boundary, but there are ethical and moral boundaries to our behavior, and ethical and moral boundaries to our speech as well. 

Recently a 4-year-old asked me what the ritual of Tashlich means.  I said it was our way on Rosh Hashanah afternoon of getting rid of all the bad things we did last year.  He looked at me seriously and said, “I didn’t do any bad things last year.” After a pause, he said, “Well, maybe I had a fight with my brother last week.  Or maybe not.  I forget.”

Our tradition, in its wisdom, does not want us to forget.  The list of Al Cheits jogs our memory.  To do the work of teshuvah, repentance, and returning to our best selves, we must remember and own up to our transgressions, our failures, the ways we have hurt ourselves and other people. 

The message of the High Holy Days is not that our souls are tarnished or bad.  Rather, it is our deeds that need examining and perhaps correcting.  Our souls are pure.  We are not talking about “sins.”  Rather, we are considering where we have made bad choices, the times we have missed the mark.   We are asked to review the past year and recall our transgressions.  The true work of repentance is to be sorry, remorseful, for the transgressions, repair them in whatever way we can, and finally be ready to turn to the year ahead with the resolve not to transgress again.

And so I say to the young woman who finds prayers about “sin” so distasteful--and I say to all of us as well--let’s move beyond that misleading translation.  Let us admit:  we have missed the mark; we have crossed boundaries in so many ways large and small.  Once we can see our transgressions honestly, then our real work can begin. 

Amen