Yom Kippur 2024

Margaret Holub - 10/12/24

I first learned about the Stolpersteine in Berlin from Mina, after she, daughter of a survivor of the Shoah, returned from her journey to Germany to meet with children of Nazis. The Stolpersteine — literally “stumbling stones” are small brass plaques, about 4 x 4 inches, each inscribed with the name of an individual victim of the Nazis and a bit more personal information, and installed in the sidewalk in front of, as the Stolpersteine website puts it, “their last address of choice.” Almost every stone begins with the words “Here lived…” The website says:

This project commemorates all victims of National Socialism: Jews; Sinti; Roma; Jehovah’s Witnesses; homosexuals; mentally and/or physically disabled people; people persecuted for their political views, their religion, their sexual orientation or the color of their skin; forced laborers; men considered deserters; people who were persecuted on grounds that they were considered “asocial” such as homeless people or prostitutes – anyone who was persecuted or murdered by the Nazi regime between 1933 and 1945.

NB: STOLPERSTEINE are not only placed for people who were murdered, but also for “survivors”. For example, in front of a house in Amsterdam, a STOLPERSTEIN might be placed for a woman who survived Auschwitz alongside two STOLPERSTEINE for her parents who did not. This “reunites” families. Stolpersteine can also be placed for people who were able to escape to Palestine or South America or survivors of concentration camps. The project also commemorates those who were forced by the circumstances to commit suicide.

The Stolpersteine project was conceived in 1992 by German artist Gunter Demnig. Demnig originally personally hand-inscribed and installed every stolperstein. He has personally overseen the wording and installed over 70,000 plaques in many countries in Europe. Beginning in 2005, a second craftsperson has undertaken the hand-carving. Demnig still does the installations. He is on the road 300 days a year.

Many things move me about the Stolpersteine project. One is that Gunter Demnig was born in 1947, two years after the end of World War Two and the Nazi regime. He conceived the project 45 years after his own birth, 47 years after the end of the war.

What does it mean to memorialize a mass atrocity committed before you were born? Who is Gunter Demnig to atone for such public crimes and sins?

Abraham Joshua Heschel famously said that, “in a free society, some are guilty but all are responsible.”

Rabbi Heschel’s larger statement says that “morally speaking there is no limit to the concern one must feel for the suffering of human beings, [that] indifference to evil is worse than evil itself, [that] in a free society some are guilty but all are responsible.”

Far be it from me to argue with such a revered teacher, but here I go: I am not sure what it means to feel limitless concern for the suffering of human beings. Where in our feeling life do we hold such limitless concern? How big is our capacity to feel? What is the nature of that concern out at the far reaches of limitlessness?

To explore this I tried a terrible little experiment. I randomly picked a country about which I know virtually nothing. I picked Tajikistan, because I don’t even know where it is. And I googled “Tajikistan suffering.” Only to read the following, right off the top: “Rape, sexual violence, and forced marriage were widespread. Now, new research suggests that 60% of married women ages 15 to 49 have experienced spousal violence or emotional abuse, rising to more than 90% for women living with disabilities.” (That’s from a report by Human Rights Watch from October 2023.)

Where do I put that terrible information in my heart? Am I indifferent? Not quite. But what is the name for that sad and unsurprised wince when I read those words and then move on to whatever I am doing next?

Is the very weak tea of my momentary concern for women in Tajikistan really worse than the cruel deeds of their abusers. I’m not sure it is.

And finally I am not certain what my responsibility is for this suffering. Undoubtedly there is some in the the US role in global politics, in wealth inequality and in misplaced social priorities. I’m a US citizen and a modest taxpayer. But I am not really motivated to put the work into learning what is my role in marital abuse in Tajikistan. And so I am not really prepared to take responsibility except in the most abstract way.

I am interested in that space that Rabbi Heschel delineates between responsibility and guilt. On the one hand I am moved and inspired by someone like Gunter Demnig, who takes on such responsibility as to memorialize the victims of a crime committed by his country folk before he was even born. On the way other hand I am curious about the moral event I experience every day, and possibly many of you besides, when I read the headlines in the morning and say to myself, “How terrible.” And then I move on, forgetting all but the most general distaste for the events; not the names of the bombed villages, not the number of dismembered children, not the city in which the racist murder was committed, not the number of unhoused people forced out of their encampment in, which city was it again?

I am more than interested in this space — I am tormented by it. What does it mean to care about suffering when I am not going to act to end it and not even really going to commit it to the center of my consciousness? Truthfully most suffering that I care about — or whatever the word is for this regretful, absentminded place I occupy with regard to so much suffering — I am going to do little or nothing about.

Sometimes, probably much of the time, this is because I have very little agency to relieve some particular suffering. I can send money, and about one millionth of the times that I become aware of some place of suffering I do so. But I just give what I can easily spare. I can go to a meeting, read articles, become informed, and thus care in a more informed way. I can make this particular piece of suffering — for example, about Tajikistan — part of my conversation. But I don’t really have the capacity, or the authority, or the power, to take serious responsibility for much of the suffering that touches my heart, whether momentarily or even deeply.

Other times it is because I can’t really identify my own place in the story. For example, much closer to home than Tajikistan, one time long ago Mickey and I were evicted from our rental home. We found another rental. But for complicated reasons another couple was displaced by our moving in. Years later one member of that couple confronted me at the grocery store and demanded an apology and furthermore that I locate his long-ago partner and apologize to her as well. I was happy to apologize. But really, we were as vulnerable as they were. It was the badness of larger structures that none of us had much control over that led to all of this. Probably the proper atonement for that act of displacement would have been for me to work vigorously to change housing laws in Mendocino County, no easy task. But then what about Tajikistan?

I recently attended an Elul gathering centered by soon-to-be rabbi Ilana Sumka. It was called “Palestine: A Collective Teshuvah Process.” The outcome of the teshuvah process was a long, group generated list of al cheyts for injuries committed against Palestinians by Israel. Ilana framed this undertaking very carefully. She acknowledged that, while our attention in this gathering was on Palestine, Jews have been injured as well, both in the present moment and also historically. She further clarified that we rabbis on the zoom did not kill or assault or displace anyone. Soldiers and terrorists did the violence. But, she said, the IDF, the Israeli government, Hamas and the US government are very unlikely to apologize. So, she asked, who is left to atone?

This is one way that I am coming to understand the role of collective confession. There are a number of sins in our Sin Buffet line-up that I haven’t committed. It’s been awhile since I have personally bought too many shoes. I generally do pull over on the road to let faster drivers pass me. (And I’m quite sympathetic to whoever it was who, on the bottom of the card in our Sin Buffet which says “Sexual inappropriateness” wrote, “I wish…”)

But someone has done all these things. And the intention of a Sin Buffet, or a vidui, which says, al cheyt sh’chatanu lfanecha…” for the sin which we have committed before You…” is to meet us in that queasy zone of “all of us are responsible.” We atone together for sins which we did not personally commit because someone did. And we are a community, a people and part of the human race, as well as individual souls. The spiritual efficacy of Yom Kippur is collective, not just individual.

Yom Kippur enacts the journey of the Kohen Gadol to the Holy of Holies. After many purifications, many offerings, many changes of clothing, the High Priest enters the Holy of Holies, speaks aloud the Divine Name and atones for herself and her family, for the priesthood and for the entire nation. And year after year she returns from that encounter radiant.

“Her beautiful visage was like the sun rising powerfully. Invigorated and joyous she donned her own clothing. The wholesome nation escorted their faithful emissary to her home. The people rejoiced when informed that the scarlet wool had turned snow white. It was adorned with salvation, draped in a garment of righteousness, exuding cheer, expressing pleasure and delight…” Even the land sang.

This is the mystery and power of Yom Kippur — that somehow we lift up the confessions for sins that we are barely responsible for —but someone is. And they lift up ours. I don’t think that any of us here has abused our Tajiki wife. And it may be that someone in a shul in Tajikistan, if there is one, is lifting up our sins of excess and greed and despoiling the land. And it all rises up and is cleansed and transformed.

It is true that we need to identify ways in which we are directly culpable for suffering and act as we can to repair them. But then there is that whole miasma of feeling bad for suffering over which we have little responsibility. But someone does. It occurs in our community, in our world. And thank God, thank GOD, that we have Yom Kippur, and within Yom Kippur that we have all those collective confessions. And we can trust that the sins of abusers of all sorts will be lifted up and, there in the Holy of Holies, forgiven and transformed. And we as a people, as a world, can return from that holy place “draped in a garment of righteousness, exuding cheer, expressing pleasure and delight…”

And perhaps through this lifting up, this transforming, the world is lightened and there is space for change to the good. At least I hope so.