Selichot of the Heart
A pal once offered this insight: The human condition, she mused, is really about getting it wrong. To this I add: The religious enterprise is about recognizing this, with compassion, and working it out, guided by teachings of our ancestors. It’s not about getting it right; it’s about the journey.
On the verge of our annual journey around the year cycle, I am filled with … many feelings and thoughts. But that is precisely what this moment calls for. In the month of Elul, with those sunsets coming earlier and cooler days prevailing over the intense summer heat, we are invited to examine the ways we get it wrong, with compassion for ourselves and others, and work it out, otherwise known as doing teshuvah.
It’s always helpful to be reminded that teshuvah is not actually limited to the fall season. I remember well the moment I truly internalized this teaching.
As the cantor of a Conservative synagogue while in rabbinical school, I got to practice what my traditional chazzanut teacher might have dubbed “full-sleeve Judaism.” After havdallah and the final blasts of shofar closing the long day of Yom Kippur services, instead of moving quickly off to our break the fast, we recited the obligatory evening prayer service. Already a short service, the lay leader would zip through the out-loud section, and leave a scant pause for the silent Amidah.
Whoa. When I got the sixth prayer of the weekday Amidah, I was stopped short: slach lanu avinu ki chatanu, mechal lanu malkenu ki phashanu; forgive us for our sins, deal mercifully for our transgressions. Wait! How many chets or peshas could we possibly have done since we last recited the vidui or confessional prayers of Neilah???
Lots. Jimmy Carter took it on the chin, politically speaking, when he confessed to cheating “in his heart.” But that confession was actually spot-on. Sinning in our hearts, or heads, is highly worthy of confessing and repenting, for their impact can range far and wide, not only hardening our hearts but setting our interactions on the pathways of negativity and harm.
Something about this clicked for me again after an idle chat I was having with my son as we watched a tennis match. A high-level player, known for various antics as well as views that I’m not fond of, was also known for having the members of his team sitting courtside all wearing the same shirts and caps. I said aloud a thought I’d had before: isn’t that kind of creepy, him forcing these adults to do this? I had a whole narrative in my head about his malign intentions and his controlling nature, which Buddy punctured by simply suggesting that perhaps it was a requirement imposed by his sponsor.
Not only did my narrative instantly dissolve, but I had to confront how firmly, how solidly, and even how viciously I had made what I saw on the screen mean only this one, bad, critical thing, with no room to take in what I knew about high level tennis and the elaborate relationships between elite players, their “kit” (outfits), and their sponsors.
Perhaps these particulars seem petty, or perhaps irrelevant to you. What’s wrong with having a thing against or for a particular athlete? That’s what fans are for. But fandom for some gets ugly when it comes to hating on the other side, and in this case, the ugly was inside. I literally could not see, could not fathom another scenario than the one I had painted, because it affirmed for me the nasty qualities I ascribed to this talented human, who was putting his all out there on the court.
Back at that synagogue in the Philadelphia suburb, I quickly gleaned the value of chanting that slichah passage in the weekday Amidah immediately after Yom Kippur. It was a reminder that I had already had PLENTY OF TIME to sin in my heart, to transgress in my ways of ignoring the beauty, integrity and wholeness of every human being beside me in that shul, and beyond me and us.
So let’s continue to get it wrong together, and to work out how to travel the path of right relating, of being different-yet-all-human together. Wear your most comfortable kit, take it in through song, through the folks you sit with, through your private reflections, all in community. Let’s selichah ourselves and each other, together, these Days of Awe 5786.
