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Jewish Life & Celebrations

Kol Nidre and Yom Kippur

What does Yom Kippur mean for Secularists?

Judith Seid

This is excerpted from We Rejoice in Our Heritage: Home Rituals for Secular and Humanistic Jews, Kopinvant Press, by Judith Seid. The "Four Themes of Yom Kippur" is excerpted from Rabbi Seid’s book, God-Optional Judaism, Citadel Press, 2001. Rabbi Seid is the author of We Rejoice in Our Heritage: Home Rituals for Secular and Humanistic Jews, and God-Optional Judaism: Alternatives for Cultural Jews who Love Their History, Heritage, and Community. Rabbi Seid is also the cultural leader at Tri-Valley Cultural Jews in Pleasanton, California. Visit Rabbi Seid at www.SecularJewishWeddings.com

We secularists hear it a lot: “How can you observe Yom Kippur? It’s a strictly religious holiday.” And we understand the puzzlement of Jews who have been taught that Jewish holidays may have one or more of three components – historical, seasonal or religious. The fault, however, is in the formulation of the components, not in the concept of a secularist observance of Yom Kippur. Jewish holidays may also have national or ethical components, and often the ethical component is strongly secular/humanistic, as it is in the case of Yom Kippur.

A basic tenet of humanism is that human beings are responsible for their own destinies. That Yom Kippur exemplifies this humanist tenet was first recognized, ironically, by religious leaders of our generation and of earlier generations. Modern Orthodox Rabbi Emanuel Rackman, chancellor of Israel’s Bar-Ilan University, states that Yom Kippur “teaches man (sic) that no matter how low he has sunk, he can rise again… Especially for evildoers who regret what they have done, it brings a message of hope. They can overcome their guilt. Is (this) … an exclusively religious value?”

Yom Kippur teaches that people are capable of change and growth, surely a primary message of the humanistic philosophy. As Rabbi Morton Yolkut wrote, “We are free moral agents, capable of choosing between right and wrong. And because we are free to choose, we are not only responsible for our past, but we are also capable of changing the course of our future.”

Even Maimonides, no friend of the secularists of his time, and the only great rabbi ever to attempt (albeit unsuccessfully) to impose a creed on all Jews, teaches us, “Since the power of doing good or evil is in our hands…it befits us to turn in penitence and forsake our evil deeds; the power of doing so being still in our hands.”

Yom Kippur, while certainly valid in a religious sense for those who choose to observe its religious component, is equally valid in an ethical sense for those of us who choose to observe its secularist/humanist ethical component.

The Four Themes of Yom Kippur

The community observances, whether on one day or broken up into a Kol Nidre and a Yom Kippur observance, may stress the four important themes of the holiday: recognition of one’s behavior, repentance for wrong behavior, forgiveness, and commitment to change for the better.

During the observance, you can talk about our community responsibility, the responsibility of one Jew for the other, and of one human being for the other. Talk about how our individual and communal behavior can influence our communities and our world for good or bad. Give people an opportunity to remember how their behavior has affected others and to recognize that they haven’t always behaved as they should. Quiet music or singing helps people to concentrate and keeps them from wondering if it’s time to move on.

Awareness of wrongful behavior leads directly to repentance for it. Give people permission to feel truly sorry for what they have done and to fully feel repentance for they way they’ve hurt others. People tend to cry during this portion of the observance. That’s okay – it’s what we’re supposed to be doing.

Set aside the next period during the observance to examine and to give up old grudges, to examine the pain others have caused us and to forgive them, and to examine the pain we have caused others and ourselves and to forgive ourselves. This is quite a lot of mental and emotional work. You might divide these tasks into time periods broken up by readings of poetry or the singing of songs.

Finally, it is time for the commitment to a change for the better. Talk about which values you wish to uphold and how you can uphold them. Remind yourself that sin is not a permanent human condition, but a straying from the right path.

You may want to include a nizkor ceremony before ending. Give people a chance to speak about those who died during the year and those who died earlier. Let them talk about what they want to remember about those people, the ways in which their lives influenced others, and the values that guided them.

Yom Kippur observances traditionally end with one long blast of the shofar.

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