Yom Kippur - 005 Day of Purity

Yom Kippur – A Day of Purity ^[1]

A Moment of Purity

We are now before the holiest day of the year – Yom Kippur.

Yom Kippur is time to become purified, as it is written, “Before Hashem you shall be purified.” There is a well-known Chazal that Hashem purifies the Jewish people just like a mikveh purifies those who are impure.

Let us think a little into this.

The Kotzker Rebbe, may his merit protect us, would say that although usually we find that the rule is “the majority is like the whole”, when it comes to mikveh, there is no such concept; either you’re totally in the mikveh, or you’re not considered to be in the mikveh. If someone is mostly is in the mikveh but he’s partially outside of it, even a little – he’s not considered to be in the mikveh. Why? Because the whole concept of mikveh is to be totally in it.

From his words we can compare this to what it means that Hashem purifies us like a mikveh. If even one hair on a person’s body is outside the mikveh, his immersion doesn’t count. The same can be said with our purification process of teshuvah: if we are missing even a little bit of purity from our teshuvah, we are missing the entire purity of Yom Kippur.

Of course, it is impossible to be perfect. Even if a person really works on himself, no one can become perfect; even Moshe Rabbeinu got angry once and made a mistake. So we do not mean that one has to become perfect; there is no such thing. We are all mere creations, and we are imperfect by definition.  What, then, is our mission? How can we “totally be in the mikveh”? How can we totally purify all our deeds, middos and thoughts? This is simply impossible. If so, what is our mission?

When a person enters the mikveh, the purity hasn’t begun yet. It is the moment he exits the mikveh that he has become purified. If a person sits in the mikveh all day, he’s not in a state of purity yet; it is only when one exits the mikveh that the purity starts. This shows us that a person cannot live all day in the state of Yom Kippur; he has to leave Yom Kippur at some point.

When a person immerses in a mikveh, it is enough to be in it for just one second; as long as he’s totally immersed in the water. The same is true with Yom Kippur; on Yom Kippur, a person has to come to just one moment of truth, and from that moment onward, he draws forth purity.

Hashem does not demand of any Jew that he live the whole year like how he is on Yom Kippur. There are five kinds of suffering we have on Yom Kippur, and this suffering ends on Motzei Yom Kippur. There is no halachah that we have to remain on the level of Yom Kippur. On Motzei Yom Kippur, we return to routine life; it is brought in halachah that one must immediately begin to build the sukkah after Yom Kippur is over. It is clear to anyone that when we build the sukkah on Motzei Yom Kippur, we are no longer on the same level as we were by Ne’ilah. If so, what are we supposed to take out from Yom Kippur?

On Yom Kippur, we have to feel as if we have entered the mikveh; a person enters the mikveh impure, but he emerges from it purified. If we reach a certain point of truth on Yom Kippur, we receive a special purity in our soul – and from it, we can continue into the next year pure, all the way until the next Yom Kippur.

“Before Hashem, Be Purified”

What is that truthful point we are supposed to come to on Yom Kippur and take with us for the rest of the year?

Rabbi Akiva said, “Before Whom are you purified, and Who purifies you? Just like a mikveh purifies the impure, so does Hashem purify the Jewish people.” What kind of question is this? Do we not know this?

It is describing what it means to be pure. How? We have to reflect into what the special purity on Yom Kippur is, more than on any other day of the year. But doesn’t teshuvah help for the entire year round? What is the special teshuvah which we are able to do on Yom Kippur? It is because only on Yom Kippur are we considered to be “before Hashem.” During the rest of the year, we don’t have this.

How exactly on Yom Kippur are we “before Hashem”? It is written, “Their sins separated between them and Hashem your G-d.”^[2] Usually, there is a separation between people and Hashem; on Yom Kippur, however, “the essence of the day atones”, and it is a time in which there are no sins, no dividers. We are all like angels, and we wear white. If a person merits to reach the inner point of this day – the point in which one realizes that he is above all sin – for him, there is no separation between him and the Creator, and he can now truly feel Hashem in his heart.

During the rest of the year, a person doesn’t feel Hashem in his heart, for two reasons: Either because of his sins, or because he is attached to materialism (which might even be permitted desires; yet we have a mitzvah of “You shall be holy”, and the Ramban’s explanation of this is well-known^[3]). On Yom Kippur, both of these barriers are removed. Our materialism is removed due to our five forms of physical suffering on this day; when we fast, we are disconnected from materialism. And the barriers caused by our sins are removed as well on this day, because “the essence of the day atones.”

This is the opportunity available on Yom Kippur: all barriers are removed, thus we are able to come to truly feel Hashem in our heart. However, just because it is a special time, that doesn’t mean that people can automatically utilize it. Shabbos and the other Yomim Tovim are also special times, yet people don’t necessarily utilize those times.

There is a concept that the time itself is an opportunity to receive spiritual growth. But it doesn’t work unless we access it. The special time can only affect us if we draw the matter close to ourselves. Otherwise, a person can go a whole Shabbos or Yom Tov without feeling a thing. It’s possible that a person goes by Yom Kippur and doesn’t feel anything, in spite of the fact that “the essence of the day atones.” So although it is a special time, we have to go ahead and actually tap into its power; it’s not automatic.

A Day of No Barriers

The fasting and atonement of our sins on Yom Kippur are not a goal unto itself. They are just a tool, to help us recognize the Creator, in our hearts.

“Forgive us, our Father, for we have sinned.” Why are we asking for forgiveness? There is no obligation to ask forgiveness; we are obligated to regret our sins, to confess them, and to resolve never to do them again – but there is no mitzvah to ask Hashem to forgive us! Why, then, do we ask Hashem to forgive us? It is because Rabbeinu Yonah writes in Shaarei Teshuvah that besides for begin forgiven, we also want to find favor in Hashem’s eyes. A person might be forgiven for his wrongs, but that doesn’t mean that he has gotten his favor back in the eyes of the one he wronged. We don’t just want to be forgiven for the sin - we also want to win Hashem’s favor back.

The depth of this is that when we ask to be forgiven, we are not just doing it to be saved from suffering, in this world or in the next world. We know that there is a higher purpose to Creation than this. A person might go his whole life and never commit one sin, but he can still be very far from fulfilling the purpose of Creation. Hashem created the world so that His creations can come close to Him. Sins prevent this, and so does an attachment to materialism in general. But even if a person hasn’t sinned or isn’t stuck to materialism, he can still have a problem in that he is just living his life in a very routine way, and he will never search for the Creator in his life.

Fasting and asking Hashem for forgiveness is just a means to help a person reach the inner point of Yom Kippur, which is: “Before Hashem, be purified.” In others words: we need to reach a palpable recognition in our heart, of Hashem.

How can a person reach it? Don’t our sins and attachment to materialism hold us back? Normally, they do. For this reason, Hashem gives us one day a year in which nothing holds us back.

Chazal state that Yom Kippur is “the day of HaKadosh Baruch Hu.” What does this mean? Are there days that aren’t a “day of HaKadosh Baruch Hu”?! Don’t we serve Hashem every day? What it means is that it is the day of the year in which a person can feel Hashem in his life, by very nature of this day. It is a “day of HaKadosh Baruch Hu” for us. During the rest of the year, sins and the pull towards materialism act as a barrier between the person and Hashem, preventing him from becoming closer to Him. Even if he fasts, he still has his sins. Yom Kippur, though, is day which Hashem has given us that has no sins and no pull towards materialism. It is a “day of HaKadosh Baruch Hu” – a day in which a person must come to truly feel Hashem’s existence, in his heart.

This does not mean that a person cannot attain this during the rest of the year as well, but the day of Yom Kippur provides a person with a special opportunity to have this.

Asking Forgiveness – A Tool, Not A Goal

Every person prepares himself for the holy day of Yom Kippur. A person accepts upon himself to regret his sins, to confess them, and to resolve never to commit them again; each person according to how much he feels he is capable of doing. But why are we asking Hashem for forgiveness?

A superficial person, as he says the words “Zochreinu l’chaim tovim” (Remember us for a good life), is already thinking about “Chosmeinu b’sefer chaim tovim” (Seal us in the book of life) – that he be written in the “sefer parnassah v’chalkalah” (the book of livelihood and support); he’s just thinking that he wants to have a good and sweet year. He realizes that his sins will get in the way of this, so he asks Hashem for forgiveness.

This is not the true perspective to have, though. Rather, it is that Hashem gave us one day a year in which we can feel Hashem in our heart, and from that we can come to understand what our mission is during the rest of the year.

“Taste it and see, that Hashem is good.” The Mesillas Yesharim states that one must reach a level of closeness to Hashem in which he is pulled after him like one magnet to another. But when a person doesn’t “taste” or “see” Hashem’s existence, it is very unlikely that he will pulled after Hashem like a magnet. He doesn’t feel close to Hashem; he simply believes that it’s possible. But this alone will not suffice. Who among us can feel what we believe? It is not enough just to believe. There are some rare individuals who are able to survive just on belief alone in Hashem without feeling Him, but most people need to feel Hashem in order to survive. If they just believe in Hashem and don’t feel Him, they are less likely to act upon their beliefs; we need to feel Hashem, and it is not enough just to believe in Him.

Hashem gave us one day a year in which He removes all barriers so we can feel Him. Thus, the first preparation one needs to make for Yom Kippur is that the five forms of physical suffering on this day are to fulfill the mitzvah of teshuvah (which includes regretting the sin, confessing the sin, and resolving not to do the sin again) – but that the purpose of all these mitzvos is to come to feel the existence of Hashem!

A person awaits the spiritual light of Yom Kippur. What is the spiritual light that a person should want to take with him from Yom Kippur? If a person is just looking forward to his sins being forgiven, maybe his sins will be forgiven, but as Rabbeinu Yonah writes, he has lost the whole purpose of the day; he forgot to search for Hashem. Even if a person davens from the depths of his heart and cries to Hashem that his sins be forgiven – and Hashem answers him and indeed forgives him – now what? What is the point of this?

A person has to know what the purpose of Yom Kippur is – to ask for forgiveness, and to ask that he draw close to the goal of all this. A person has to know that sins and an attachment to materialism are what hold him back from feeling Hashem; to remove our sins and our attachment to materialism is just one aspect of Yom Kippur, but it is not yet the essence of Yom Kippur.

Only on Yom Kippur one is purified “before Hashem.” If the purpose would be that we just become purified from sin, it wouldn’t have anything to do with “before Hashem.” Being purified on Yom Kippur is not the regular kind of purity that we understand from learning the laws of purity and impurity. It is a purity of being “before Hashem”, and it is not just about becoming pure. It is a purity so that we can come to remove the barriers that hold us back from being close to Hashem – and when we remove those barriers, one can come to truly recognize the reality of Hashem in his heart.

All of Life Is One Piece

What we are discussing here is not just an issue of how to look at Yom Kippur. It is an issue of how a person looks at everything in the world before him.

A person might live Yiddishkeit very superficially and view everything he does as random acts: we learn Torah, we do the mitzvos, we daven…and then we also have to go through a Yom Kippur, which is day to ask Hashem to be forgiven for our sins. With this perspective, one doesn’t see any connection between all the mitzvos of life. He doesn’t see how it all relates automatically to his connection he has with the Torah. If he’s a little bit of a thinker, maybe he realizes that he needs his sins to be forgiven so he can learn Torah better, but beyond that, he doesn’t see the connection.

The truth, though, is that all of life is “one piece” (miksheh achas) – just like how the Menorah was entirely made from a miksheh achas, from one piece.

We need Hashem revealed in our life, though, to show us how all of life is all one piece.

The Torah Can Only Be Received After Being Purified from Yom Kippur

When Moshe came back down with the second set of Luchos, it was the day after Yom Kippur – after the Jewish people were forgiven and purified. This was not by chance. After the sin with the Golden Calf, the Torah could not be given to the people unless they were to be purified.

Why did it have to be this way, though? Do sins contradict the Torah so much? Don’t we know that a person can learn Torah all day and even produce sefarim with wonderful chiddushei Torah of his, yet this doesn’t mean that he doesn’t speak lashon hora or commit other sins? It seems that sins are not such a contradiction to Torah learning. Why, then, did the Luchos have to wait until after Yom Kippur? Why did they need Yom Kippur to receive the Torah?

The answer to this is, that it’s very possible that a person is connected to the superficial layer of Torah, but as for the true reality of Torah – the kind of Torah that is “one piece” – this does not exist by a person who hasn’t revealed Hashem in his heart. Thus, only after Yom Kippur did we receive the Torah, after we were purified and forgiven.

When a person sees how all of life is really one unit, when he sees how all of the Torah is really one piece, a tool that can reveal the One Creator of the world in his heart – such a person, when he comes to Yom Kippur, realizes that the whole idea of Yom Kippur is for this purpose. He sees how the five forms of physical affliction on this day are essentially a tool to remove the barriers that hold a person back from revealing Hashem in the heart.

But if a person views Torah as a goal unto itself, a Torah that doesn’t necessarily involve the revelation of Hashem’s in one’s personal life – then he views the Yomim Tovim with the same attitude: it’s all just happenstance to him. To him, Rosh Hashanah is nothing more than a day of judgment; Yom Kippur to him is a day to have his sins forgiven, and Succos is a time of happiness. He doesn’t see a connection between any of the Yomim Tovim.

However, when a person lives with the recognition that the purpose of his life is to reveal Hashem in the heart, then he can view Rosh Hashanah as a tool to get to this purpose, and he sees Yom Kippur as another tool to get there. These times of the year can all be seen as tools of how to reveal Hashem more in the heart. A person can only come to this recognition when he views all of life as a means which bring him to a greater goal: to reveal Hashem.

The Proper Way To Prepare

Everything needs preparation. What preparation is required for the Yomim Noraim? First, one needs to acquire for himself the proper attitude, he has to know towards where he is aspiring to: “Sof maaseh, b’machshavah techilah” – “The end of actions, is first with thought.”

What exactly should a person want to take out of Yom Kippur?

In order to answer this question, one has to answer a question that comes far before this. It should not be a question of what I want to take out of Yom Kippur, but a question of what I must take out of the 1st day of Elul, the 15th day of Elul, the 4th of Tishrei, the 5th of Tishrei. What does a person want then?

If a person wants a certain thing in life on the 5th or 6th of Tishrei, and then it comes Yom Kippur and he wants something else, he is attempting to reach a level where he isn’t yet at, and he might have a fallout from all of this, chas v’shalom. When a person tries jumping to a level which he isn’t at, he is not actually there, and if he isn’t there, then it is not his true level. Even if he jumps to it, he will soon fall from there.

Thus, we cannot look at Yom Kippur as a day that is separate from the rest of the year, and to attempt to live it during the rest of the year. What we must understand is that all of life, including Yom Kippur, is all a means to reveal Hashem in the heart.

Why Do We Wait For Moshiach?

One of the thirteen principles of our faith is that we must wait for Moshiach every day. Yet, it’s possible a person is waiting for Moshiach – but not for Hashem! Who - and what - is Moshiach? When Moshiach comes, the world will be filled with the knowledge of Hashem.^[4] Moshiach will come to reveal Hashem onto the world.

Why are we commanded to wait for Moshiach every day? So that he can redeem us from our suffering? So that he can give us all health and livelihood? This is not the point of Moshiach. For this, we wouldn’t need Moshiach – we could have any miracle worker come and solve all the problems for us. The concept of Moshiach is that he will come to reveal Hashem in the hearts of people. This is why we await for him to come – we are awaiting that inner light to become revealed.

When a person wishes he could have Hashem’s reality revealed to him in his heart, even if he has sinned during the year or is pulled towards materialism in general, he will be able to utilize Yom Kippur and reach this aspiration. The day of Yom Kippur can elevate a person to a higher level he isn’t normally on. But in order to receive that higher level, a person needs to indeed yearn for this. If a person has a longing for something, he will able to receive what it has to offer him, but if this aspiration isn’t present, he won’t reach the high levels.

The relationship between the Creator and the Jewish people is compared to that of a bride and a groom. A person only has this intense relationship with Hashem if he longs for it – meaning, if he lives the rest of the year with Hashem. If he doesn’t live with Hashem during the year, he should at least long for the relationship. If he has that longing, he will be able to gain from what Yom Kippur has to offer – and even though he normally isn’t on such a high level, the day of Yom Kippur can elevate him to indeed feel Hashem in his heart.

The purpose of Creation is so that we become close to Hashem. Hashem took us out of Egypt, He gave us the Torah – but He was only revealed to us for this short amount of time, because we still hadn’t reached our purpose. Our purpose was reached with the building of the Beis Hamikdash, when Hashem said, “And I will dwell amongst them.” Each person is supposed to come to have Hashem’s presence dwell in his own heart. The purpose of everything is that Hashem should be felt in each person’s heart.

When a person reaches with clarity, that this is the ultimate purpose of life - even if he knows he hasn’t reached it, at least he should yearn for it - he can long for Rosh Hashanah because it is a day in which he can search for how to become closer to Hashem, and he longs for Yom Kippur because it is a day in which he can become close to Hashem.

It is not only during Yomim Noraim that a person can become close to Hashem. A person can search for closeness to Hashem even if it is the second day of Tishrei, the second day of Cheshvan, or the second day of Kislev. What, then, is special about the Yomim Noraim? These are special times in which a person can reach closeness to Hashem even if he isn’t on such a high level – as long as he aspires for this and longs for this.

“You have chosen us from all the nations, You loved us and desired us….” These words of the Shemoneh Esrei we daven on Yom Tov mean that these days are really a spiritual level that is above us, but since Hashem loves us so much, He reveals Himself to us through Yom Tov. Yom Tov is called “moed”, which comes from the word “vaad” – a “meeting.” Yom Tov is a meeting between the Jewish people and their Father in Heaven.

Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur Show Us What Life Is All About

We need a clear way to live life, and it shouldn’t be limited just to Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur. We all know that these days of Yomim Noraim will come and go, and then we will go back to our routine life. What then? There will be no morelectures for Yom Kippur. What will we do then?

If one really knows what life is about, then Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur to him is the backbone for the rest of the year. These days are supposed to give us the true meaning of our entire life: to understand that Hashem created a world with one goal, a goal that applies even more specifically to the Jewish people: that “we all believe in our G-d and thank Him that He created us, for we have other reason in being created; the Almighty Above has no desire in this world at all except that a person should know and thank his G-d, Who created him.”^[5]

Even if a person knows the purpose of why he was created, how often does he think about it? These words to him might just be something he sees printed in a Chumash, but he doesn’t actualize it in his daily life.

Preparing for Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur is really about understanding what life is about. It is to understand that Hashem gave us these ten days so that we can realize, that even if we fall to sin during the rest of the year and we have lost sight of our goal, we are given a new year as a new opportunity, to open a fresh new page in our life.

What would we want written in that new page we are turning for ourselves? That we should be forgiven?? If that is where our aspirations end, then when it comes next year as well we will need to once again be “forgiven”…

If we are writing for ourselves new piece of paper, we should want that it should say on it the possuk: “And as for me, closeness to Hashem is good.” How, indeed, do we become close to Hashem? Through Torah, through mitzvos, through remembering Him constantly, and through simply talking to Him every day, as a person talks to his friend.^[6]

The Depth of Our Tefillos on Yom Kippur

The power of Yom Kippur is that it can give a person the ability to change his whole orientation about life. Let us reflect into this.

We are used to thinking differently than what has been said here – and in fact, we never think at all about it. But the power of Yom Kippur is that it can enable us to have our hearts and minds be purified by Hashem. We are able to purify our hearts that we shouldn’t want anything else other than Torah and avodas Hashem; we are able to purify our minds that it should understand what the depth of life is all about.

What should a person mainly daven for on Yom Kippur? That his sins be forgiven? No. Although that is what it seems to imply from our davening, there is more depth to what we saying in the davening.

Let us compare this to the following. A person who hasn’t learned Gemara for years and went to work now opens a Gemara and starts to learn it. He doesn’t see any logic in it; the Gemara makes no sense to him. If you tell him that there have been hundreds of pages full of writings about the line of Gemara in front of him, he wouldn’t believe you. But we all know that there is depth within depth contained in the words of the Gemara; if someone doesn’t understand the Gemara. It’s simply because he’s unlearned.

The same goes for the tefillos of Yomim Noraim. The fact that we ask for forgiveness is really a deep matter, and it requires a lot of in-depth analysis. It is just that we are used to reading it off like when we say Tehillim. Even those who have kavanah when they say the tefillos are only thinking about the simple, basic understanding of the words. But the truth is that these tefillos are just as deep as any Gemara. They need to be learned and understood, with depth.

So the first thing one must understand about Yom Kippur is, that the point of this day is not about asking for forgiveness. Asking for forgiveness is only a tool to help us reach closeness to Hashem, because it removes the barriers holding us back from this.

The Practical Way To Prepare for Yom Kippur

Let us think in a very practical way how we can prepare for the holy day of Yom Kippur.

Firstly, we need to clearly understand what the general purpose of life is. Then, we can come to understand what the purpose of the day of Yom Kippur is.

After one has clarified what the purpose of Yom Kippur is, and he is also aware of what holds him back from reaching this purpose – he can then ask from Hashem the following: “Hashem, please remove from me all barriers, and reveal to me the inner point of it all. Reveal to me the Torah, which came down on Yom Kippur, the Torah which is clean from sin; the Torah which will enable me to cleave to You.”

In other words: Know what the purpose of Yom Kippur is, what the tools are which bring about this purpose, and daven that you receive those tools.

On Yom Kippur, a person has a lot of time to talk to Hashem. One can lengthen his Shemoneh Esrei on Yom Kippur and talk more to Hashem. On Rosh Hashanah, this is harder to do, because a person has to be able to hear the shofar. But on Yom Kippur, one is free to spend much more time in Shemoneh Esrei and speak with Hashem. It is one day of the year in which we have permission to speak freely to Hashem, all day. And what should we ask Hashem for?

“Ribono shel olam. First and foremost, purify my mind, that I should understand what the purpose of life is. Open up my heart to Your Torah. Which kind of Torah? The kind of Torah that brings me close to You, the Torah which came on Yom Kippur, the Torah that is free from sin, the Torah of which there are no barriers holding me back; that I should merit to truly be close to You.”

There Is Always One Goal

Even if we would be before Chanukah, Purim, Pesach, or Shavuos, the words here still remain unchanged, just as the air we breathe which always stays the same. For something which sustains us always stays the same - it never changes.

But if a person can’t breathe through his nose, he needs to be put on intravenous to help him breathe. The same can be said of our avodas Hashem throughout the whole year: we always have one goal, we always “breathe the same air.” Hashem gives us each Yom Tov so that we can have different ways how we can breathe that same air – there are many ways to become sick in the spiritual sense, and the cure is always to become close to Hashem. That is the air which we must always breathe, and there are many ways – many Yomim Tovim – how we can “breathe” this air.

Every Yom Tov which we have, was given us to by Hashem to get to one purpose alone: to feel in our heart how Hashem exists. If we absorb these words, the next year will be a totally different year. We will be clear from the beginning of the year until its end, about what we are searching for, and what we want, and what holds us back, and the tools we can use to reach our goal.

As mentioned, there are altogether three things that hold us back: being attached to materialism, sins, and acting monotonously. We have several tools we will need to help us get to our goal (closeness to Hashem), and they are: Torah, mitzvos, tefillah, and emunah. All of these things need to be done with the intention to get to our goal – to become connected to Hashem, every day.