By Betzy Lynch in La Jolla, California
Jewish tradition gives us a season each year for cheshbon hanefesh, an accounting of the soul: How did I treat people? Where did I fall short? What can I do differently?
This work intensifies between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur. For wrongs between ourselves and G-d, we seek forgiveness through teshuvah (return). But for wrongs between people, Yom Kippur alone cannot bring forgiveness. We must turn toward the person we have hurt and try to make things right.
Maimonides teaches that we have free will. Our behavior is not predetermined; we are responsible for our choices and capable of choosing differently. He asks us to imagine the entire world balanced between wrongdoing and goodness, with our next act capable of tipping the scale toward merit.
Suddenly, a small choice may not be so small.
On Yom Kippur, we practice Vidui (confession). One of its central prayers is the Al Chet. Its authorship is unknown; this ancient communal confession evolved over centuries into the liturgy we know today.
Perhaps its most powerful feature is that we don’t say, “For the sin I committed.” We say, Al chet shechatanu, “For the sin WE committed.”
We share responsibility for the kind of community we create.
Inspired by that idea, I wrote a version of the Al Chet for our JCC community.
Al Chet (JCC style)
For the times we passed someone without looking up and saying hello.
For the times we saw someone again and again but never learned their name.
For the times we noticed someone hadn’t been here but didn’t reach out to say, “We’ve missed you.”
For the times we saw a parent struggling with a crying child and didn’t stop to offer help.
For the times we saw someone standing alone and stayed comfortably with the people we already knew.
For the times someone new entered the room and we assumed someone else would welcome them.
For all these, G-d of forgiveness, forgive us, pardon us, grant us atonement.
For the times we made assumptions about someone based on their appearance, family, knowledge, practice, or background.
For the times our language, traditions, acronyms, or inside jokes left someone outside the circle.
For the times we were so focused on where we were going that we failed to see the person in front of us.
For the times we listened to respond instead of listening to understand.
For the times someone’s different opinion inspired judgment instead of curiosity.
For the times our circle remained closed rather than opening to make room for another.
For all these, G-d of forgiveness, forgive us, pardon us, grant us atonement.
For the times we saw someone looking lost and assumed they would figure it out.
For the times we witnessed exclusion or an unkind word and remained silent.
For the times we forgot that the person in front of us may be carrying a burden we cannot see.
For the times we chose efficiency over humanity.
For the times we believed creating belonging was someone else’s responsibility.
For the times we simply did not notice.
For all these, G-d of forgiveness, forgive us, pardon us, grant us atonement. And give us the wisdom to notice, the courage to act, and gratitude for our freedom to choose differently.
My aspiration for our JCC is not perfection. It is to become a community that notices and then chooses. The Baal Shem Tov, the founder of Hasidism, taught about divine providence: the possibility that even ordinary encounters have meaning, that there may be purpose in two people’s paths crossing.
When I place that teaching beside Maimonides, I find a beautiful, deeply Jewish tension:
Maimonides tells us that the choice is ours. The Baal Shem Tov asks us to consider that perhaps the encounter isn’t. Perhaps Providence brings two people into one another’s lives. What happens next remains a matter of choice. We may not choose who crosses our path. We always choose how we meet them.
That is my aspiration for our JCC: That we: Learn the name. Cross the room. Notice the absence. Help with the crying child. Ask the question. Listen to the answer. Become curious. Open the circle.
Our Al Chet asks us to account for what we chose to do once we encountered one another. Because perhaps no human encounter is insignificant … perhaps the next one is ours to make holy.
May 5787 be a year when we choose to elevate our interactions with holy intention.
Shana Tova and G’mar Chatima Tova.
*
Betzy Lynch is the CEO of the Lawrence Family JCC.