These two pieces are excerpts from a short class Rav Ginsburgh gave at the end of Yom Kippur last year (5785).
The first excerpt is a foundational point about how to see time as a manifestation of Godliness and ties it to the onset of Yom Kippur, just before Kol Nidrei.
In the second excerpt, the Rav recollects his time with Rav Asher Freund zt”l, whom he often refers to as his mashpia. Reb Usher, as he was known by his disciples was a tzaddik who lived in Jerusalem and was known for his miracles and for his staunch demand that every person see themselves as humble and lowly before God. He had a special bottom line that he encouraged people to see once the services of Yom Kippur had ended.
This class was first published in the Yom Kippur 5786 edition of Nifla’ot.
Time Manifests Godliness
We are all familiar with the saying that “time is the most precious commodity.” It is the one thing that no matter what we do, we cannot restock on. The life we have been given by God is limited in time and so it should be a cornerstone of every spiritual system to teach its followers how to relate to time properly.
Time is much more than just what the calendar or our watch would have us think. It is one of the three dimensions in which Godliness appears in reality, as Sefer Yetzirah states, “God created reality with space, time, and soul.”[1] One of God’s connotations in Judaism is “the space” (הַמָּקוֹם), indicating that the space we inhabit is a manifestation of Godliness. Likewise, the higher soul in man is known as the Divine soul, indicating that it is “an actual part of God.”[2] Though there are sacred days and festivals on the Jewish calendar and every Shabbat is sacred, we do not usually think of time as a manifestation of God. However, our attitude and view on time are essential to our spiritual well-being and to performing our mission in life, because time, too, is a manifestation of Godliness.
Attitude Toward the Past, Present, and Future
Our time is made up of our past, our present, and our future. Most people are familiar with the Hebrew words for these as “avar” (עָבָר), for the past, “atid” (עָתִיד), for the future, and the present is known as “hoveh” (הוֹוֶה). But the present has several synonyms among them “beinoni” (בֵּינוֹנִי), which literally means “in-between” or “intermediate,” since the present stands between the past and the future. Once we know this fact, it brings to mind that the Tanya, the foundational book of Chabad (and Chasidut in general) is subtitled, “The Book of Beinonim,” i.e., the Book of Intermediates. The plain reason for this is that it is structured around the distinction between three types of people: tzaddikim (the righteous), beinonim (intermediates), and resha’im (wicked). To simplify, each type of person has a different relationship with his or her evil and good inclinations. The tzaddik hears and follows only his good inclination, the beinoni hears both inclinations but follows only the good, and the wicked individual may or may not hear both inclinations but is seduced by his evil inclination.
One might say that the Tanya, which teaches that most of us are beinonim (or at least have the potential to be), is of the view that we mostly live in the present moment. Not in the sense that we are necessarily mindful, but that we are constantly dealing with the chatter between our mind and our inclinations. The beinoni is engaged in a constant battle to ensure he or she does not transgress. It follows then that the tzaddik lives in the future, constantly living in a future state when all that we believe in—the coming of Mashiach, the Redemption, even the Resurrection of the Dead—will be fulfilled and God will recreate the world. The wicked though are constantly living in the past, which usually means that they are anchored by the weight of their transgressions, unable to break free to pursue a life of goodness.
The wicked are also bogged down by their past self-image, which hampers their ability to truly fulfill their potential (regardless of whether this image is positive or negative[3]). Strengthening this three part correspondence is the Hebrew translation for “transgression” (עֲבֵרָה), which stems from the same root as “past” (עָבָר), and a person who transgresses is called an avaryan (עֲבַרְיָן).
Praying with Transgressors
At the start of Yom Kippur we say, “We permit praying with the transgressors” (אָנוּ מַתִּירִים לְהִתְפַּלֵּל עִם הָעֲבַרְיָנִים). We normally explain that an avaryan is someone who is a transgressor because he continues to live with his past transgressions. There can also be a positive way to live with the past; not with my own individual past, but with the tzaddikim of past generations, with the Patriarchs (as we are living now in our weekly Torah readings). But there is an even deeper past that makes us all do a reckoning with ourselves—living with the deep past of Adam and Eve’s sin. Individually, we can also live with the rabbinic injunction, “Remember from where you came: from a putrid drop.”[4]
What we want to focus on is that when it comes to prayer specifically, we give ourselves permission to be together. It is in prayer that we especially feel that “all of Israel are mutually responsible for one another”[5] and that we can be unified; everyone should pray together. When it comes to learning Torah, for instance, people do not always like to be together with just anyone. There is a story that when the Rebbe Moharash (the fourth Lubavitcher Rebbe) was a child he was very sharp-minded and did not like learning with his brothers or classmates. Each of his brothers became a great rebbe in his own right, but the Moharash felt that they were hard of understanding. They simply did not understand the material as fast as he did. Of course, Torah also contains many disputes. Even though in the end the sages, “come to love one another,”[6] but first the opinions are a source of contention. This can even be between a father and a son or a Rav and his student. When it comes to acts of loving-kindness, we also cannot treat everyone equally. Truly everyone deserves to receive charity, but in practice, there is a list of priorities dictating who receives first. Where we are all equal is in prayer. Of the three pillars on which the world is founded—Torah, prayer, and acts of loving-kindness—true unity can only be found in prayer.
How does this happen? When we are all “transgressors” in the sense of remembering the past. When we all remember our origin, which is the same from everyone—“a putrid drop.” When we recall this common past, we can also keep in mind that we are all destined for the same place as well. As the Mishnah continues: “Remember where you came from… and where you are headed….” More deeply, we are all together in this long exile, hoping that the Redemption will extract us from it. Since exile is a punishment for transgressions—as we say in the Amidah, “because of our sins we have been exiled from our Land”— in this sense, we know we are all equally to blame. If we remember this well, then we can all pray together, even with the greatest avaryan (I myself…). God accepts us all and the true tzaddikim accept us all and are waiting for us to join them in prayer. In their merit, all our prayers are accepted above.[7]
The Bottom Line
What is the Takeaway from Yom Kippur
There is a short teaching that I heard myself, more than once, from Rav Asher Freund zt”l. He would say that the most important sentence from our Yom Kippur prayers and the takeaway from the entire day is the end of the confession,
“My God, before I was formed, I am unworthy. Now that I have been formed, it is as if I had not been formed. I am dust while alive, how much more so when I am dead. See, I am before You like a vessel filled with shame and disgrace”[8] (אֱ-לֹהַי, עַד שֶׁלֹּא נוֹצַרְתִּי אֵינִי כְּדַאי. עַכְשָׁיו שֶׁנּוֹצַרְתִּי, כְּאִילּוּ לֹא נוֹצַרְתִּי. עָפָר אֲנִי בְּחַיַּי, קַל וָחוֹמֶר בְּמִיתָתִי. הֲרֵי אֲנִי לְפָנֶיךָ כִּכְלִי מָלֵא בּוּשָׁה וּכְלִימָּה.).
This is of course a very typical thing for Rav Asher to say. In fact, all year long, he would repeat this sentence. This is what a person should take with him from Yom Kippur, this is the bottom line.
This saying from the Talmud has three parts to it. First, “I am unworthy,” which means that I am not in a position to demand anything. It follows then that all that you God give me, it is all out of compassion, it is all a free kindness. Second, “I am dust while alive,” which is based on God’s words to Adam, “You are dust, and to dust you shall return.”[9] Or, as Ecclesiastes says, “Everything comes from dust, and everything returns to dust.”[10]
Dust is the essence of lowliness. A person should always be like dust, as Abraham says, “I am dust and ashes.”[11] Dust in Hebrew is the name of the ancient element usually called earth; the four elements were earth, water, air, and fire. Thus dust (earth) represents the category of all that is inanimate. In Hebrew, the root of “man” (אָדָם) is cognate with the “inanimate” (דּוֹמֵם). So even though, man belongs to the highest category of being, i.e., to the “speaker” (מִדְבָּר), the element that he is made of is dust or earth. In man’s creation, we see that first God formed the physical body, which was made from dust, as the verse says, “Havayah Elokim formed the man dust from the earth.”[12] Only then did He breathe into man the breath of life and then man became an animated living being.
The third part of this sentence is that we should feel like a vessel filled with shame and disgrace.
Now, Rav Asher would not have calculated a gematria normally, but we enjoy having fun with numbers. So, we find that the value of the key phrases, “I am unworthy… I am dust… like a vessel filled with shame and disgrace” (אֵינִי כְּדַאי… עָפָר אֲנִי… כִּכְלִי מָלֵא בּוּשָׁה וּכְלִימָּה) is 1092, which is also the value of “And who is like Your people Israel, one nation in the land”[13] (וּמִי כְעַמְּךָ כְּיִשְׂרָאֵל גּוֹי אֶחָד בָּאָרֶץ). This is the virtue of the Jewish people. That we are one nation, as it were, planted deep in the earth. Only a Jew can take this sentence with them and feel good about it, feeling joy in deserving nothing and being nothing more than dust from the earth, all this to be a vessel for God, ultimately receiving all His blessings and goodness, both physically and spiritually.
[1]. Sefer Yetzirah beginning with 3:5 and all through chapters 4 and 5. Pardes Rimonim 5:5.
[2]. Tanya, ch. 2.
[3]. Self-image is the picture a person has of himself or herself, whenever they think about themselves or refer to themselves. It is formed entirely out of past experiences. Whether the image or positive (the past was good) or negative (the past was bad) does not really matter. In the end, we use the self-image to cast an image of ourselves, which not only makes it harder to truly take advantage of new opportunities arising at every moment, but can also be likened to
[4]. Avot 3:1.
[5]. Shavu’ot 39a. Sifra Bechukotai 7. Bamidbar Rabbah 10:5.
[6]. See Kidushin 30b, based on a homiletic understanding of the words, “And Vahev in Sufah” (אֶת וָהֵב בְּסוּפָה); note that the value of the name place “Vahev” (וָהֵב) is 13, the same as “love” (אַהֲבָה).
[7]. See Keritot 6b which states that during a fast day, we must include transgressors, like the inclusion of the galbanum in making the Temple’s incense.
[8]. Berachot 17a and Yoma 87b in the name of Rav Himnuna.
[9]. Genesis 3:19.
[10]. Ecclesiastes 3:20.
[11]. Genesis 18:27.
[12]. Ibid. 2:7.
[13]. 2 Samuel 7:23.
