Yom Kippur - You Can't Hide From The Truth

GOOD AFTERNOON!! This Shabbat is the Jewish festival of Yom Kippur. It’s a 25 hour fast from sunset on Friday until dusk on Saturday. And it means missing not one, but 2 England games, but such is life. The idea of fasting on Yom Kippur is not to afflict ourselves in atonement for our transgressions as some might believe. Rather, the Rabbis explain, Yom Kippur is a day when God draws near, so to speak. We have the ability to be like angels, purely spiritual beings. When the spiritual world is all there for the taking, who could possibly have any interest in the mundane and petty activity of eating? All the more so, a person focused on the spiritual potential of the day would have no desire to watch England play either!

Davar Torah

Yom Kippur - You Can't Hide From The Truth

In the famous story of Jonah, which we read on Yom Kippur, God tells Jonah to go to Nineveh and tell them that if they do not mend their ways within 40 days, the city will be overturned. He sails in the opposite direction and is immediately caught up in a raging storm. The men on the boat throw Jonah into the sea and he is swallowed by a large fish (not necessarily a whale). The storm abates and Jonah spends a number of days inside the fish until it eventually spits him out onto the shores on Nineveh.
 
Jonah proceeds to announce his prophecy in Nineveh and, quite unbelievably, the king himself leads his country in a return to righteousness.
 
There are many messages in the story and I wish to point to one of them.
 
Truth will catch up with you in the end. In Jonah’s case, via a storm and a whale, it caught up with him quite dramatically and immediately. With most of us, the process is slower and more subtle, though perhaps no less dramatic in its intensity.
 
I don’t want to presume whether Amanda Knox, for example, is guilty or innocent. But if she was involved in what happened, her successful appeal will by no means be the end of the story for her. You can run from truth, but ultimately there is nowhere to hide. If she was involved and does not take responsibility for what she has done, it will haunt her for the rest of her life, no matter how good a show she puts on – and, we Jews believe, for all eternity. I hope, for her sake, that either she is innocent or that she owns up to what she has done.
 
People often question God’s existence by saying there is no reward and punishment in this world. And the answer often given is that justice is reserved only for the world to come. However, I believe that there is very much an aspect of justice in this world. Good deeds are rewarded with a deep and lasting feeling of satisfaction and bad deeds are rewarded with a deep and lasting feeling of pain and disappointment.
 
No matter how much frustration and sacrifice we might go through to be good, it’s all worth it simply for the satisfaction of being good. No extra reward is necessary. Equally, no matter how much simpler doing the wrong thing might make our lives; no matter how much superficial benefits it might bring; nothing can make the lasting pain of disappointment with ourselves worthwhile.
 
Ultimately, there is nowhere to run from ourselves. We have a simple choice – choose goodness and be rewarded by knowing that we are good. Or choose otherwise and suffer the pain of knowing that there are eternal consequences to the decisions we have made. Whoever killed Meredith Kercher must live with the fact that he or she is a murderer for all eternity.
 
Shabbat Shalom and well over the fast
Rabbi Shaul Rosenblatt

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