Rabbi Zeitlin

It’s curious that while Parshat Kedoshim mandates that the Jewish People be holy, Kedoshim Tihiyu, nowhere is “being holy” in itself listed as one of the 613 mitzvot. Rather, the parsha proceeds to list more than 50 (approximately 8-1/2% of the total) specific mitzvot through which we can begin to become holy. (The argument that the verse says Daber, “Speak” and V’Amarta Alayhem,  “And say to them”, rather than Tzav, “Command”, holds little water since very few of the mitzvot are introduced with that specific language, “tzav”.)  It’s also important to understand that while one can be commanded to do something or to refrain from something else, how can we reasonably be commanded to be something? We can, indeed, work hard and wish deeply for results, but it’s impossible to guarantee success.

Granted that the Torah assumes that by following the mitzvot, that is to say honestly attempting to carry them out, we will at least approach a higher state of being, and granted that our tradition assumes that if all Bnei Yisrael, or at least a critical mass of us, actually did fulfill mitzvot we’d also bring about a higher state of existence for the entire Creation, why is coercion always rejected? It’s “for our own good”, after all, so shouldn’t we be made to do it?. Oftentimes,after all, medicine may be bitter and painful treatment might lead to healing. Nonetheless, the Torah leaves our individual compliance in our own hands–it, indeed, obligates but doesn’t enforce.

What is it about Bechira, free choice, that makes it such a supreme value? Take the mitzvah of tzedaka, charity, for example. Can the $20 a needy person might receive buy any more or any less depending on if it was freely offered or forcibly collected (let’s assume both the donor and the recipient are mutually anonymous to keep it even)? Is the value of a mitzvah limited to the effect that action has in the physical world? Although there is a sense of the word which allows us to say that God “wants” us to perform mitzvot (kabbalistically we can say that “it arose in God’s Will” for Bnei Yisrael to be obligated) , can we even say that God benefits from our compliance? After all, as we learn in Malachi (3:6), Ani HaShem lo shaniti, “I, God, am unchanging”. God is neither enhanced nor reduced by our performance or non-performance of a mitzvah.

On the other hand, both we and the physical/spiritual world we inhabit can and do change in response to human action. In ways we cannot fathom (but can, perhaps, through the halacha process, “tweak”), the mitzvot are designed to perfect and complete us–this is the real meaning of Tikkun Olam, repairing each person, who is considered an Olam Katan (small world), a microcosm of the entire universe, by means of the mitzvot. And, in doing so, we bring the larger world, also described as Adam Gadol, the universe as aligned with the essence of each human, into a state of tikkun, complete harmony.

The question is what force is able to link our physical actions to these great spiritual, non-material processes? The actions seen only for themselves, are actually rather empty, merely shuffling and reshuffling things that already exist–material objects (which include ourselves and other people as seen only physically).

The linking mechanism is, in fact, this bechira, our freely made decision to do something, even (especially?) when it has no apparent material benefit, only because we are called. Merely by exercising our bechira we, slowly but surely, begin to resemble and thus approach The Creator Who always acts with the benefit of others “in mind”. As we separate from our material self-interest we separate ourselves from complete entrapment in the material itself. As God is Kadosh, Holy, which word also means separate, we emulate His Kedusha, separating ourselves from the narcissistic slavery of of self, and , thus approaching the mandate of this parsha.

Israel never had a greater ally and supporter than Yitro, Moshe’s father-in-law, a ger tzedek, a righteous convert. Vayichad Yitro al kol hatovah asher asah Hashem l’Yisrael (Shemot 19:9), “And Yitro rejoiced at all the goodness that God performed for Israel”. He was so taken with Israel because of God’s relationship with and protection of Yisrael that he even joins our people!

Although Yitro does sincerely convert, becoming a full Jew in every sense, with all the future responsibilities and privileges, there is no way he can acquire our past experiences. His observations and ideas are born in his own Midianite past, before he became a Jew. Also, his relationship with Moshe as son-in-law makes it impossible for him to truly appreciate his role as Moshe Rabbenu, Moses our master teacher, nor his resulting relationship both with God and with the Jewish people.

Nonetheless, even though he is still at least partially rooted in his former reality as an outsider, he wants only the best for the his new people. But, not yet grounded in Torah (which had yet to be revealed!) and necessarily seeing the world in a more material than spiritual way, he sees his son-in-law exhausted by his job of being not merely Moshe, but Moshe Rabbenu, dedicated 24/7 to teaching even the slightest of details of Torah, that exclusive interface by which the Jewish People tie ourselves in ever-deepening relationship with The Creator. Physically, of course, it’s an exhausting job, but as the most vital way Moshe can perform his life’s work, it’s also the most invigorating.

Unfortunately, Yitro can’t call on his own first-person experience of being a slave to Pharoah. Nor did he witness the plagues that, as God’s messenger, Moshe brought down on Egypt. He wasn’t a part of the miracle of crossing the sea, a revelation of God’s divinity of such immediacy that we’re taught that a humble maidservant saw more than did the Prophet Yechezkal! While Yitro now has the opportunity to experience reality as a Jew, he has to begin that journey more than half-way through his life.

But, nonetheless, certainly meaning well even if he wasn’t even aware of the limitations in his worldview, he offers Moshe the advice of establishing a bureaucracy, a system of lower and higher courts where Moshe need only be consulted on those most difficult questions which no one else could answer. A number of commentators (including Abarbanel, Akeidat Yitzchak) point out that this became catastrophic for Israel. Rather than receiving Torah, especially in its subtlest meanings, directly from Moshe Rabbenu, they would now receive it in a much more diluted form. These commentaries point out the obvious, that while God didn’t command this structure, perhaps more based on Midianite reality than on Jewish experience, he neither endorsed nor forbade it. He left it to Moshe to decide and, perhaps too polite to ignore a well-meaning but uninformed advisor, Moshe accepts this suggestion.

The parallel with today is obvious. Overlooking specific political issues, historically the United States has been Israel’s strongest supporter and ally. In the years immediately following the Shoah, Holocaust, most European nations felt a great sense of responsibility to the newly formed State of Israel. Even in the most generous interpretation, that the international community really does have Israel’s best interests at heart, they don’t know in their kishkes, in their guts, the experiences of the Jewish People. Even granting them the best of intentions, they are outsiders. They don’t understand the experience of survival through two millennia of brutal exile in hostile environments. They haven’t experienced unending acts of war and terrorism, beginning even before becoming independent nations. They see only the material and have no grasp of the spiritual reality of being a Jew.

When Moshe listened to the advice of Yitro, well-intentioned and seemingly wise as it was, he removed just enough of his personal shepherding the Jewish People to allow the doubt and the slightly-reduced connection with The Creator to lead to the disaster of the Meraglim, Spies, requiring the 40-year wander in the wilderness and the death of an entire generation of the Jews.

Can we learn from our past mistakes in order to not repeat them now? Can we begin to understand that if advice from an ally so true as to join their destiny with ours should be rejected, “advice” from those whose affections are, let us say, somewhat less strong, be no less disastrous?

Rabbi Shloime Twerski zt”l didn’t allow the practice, common in most shuls, for someone to walk the tzedakah pushka around the room to make it convenient for everyone to fulfill the mitzvah of daily charitable giving. He explained that this practice, by introducing the element of avoiding shame, reduces the strength of the mitzvah. Better that a Jew makes the effort to walk over to the pushka on his own than to possibly make the donation even a little less-than-intentional because someone, standing in front of him, expects him to.

The value system of Torah places great emphasis on individual responsibility and growth. A major theme in many Kabbalah books in the movement from katnut, smallness, to gadlut, greatness, from mochin katnin, immaturity, to mochin gadlin, maturity (literally, from the brains of a child to those of an adult). Of course, everyone is familiar with the adage of the advantage of giving a man a fishing pole and teaching him the skill of fishing over merely giving him a fish.

No argument, the dollar given under gaze of the collector buys exactly as much as the dollar walked over by the giver. Likewise, a fish caught contains the same nutrition as one received as a gift. But this is examining the situation blind in one eye and with highly compromised vision in the other. Only a tiny part of the story is understood.

The greatest gift we can give someone in need is the opportunity to succeed on their own. Not only do we launch someone on their road to independence, their successes will be all the sweeter, lacking the bitter taste of what our sages called nechama d’kisufa, often translated as “bread of shame”, literally, “magic comfort”.

While the Torah is full of examples of God setting tasks and trials for mankind, Avraham’s instruction to leave the comfort of the familiar or to offer is son, Yitzchak, as a live sacrifice, the reading and entire theme of the seventh day of Pesach most clearly illustrates this value. God could, of course, just as easily presented the Sea already split with a dry path stretching in front of Bnei Yisrael. As we know, He didn’t choose to do that. Rather, we were faced with a roaring,  impassable barrier of water and an implacable enemy at our heels. We’re familiar with the story that only Nachshon Ben Aminadav had the gumption to set foot into those raging waters. But that first footstep, admirable as it was, was insufficient to split the waters. Rather, God gave him, and all of us by extension, the gift of being able to invest ourselves fully in order to succeed–it wasn’t until he was literally over his head that the waters parted, the future became clear and we all were able to clearly see that the opportunity to succeed is, indeed, one of God’s greatest gifts to mankind.

Shir HaShirim, usually read by Ashkenazim on Shabbat Chol HaMoed Pesach (1) and by Sephardim before every Shabbat, presents on the surface as a secular love poem. In fact, it was the last (or among the last) scroll to be accepted into the canon (Mishna Yadayim 3:5). Understood as a metaphor of the love between God and the Jewish People, we can understand how it really is integral to the Written Torah.

Most rabbinic texts that I’ve studied emphasize God’s great love for Am Yisrael. Often overlooked, and perhaps of much greater urgency is what is left unsaid. We, the Jewish People, need to love our Creator just as passionately as He loves us, not merely intellectually. Taking our cue from the twice-daily Shema, loving requires all of our heart, not only our mind.

If mountains and rivers and valleys, representing the physical world, tremble and leap in the Psalms of Kabbalat Shabbat, to greet God with the approach of that closer Shabbat relationship, can we do any less?

1. This year, as with all years when Pesach begins on Shabbat, Shir HaShirim is read first day in Eretz Yisrael and last day in the diaspora.

Until just a few days ago, I had waited for years to be asked at Seder why we begin by breaking the middle matzah, יחץ (Yachatz). The simple answer is that we cannot begin to become whole until we first realize that we’re broken, that true freedom will continue to evade us until we admit, at least to ourselves, that we lack it.

It’s especially difficult in modern times, particularly for those of us living in western democracies, to face just how far removed we are from actual freedom. This realization, and the resulting deep longing, have been much more intensely felt throughout most periods of our history. Here, in the twenty-first century United States, there is a natural inclination by many to read the Haggadah as a quaint historical text talking about almost mythological people “long ago and far away”. While the matzah is broken, we’re just fine, thank you very much.

Perversely, claiming “freedom from the chains of religion”, spearheaded by questioning the historicity of the entire story, has become central to the “progressive” canon and not so slowly infiltrates  even more traditional Seders. Although the Shoah, Holocaust, as well as the Gulag, remains as close as our own parents’ and grandparents’ generations, that living link with Jewish slavery is rapidly disappearing and it becomes increasingly easy for those so inclined to trivialize or to deny it completely. So, even though almost the entirety of Europe’s Jews (and almost half of all the world’s Jews of that time) lived in slave camps less than seventy-five years ago (I’m not trivializing the terrible situations that often faced Jews living in Moslem countries in those days), it’s become inconvenient and, even worse, impolite to bring that up in our “enlightened” day. Thus, many “modern” seders focus on the individual and their emotions, as well as various external political causes, rather than on our people and our reality. Pesach, continuing this trend, becomes a vehicle for that very narcissism and mis-aimed idealism which entraps us and then blinds us to reality.

The founding of Medinat Yisrael, the sovereign State of Israel, did not, despite the passionate line in Hatikva, the national anthem,  להיות עם חפשי בארצנו (lihiyot am chafshi b’artzenu), “to be a free nation in our land”, bring immediate and total freedom to even those Jews who now make their lives there. Perhaps the experience of continual and very real existential threat largely prevents the complaisance among most Israelis that afflicts those in the affluent diaspora communities (of course, there are still some communities who are more threatened), but how many of our people there, perhaps just because of these security and terrorist threats, see beyond a lengthy, but still temporary, ceasing of hostilities, all the way to our real destiny? Even among religious Jews, how many of us long for true freedom rather than merely extending diaspora styles of observance ?

The Haggadah, although often approached as such, is not modern document looking back at our history, but, rather an ancient text, written perhaps as early as Rabbi Yehuda HaNasi, the complier of Mishna in early 3rd century CE, at the latest before the end of the Talmudic period approximately 5oo CE. It was prepared for and addressed to us, the generations of the future, not merely to give us a sense of history and continuity, but to teach us both how to survive the exile, but more importantly how to prepare for and eventually bring about true freedom.

Complaisance is the enemy of freedom. Settling for mediocrity is the enemy of freedom. Distraction is the enemy of freedom. Taking our slavery, whichever form(s) it manifests, for granted is the enemy of freedom.

Carefully study, rather than merely recite, the lessons our sages left for us in the Haggadah. Now that we’ve finished the mad rush of cleaning and cooking for yet another Seder season and the time pressure is slightly relaxed, is a great time. It’s never too early or too late to realize that there’s still a lot of work left ahead.

Of course, there are likely to be at least a couple skeptics at most seder tables. The story of the Exodus, with it’s other-worldly plagues, set in the midst of detailed and convoluted rabbinic explanations of a few Biblical passages, doesn’t mean much to those too attached to their blinders which don’t permit them to gaze beyond our contemporary, materialist world. Nostalgia only goes so far and then a Seder host is lucky if the damage is limited to bored looks and questions about when we eat.

The “dirty little secret” in the observant world is that it’s also a mighty challenge to inject much life and enthusiasm into the rituals and recitals, even for those of us who have been, once again, studying, cleaning and cooking in anticipation. Familiarity seems to inevitably breed contempt, or at least disengagement. Even deeply believing Jews, even those of us who professionally teach and try to inspire other Jews, are not immune to the gravity-field of ennui.

Perhaps we can repurpose the initial dose of nostalgia as a catalyst. After all, even though we’re enjoined each year to feel as if we, ourselves, are being rescued from Egyptian slavery, it’s hard to go back that far in time, into an almost legendary past we didn’t physically experience.  Maybe the smells (olfactory, perhaps the most “primitive”, certainly the most evocative sense), the familiar songs, the comfort of family jokes and rituals can be utilized to not merely remind us, but to actually transport our spirits to seders past. And once we’ve cracked the secret of time-travel with this tiny and seemingly trivial initial jump, let’s keep going, all the way back to when we join our former, ancient selves and experience the fear, the disbelief, the insecurity, the terror and then the surprising relief of yet-to-be-known freedom.

With the passing of almost the entire Shoah, Holocaust, generation, almost none of us are left can really understand the level of terror and uncertainty that I suspect are absolutely necessary components to reaching true freedom. Of course we pray that our people never undergo any horror remotely approaching that in the future. However, the opportunity to at least vicariously and in yearly fractional installments experience what our fathers did in their final days in Egypt, is designed to enable us to move forward into heights of freedom, independence and dignity, to a level even those later ancestors who experienced both sovereignty and the resultant indwelling of God’s Holy Presence, the Shechina, in His Holy Temple, never reached. The secret is to engage in honest feeling (let yourself be terrified at the mention of the plagues) deep conversation, relating but also actively hearing others as, together, we speak (read the words of our sages as conversation and descriptions of their experiencing God’s Infinite Complexity) our experiences on this journey.

All of our rituals and traditions, including or especially Pesach Seder, are doomed to tedium if they’re relegated to mere re-enactment, whether we re-enact the grand drama of the Exodus or merely the comforts of our childhood. But if we honestly try to re-experience and relate, it can act as a springboard to filling our destiny, bimheyra b’yameyny. Not only the holiday and ourselves, but the entire Jewish people can now become truly alive.

Three times a day we recite the the eighth blessing in the Amida praying that all Yisrael be healed. The language is very specific–it says “Rofay kol amo Yisrael” (…all of His nation…) rather than, for example, “Rofay cholay amo Yisrael” (….those who are ill among His nation….).

It’s customary here to quietly recite, or at least think, the names of close family members, then friends, leaders and others among the Jewish People who suffer illness or injury, praying for God’s direct aid in their healing. However, as I mentioned, we “seal” the bracha specifically saying “all His nation Yisrael“.

Of course, in an existential way all of us almost always has some sort of health complaint, but a  skinned knee or the sniffles are far cries from cancer or bullet/knife wounds. But that sounds like a forced, and not very convincing explanation.

These tefillot were formalized shortly after the destruction of our Holy Temple and our exile from the Holy Land. Since that time the Jewish People have lived with daily uncertainty of our very survival. Although in a very small number of places and during a very small number of periods we have had a sense of temporary security, our sages and leaders have realized that this “security” was always fragile indeed. Thus, for almost two full millennia almost every Jew, whether consciously aware of it or not, has suffered from devastating trauma.

One symptom of this trauma, a necessary survival technique throughout most of our history in exile, has been to keep our heads down, to not call attention to ourselves and to always be obsessed with not angering whoever our “masters” were at any given time and place. After all these generations, this behavior has become so deeply ingrained that we’re often not even aware of them.

The prayer for the health and wholeness of all Yisrael was also a prayer for a reality in which our health and robustness was even a possiblity. Although we’re blessed to be living in a time when that reality exists, in other words the existence of Medinat Yisrael, the modern state of Israel, a “real” country which, although embattled since long before Independence, boasts a relatively stable, humane society with both civil and human rights for all. We also have, for the first time since our defeat by the legions of ancient Rome, our own military to protect ourselves rather than having to live at the whim and pleasure of others.

The condition for our national health exists, but most of us, both inside and outside of the Holy Land, are still, to one degree or another, crippled by uncertainty and insecurity. In many ways, we still consider ourselves, at best, a vassal state (of the US, the Europeans, the United Nations) and regularly obsess to demonstrate our worthiness. No other state on the planet regularly humilates itself, puts aside the welfare and safety of its own citizens and abandons its own unique values to somehow impress “Master” and thus prove, mainly to still-insecure ourselves, that we actually are worthy of survival.

Obviously, merely having a country to, finally and once again (since it was ours long ago) call our own, has not been enough to cure us of our acute ghetto-syndrome. Boasting a vibrant democracy, being “Start-Up Nation” and winning several wars of survival have not healed this cancer in our national soul. Nothing in the merely materialistic realm ever will.

Thus, three times every day we beseech The Creator, “Rofay kol Amo Yisrael“, cure each and every one of us and enable us to move into the future as confident free people, serving no earthly master. What better time than Pesach this year? No longer avadim, slaves, ata b’nei chorin, now we are free people. May it be so this year.

We don’t consider the material world to be perfectible because we aim higher. Bringing the “world”, primarily this word refers to each individual Jew (Olam Katan, a small universe) maximally refining himself, primarily through Torah and Mitzvot (which, admittedly, are not in themselves simple-to-define nor straightforward concepts), but it also includes creating a just society based on kindness (Chesed), fairness (Gevurah) and responsibility (Tiferet), to it’s highest state, often referred to (even when this term is not quite understood in its full implications) as Tikkun Olam, is not our final goal.

Rather, our goal is to create the conditions, following the “blueprint” (i.e. Torah) we’ve been given, that enable a discontinuous higher level of existence and consciousness, Olam HaAtid, The Future World, to emerge. Spending energy trying to “fix” elements of this world that either aren’t broken or whose “repair” isn’t necessary to our real goal, is, at best, a waste and a distraction/detour from our real goal.

Olam Hazeh, This World, is expected to be flawed and contains within its embedded structure, once again Torah, responses and reliefs (Karbanot, sacrifices, for example) to rebalance itself. We don’t know the “critical mass” of Tikkun required to launch the “quantum jump” to the higher reality, but we do know which actions of ours (i.e. Mitzvot) will help us achieve it.

The unperfectibility of this world, then, isn’t a cause for despair. Rather it’s a signal to rejoice that the true universe, Olam Gadol, is boundless beyond our imaginations.

Too many people fear ambiguity. One reason why Megillat Esther, the Purim story, has remained so popular down the ages is because such clear lines are drawn. We know who are the good guys and who the bad–Esther and Mordechai, obviously, are the heroes, while Haman has, from that time forward, personified total evil.

Deeper study, however, rescues us from such oversimplification, albeit at the expense of emotional certainty. The Gemara, in various places (Sanhedrin 74b, Megilla various pages), struggles to explain and justify Esther’s marriage to Achashverosh, obviously a non-Jew, as well as the possibility of adultery if she was, as many traditions maintain, already married to Mordechai. Our sages (Megilla 13b) also reassure us that Esther, in spite of being part of Achashverosh’s harem, maintained the laws of niddah, family/sexual purity. It’s important to our tradition to highlight Esther’s heroic status in light of these issues (of course, we also go to great lengths to justify all of this on the basis of halachic principles, especially self-preservation and also her fore-knowledge of the ultimate purpose (rescuing the entire Jewish people) of her ordeal).

A little more digging and we also find that it’s just as hard to maintain Haman’s status as totally evil, without a single redeeming trait. The Gemara (Gittin 57b, Sanhedrin 96b) informs us that a descendent of Haman’s  learned Torah in Bnei Brak. Another argument can be made, based on Megilla 15a, that Haman, himself, was a Jew! Without minimizing Haman’s evil, we see that even in his case things are a little more complex than a comfortable black-and-white.

Although these teachings are interesting, I’m really not here to relate obscure facts about Purim with which you can amaze your friends in shul. Rather, I want to talk about the perils of expecting/demanding certainty and relying on literal readings of Torah, both Written and Oral.

Until fairly modern times, it was axiomatic for us that the Oral Tradition, Torah She’Ba’al Peh, was exactly equal to the Written Torah in terms of authority and authenticity, both given to Moshe at Sinai. While the main difference between Judaism and the nascent Christianity was their rejection of Oral Torah, i.e. the tradition of their hated foes, the  Pharisees (Parushim = those who explain), we have always fully relied on these explanations to inform us how to perform the mitzvot mentioned (often only in broad hints) in the Written Torah. Relying literally on “scripture”, how would have ever known how to make tefillin, mentioned only as “signs” on our hands and “reminders” or “totefot” between our eyes? Without the explanations of our Oral Tradition, we would have been mired in a primitive system of savage “justice”, amputating hands and putting out eyes. It was always obvious to us that without the enlightenment of Torah She’Ba’al Peh the Torah is an unlivable document.

Even the Torah She’Ba’al Peh, however, as a living and evolving tradition, was never meant to be frozen and understood literally on the basis of old printed words. It’s well-established, even admitted (Chulin 90b), that Chazal spoke in lashon havai or guzma, hyperbole, as does the Written Torah. Although not a free-for-all, both Talmud, and Halacha, were always taught/revealed/evolved as proposed solutions for specific times and places to the continuing challenge (and perhaps this is the only constant) of ever increasing our closeness (devekut) to The Creator, utilizing the path He gives us–fulfilling mitzvot. In other words, while the mitzvah itself doesn’t change, our method to fulfill it always needs to be effective throughout time. The last thing we want to do is to take every word of Torah She’Ba’al Peh literally. Just as real-life situations we find ourselves in are filled with ambiguity, so must be our instructions to successfully navigate them in line with halacha.

Over time, halacha has always evolved. If that weren’t the case, I’d probably own less than one-tenth of the books currently in my library–they would never have been written. We’d still be paralyzed, if we survived at all, with our inability to offer animal sacrifices in the ruins of the Bet HaMikdash. The Talmud, rather than the living tradition it has been for two millennia, would merely be of historical interest to a small number of academics rather than the dynamic core that both teaches and inspires to this day.

Of course, it’s vital to “get it right” as best each generation can. That produces a realistic hesitancy and deliberateness to precipitous change–we have too much to lose, entire paths towards The Creator, if we take the wrong steps. But it’s just as vital that we don’t lose our effective approaches because of inattentively ignoring today’s reality. Pretending that it’s still 1816 Krakow is no more conducive to reaching our goals than is seeing ourselves as merely one of many 21st century vendors of competing cultures or spiritual trips, with an eye only to our “sales numbers”. Both stultifying fundamentalist literalism as well as deconstructionist personal narrative theory have no value beyond, perhaps, presenting us parallel alternatives to reject.

We’re too wise, creative and, at the core, dedicated to an Infinite God, too close to fulfilling our goals to turn, at this late date, into ignorant literalists.

Haman’s plot failed. He, and all of his sons were hung on the gallows he had erected to kill Mordechai. Mordechai, only yesterday condemned to death, is today, like Joseph was long ago in Egypt, “second to the King”. Esther is undisputed as Queen. “The Jews had light and happiness and joy and honor (Esther 8:16).”

What about the day after? Other than resolving to celebrate future anniversaries of this escape from total obliteration, as we still do every Purim, did anything change? Did the Jews of Shushan return home en masse to Eretz Yisrael? Did they rededicate themselves to a life based on the Torah and mitzvot  mandated by The Creator who had, albeit from behind the scenes, just rescued them?

A common teaching, in danger of becoming mere cliché, is that Yom Kippur, more accurately Yom HaKippurim, is, literally, a day like Purim. There are many parallels: on Purim we begin with a fast and end with a feast while Yom Kippur begins with a feast (eating before the fast is considered to be as important a mitzvah as fasting on the day itself), both days reflect rescue–Purim from communal destruction and Yom Kippur from our just punishments for all our individual misdeeds the previous year.

Another commonality is how often most of us spend the day following each of these holy days–as if the day before had no significance at all.

Will there be a recognition this year that, in each case, we just barely escaped by the skin of our teeth, as the cliché goes, or will we merely check off one more day in our calendar?