THE DAY WE WITHHOLD OUR JUDGMENT
Rosh Hashana is the collective experience of time’s passage, and Yom Kippur is the day when we seek to understand what time’s passage means for each of us.
Rosh Hashana is about what lies ahead, for time never stops; Yom Kippur is about our ability to exercise free will, to pass judgment or withhold judgment.
In spite of the loss and suffering it brings, time’s passage makes it possible to learn new things and grow emotionally; it helps us bear our limitations and create a better world for ourselves and others.
We are privileged to lead comfortable lives that offer us many ways to enrich our worldview: traveling, reading, loving, eating good food, meeting people, listening to music, or beholding a work of art. But these are all extremely limited if we remain closed off within narrow judgments of ourselves and others.
Those who judge harshly fail to see themselves clearly. They claim to own the truth, denying the possibility that there are other ways of perceiving reality.
For believers Yom Kippur is the day people are judged by God; for humanistic Jews, it is above all a day of reparation and reconciliation.
Reparation and reconciliation are possible only if we stop passing judgment. Yom Kippur, therefore, is the day we withhold our judgment.
For nothing is more oppressive than being subject to the judgment of others.
And nothing makes us suffer more than when we judge ourselves.
Judging without first understanding is the worst form of ignorance; when we ignore the other, we remain closed off in our own little world.
Judging without first reflecting stems from the fear that others might show us things that would make us insecure about ourselves.
Yom Kippur is the day when we remember that all too often we pass judgment not because we value justice but because it bothers us that the other is different from us.
It is the day when fasting means detoxifying ourselves of our hasty judgments.
It is the day when we no longer need to forgive, since we are no longer judging.
It is the day when there is no expiation, since there is no guilt.
It is the day when we refuse to let ourselves be oppressed by the drive to tell right from wrong; instead, we seek to understand.
It is the day when we stop blaming ourselves and others and extend more compassion to ourselves and those who are different from us.
It is the day when we no longer shut ourselves within rigid systems, which are always narcissistic, and when we acknowledge that we inhabit a gray area because our feelings are complex and human beings are finite.
It is the day when we accept that we are not omnipotent, that we must make fragile choices among values, interests, and conflicting emotions.
It is the day when there are no right or wrong deeds, only a commitment to improve our lives and the lives of others.
It is the day when we can forgive others and ourselves because we have stopped passing judgment.
Bernardo Sorj
