Yom Kippur Commentary: Being Soft on Ourselves

At Rosh Hashanah I spoke of living a life from our heart’s centre. It has always puzzled and even upset me that, at Yom Kippur, Jews beat their chests while reciting the Ashmanu, the accounting and recounting of communal missteps or, more traditionally understood, “sins”. We beat and berate, for where we went wrong as individuals and as a community. Later in our service we will do a version of this but, I hope you will see the difference between berating and taking responsibility; between aggression and accountability. Cheshbon hanefesh is the accounting of the soul so, to me, accountability is an excellent goal. But accountability is not borne of self-flagellation and guilt. It is born of self-reflection and love; a deep knowledge that, as I said at Rosh Hashanah, we can be better, we can do better.

 My friend and colleague Rabbi Miriam Margles, just before leading the Ashmanu in synagogue last year, asked those of us in attendance not to beat our chests and be hard on ourselves. She suggested a little self-caress, a love pat and, in her words, to be “soft” on ourselves.

 I want us to be soft on ourselves this year. I also want us to be soft on each other.

 I have been struck, so many times even recently, by how much better our lives all would be if we could live with more softness. We live in productivity and grind culture, when to need and certainly to take a break, a rest, to ask for help, to be forgiving of our mistakes, is seen as weakness. We live in an increasingly conservative environment, where people see human need as burden, and empathy as stupidity. We have seen a political discourse that has been degraded to the point of hate-filled propaganda. We have seen  “f your feelings” bumper stickers. We have seen a profit before people model so wildly unchecked that we have food and housing crises, and unprecedented epidemics of loneliness and addiction that signify how cheap human life has become.

This is many things but it is, to me, profoundly at odds with the most salient and significant teachings of Judaism.

 I am not saying Jews are guiltless here. I am saying that Jewish wisdom could influence the world in a more caring direction. Ideas like “pikuach nefesh” that to save a life is more important than any other commandment or commitment. If we all lived by this rule we would have no opioid crisis, no hunger or housing crisis, and we would have health care for all.

 If we took seriously ideas like tzedakah, for justice, and chesed, for loving-kindness, or schools, governments, and systems of justice would centre around wholeness, redemption, and the idea that no one is disposable. Rehabilitation, restoration, and reconciliation could be central to them all.

 We cannot control all of the world’s systems and, for those of us towards the left of the political spectrum, we might feel we are already living with compassion and care, that this is a problem of the alt-right, or even the regular right, that often seems to have lost its moral compass.

 But we are not here to take stock of the way others are wrong. We are here to take stock of ourselves. It is much harder and much more important work to consider how we ourselves are influenced by the dynamics of our harsh time. None of us is innocent. And while I am still mad at certain political figures and certain conspiracy-theory -laden political movements, I am also a little mad at myself.

 This is the time of year for acknowledging where we have, as we say Jewishly, “missed the mark.” Not so much sinning, for I don’t consider pretty much anything humans do beyond intentionally causing harm to another to be a sin. But missing the mark? Oh, so much of that.

 This is the time of year for our reckoning, admitting, and then forgiving ourselves for those missed marks, missed opportunities to do or make right, missed chances to pursue justice, and all the other misses that we regret.

 I invite you to be brave. If you wish, in a moment, let’s put some of our “missed marks,” some of our regrets, in the chat. These can be as simple yet significant as wasting food left to rot in our fridge during a busy week, relying too heavily on fossil fuels for our morning commute , snapping at a child when tired,  fighting with a partner when overwhelmed. You don’t have to share anything. The invitation is there because we know from research that shame loves silence. Sometimes speaking our regrets helps us to be free of them enough to get out from under their shadow and be able to do better. I’ll go first….

 Deep breath, everyone. That was the hard and good work of Yom Kippur. We can all go home! Just kidding (we are already at home). That’s only part of the hard and good work. The rest is the part about not being hard on ourselves as we do this hard work.

 If you put something in the chat, I invite and even perhaps challenge you to write it “I forgive myself”. Do this now.

Let’s be soft on ourselves. Let’s be soft on each other.

 Recently, I was on the ferry boat to the Toronto island, and had leaned by bicycle against the wall as I went upstairs where the breeze and view are better. I came back down to find my bike blocked in by another, very expensive looking bike. I don’t know if you have this thing that I have, but I often find my annoyance is multiplied considerably if I am inconvenienced or mistreated by someone I assume has money. Think of when an Audi or BMW cuts you off in traffic. What thoughts go through your head? Well, those thoughts went through my head with that bike.
I moved it, respectfully and carefully, thinking about how that person is used to taking up too much space.

 Later that week I had a session with my therapist who started with “you didn’t see me, but I saw you last week on the Toronto island ferry! That was my bike you moved.”
I just had to laugh. My therapist is not a rich asshole. My therapist is the most sturdy and compassionate caregiver. She is thoughtful, nuanced, and empathic. She is pretty much the polar opposite of what I had envisioned.

 To her, leaning against my bike is no big deal and, in fact, is considerate of others so too many bikes don’t clutter the space. We just had a fundamentally different understanding of what was courteous and considerate. I had judged and misjudged, coloured and conditioned perhaps by living in a world, and a time, when I so often feel under siege from the “f your feelings” set that I let my sensibility and sensitivity become insensitivity.

 I think of that word “sensitivity” so often. It is all too common when someone speaks up for themselves or another against a bully that they are called “too sensitive”. Has this happened to you? In this way, the bully, and those around the bully, tell us that they have a right to make their hurtful joke, say their hateful slur, dismiss, intimidate and erase us. That if we object, that’s because we are too sensitive. I want a world that is based on such sensitivity. That insensitivity gets named for the scourge that it is.

 Of course, it is easier to call out the insensitivity for others. That moment in therapy and, wow, what a place to have this moment (!) I had to reckon with my own. I do believe that the logical and natural response to feeling dismissed, intimidated, erased, under siege, is to toughen up and become a little less sensitive. The undesired impact is that we are therefore less sensitive and understanding to others.

 During Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, Jews around the world are apologizing and asking for forgiveness from colleagues, friends, neighbours, family. To meaningfully apologize is to acknowledge where we missed the mark, express genuine remorse, and commit to doing better.

 Can we even do this if we are insensitive to our impact on others, even a little bit? Can we even approach with an apology if we are so moulded by our own feelings of hurt that we can’t appreciably be in touch with those feelings in others? How many fights and falling outs are based on misunderstandings? How much healing could come out of being willing to truly hear and empathize with one another, even when we vehemently disagree?

 I see this dynamic of being insensitive to others as a result of our own hurt amongst Jews quite often. We come by it honestly, having survived antisemitism, expulsion, and genocide for centuries. We are understandably sensitive to the rhetoric and actions of those who would hate and harm us. But this limits many Jews in their capacity to care for others. I know people who think thoughts like “well why should I participate in Black Lives Matter or stand up against anti-trans laws when no one is sticking up for the Jews.” Firstly, there are clearly Black and trans Jews so this is often a ridiculously false distinction. But more importantly, as we navigate the world of “f your feelings” white supremacy, we need each other more than ever. I care about standing up for Black lives because, of course, that is the inherently just thing to do. But I also care about standing up for Black lives because I know that the same hateful media and movements that target them, target me as a woman and a Jew. Our liberation is bound up with each other. We cannot be so in the experience of our own trauma that we lose the ability to feel empathy for the trauma of others. In fact, the more we can form connections over our shared experiences of trauma, the more we can help each other heal.

We did just a smidge of this in the chat. We shared what was hurting our hearts in terms of our own missteps not because we all did the same things but because we all share the same experience of feeling sorrow for something we did.

We can acknowledge the pain of others, particular as that pain might be, without compromising or effacing our own experience of pain. Pain is human. So are its perpetrators.

 It is no secret or surprise that hurt people hurt people. As I look at the “f your feelings” set, I see deep wounds. It is often so ironic that the people who feel their “freedoms” have been compromised are the people who are most free indeed. The idea of having to sacrifice for others only feels like oppression when you have a personal and collective history of having the world moulded to you. One would think these people, with privilege and power, would feel strong. But in how they behave it is so utterly obvious that they feel weak. Why is this?

 I think it may have to do with the construction of whiteness and masculinity as having to be always intellectual, infallible and, yes, insensitive. What does someone have to sacrifice to keep up those facades and fictions? I think it may have to do with having so much to lose that the fear of losing overshadows any possible gains that can come with being in touch with one’s softer self. And remember, this is not an us/them thing. We all have some of this in us. Let’s be in touch with our softer self. Let’s be soft on ourselves. Let’s be soft on each other.

 At Rosh Hashanah I spoke of the differences between artificial intelligence and humanity. In that commentary, I spoke of love. Here, I speak of fear. We are so driven by fear. Again, we come by that fear honestly. These are terrifying times. But people never act as their best selves when acting out of fear.

 I am not saying we should ever let hate off the hook. I want us to keep standing up and speaking up against injustice. I just want it to feel less of a fight – how we say “fight for justice.” I prefer the concept of “pursuing” justice, like from Torah’s “Tzedek, Tzedek tirdof,” “Justice, justice shall you pursue.” When we fight for justice from a place of fear, we are fighting for our very humanity to be recognized. But that is a page from the oppressor’s playbook. We are always-already human, worthy, valuable, and wonderous – not because we are infallible. Quite the opposite, our fallibility and foibles are precisely what makes us human. Our striving to be and do better is part of it too. We humans are the only beings, as far as I know, who come together to consider our missteps and aim for a higher mark.

 We don’t have to fight for justice, though the framing by those who oppose us makes it a fight. We can look into the eyes and souls (even from a distance, we can do this metaphorically) of the people who condemn and hate us for who we are, queer/trans, Jew, woman, person of colour, and beyond, we can see what fears drive their hate. We can acknowledge their humanness, even as they deny ours. We can offer them a kind of chesed, loving-kindness and empathy that continues to be corrective.

The truth is that we can’t combat “f your feelings” with a version of the same. It is exhausting and it sure isn’t easy, but we can only do this work by recognizing that part of the human experience is that people are driven to believe and do terrible things when they feel under threat. I don’t suggest we placate, but I do suggest we seek to understand.

 So much the more so when we are dealing with the less consequential everyday interactions that comprise our quotidian lives. A blocked bicycle, an unkind word, a missed birthday greeting or passing hello. It is so easy to assume the worst in others but that is not being with our softer side. Everyone is going through untold challenges, losses, issues, and emotions. Our inner landscapes are like a Salvador Dali painting, with their melting clocks and curious creatures. We are a mess. Even and especially those who seem most together are, I promise you, a mess.

This year, I want us to be soft on ourselves when it comes to our mess. Accept that we are messy and mark-missing meddlers. None of us knows what we’re doing, not really. Accept that everyone in your life is the same. I really do believe most people are doing their best. That is both sad – if we are doing our best and we are managing to destroy the world and each other in the process – that is a sad statement. But it is also hopeful: if people want to be good we can always improve.

That is our task this year. I want us to be soft on ourselves and I want us to be soft on each other. Try to see the humanity in everyone, even and especially when it is so so hard. Imagine, if they felt safe, secure, affirmed, and loved, they could act better. And let’s build a world in which we can all feel a bit more safe, secure, affirmed, and loved. At Rosh Hashanah I quoted from the liturgical “olam chesed yibaneh” We will build this world from love. It really is the only antidote to hate; the only way to avoid being so sensitive about our own feelings we become insensitive to the feelings of others.

 Softness when we miss the mark. Softness in how we interpret the missed marks of others. Softness as we pursue justice. Softness as we pursue self-love and realization.

 This year, let’s be our softest, smushiest selves, extending from our heart spaces into the heart spaces of others, beaming out (let these be the “Jewish lasers”!) so much love and light and care that even those who have become insensitive to their and our feelings can’t help but feel. That is the hard, but soft, work of becoming in this year to come.