Rav Chaim Lifshitz

Yom Kippur

 
Fasting/Eating    

l'ilui nishmas Esther bas Mordechai

“Whoever eats on the ninth [of Tishrei] is considered as having fasted on the ninth and on the tenth.” The reason for this apparently is that the fast is meant not only to distance physical matter from human beings, and to raise human beings to a spiritual level on the sacred day. The eating on the ninth, just like the fasting on the tenth, is designed to sanctify physical matter: To give the control to human awareness, to allow sacred, value-based meanings to control even (and mainly) the most basic materialistic activity, such as eating. This grants eating a meaning of serving God that is in no way inferior in status to any of the more direct forms of serving God.

The Mitsva of Vidui, Confession
This is the case with vidui, as well. The itemized recitation of the sins listed in the vidui was not designed to tally up, like a shopkeeper, the sum total of all deeds containing any deviation from the service of God, but rather the opposite: To join them to the service of God. This means that there does not exist anywhere in reality any part that is separate from the Godly presence. The root of sin lies in separation, in distancing any one particular dimension of existence from the Godly totality. The one who believes in dichotomy, who believes that there is an inherent contradiction between a spiritual view of things and the material dimension – is also the one who is causing the disintegration of the Godly unity.
An act of sin contains some sort of relating to a particular area of existence as though it belonged to man, as though it did not belong to the Creator of the universe, civyachol, if such were possible.
The list of sins that itemize the vidui was not intended as an aid to the confessing person to remind him of his sins, but rather to gather the areas of activity mentioned, and join them, preserve them, and bring them back into the framework of Godly presence.
This is the case on the plane of “Doing”, and especially on the plane of behavior, to teach you that evil is not to be found in the cheftsa, the object, but rather in the gavra, the human being. Meaning, good and evil are not found in the universe, but in the human being. Human beings grant reality its dimension of quality, whether good or evil, just as they grant reality the meaning of the Godly presence. To phrase this differently, human beings actualize the potential of Godly presence that is to be found everywhere.
By eating upon the eve of Yom Kippur, eating is removed from its place in the category of most basic, most prime example of materialistic activity, in which man joins and includes himself with all the other creatures who were not created in God’s image, who are subject to the system of animal instinct and reflex. Now behold, this very same eating removes itself from the animalistic framework, and seizes an honored place for itself in the realm of serving God, right alongside with values, spirituality, and sanctity.
Thus does a human being sanctify physical matter, and join it to the Godly presence that unites all of reality into one whole. Not only human beings, but the entire creation, including all of its distinct parts, becomes united thus, as indeed the human being was commanded to do: To bestow the meaning of Godly presence upon all of creation – a meaning of Godly/human values.
When a man is involved in the moment of recounting his sins, there is no reason for him to feel broken, or distanced from the Godly presence. It is true that that is how it was then, indeed, during the moment of his sinning, but once he has attained awareness as to the separatist meaning of the behaviors of sin, and as to his own distancing from the circle of Godliness by the action of sin – at this point, the act of vidui alone is sufficient to return him to the circle of Godly reality.
Indeed, it is for this reason that the obligation of vidui exists as a halachic requirement within the framework of the re-awakening, return, and repair that comprises teshuva.
This obligation does not exist in relation to others, as an obligation to make one’s sin known in public, because the inter-personal sins deal with how one has related to others. When a wrong has been perpetrated against another person, a man’s innermost unfolding, his inner thoughts, his dialogue between him and himself, between him and his God, is insufficient.
In the inter-personal realm, Godly presence takes on a moral stamp, in which consciousness of sin requires distinguishing between good and evil, and not only re-including a certain reality that, as a sinner, one has excluded and separated from the direct Godly presence.
In the person-to-person realm, the Godly presence undergoes a metamorphosis and takes on a new face. From the direct Godly presence, it moves over into the realm of those created in the Lord’s image and form, that is to say, the human realm. This explains the critical importance of “repairing the sin” in the area of person-to-person relations: Appeasing the one who has been hurt and compensating him. If this element of repair is omitted, and one merely requests forgiveness from the Lord, it has the opposite effect.
Just as with a sin, in which a sinner has removed the area of sin from the plane of Godly presence, so with merely turning to the Creator for forgiveness, while ignoring the person who has been hurt: This removes the human plane – that plane on which the Godly presence finds its most direct and powerful expression – from the plane of the Godly presence.
In contrast, the mitsva of “love your friend as yourself,” and the mitsva of “bringing peace between a man and his friend” constitute a prime expression of the Godly presence, to such an extent that love for one’s fellow human being contains an aspect of expressing love for God. Furthermore, “great is peace, for in a generation that upholds peace, even if they have not properly observed the commandments between man and God, nevertheless, the Holy One does not bring retribution upon them.”

The Right to Request

This distinction even applies to requesting one’s own existential needs of God. The matter of praying for one’s own needs is perhaps the most widespread expression of those who pray. Even those “of little faith” who are swept along by the current of material living, who are entirely involved in their fight for existence, who possess no spiritual dimension whatsoever, pounce upon the pillar of prayer during periods of distress. It is hard to deny the ugliness implied here. Religion is grasped as the means for serving one’s own private selfishness.
However, in light of the distinction explained above, requesting one’s own needs of God becomes an act that joins the sensation of existence to the realm of the Godly presence.
By its nature, awareness of the needs of existence belongs to the self-preservation system, and to the sensation of the animalistic survival need. Yet here, behold, requesting one’s own existential needs is not only permittted, but one is even commanded to do so, according to the Chazon Ish, for such a request is able to deepen the requester’s awareness of the fact that the Godly presence exists even in the infrastructure of existential sensation. Such an awareness is able to release the survival needs from their enslavement to physical matter, and attach them to the Godly reality, and an attachment of this kind sweeps the entire survival system along with it, thus achieving God’s servant’s goal: To sanctify physical matter.
This is sanctifying at the most personal and tangible level. This is realization and actualization of the goal at the essential level, at the level of “fat and blood,” since “a man is closest to himself.”
This sheds light on an additional perspective of the practical commandments. Serving God is percieved to be an expression of one’s spiritual side, an expression of values and sanctity. This perception entails a certain danger – that of separating between spirit and matter. Such separation has no place in Judaism, which sanctifies physical matter, and which views all of reality without exception as an object for bearing the Godly presence.
The practical commandments were designed to attach an idea to a tangible reality, not only as a symbol, but as a tangible attachment. Thus the mitsva of eating matsa, and thus the mitsva of sitting in the succa, “sitting meaning living the way you normally live,” the goal of which is to bring existential reality into the Godly presence, to immerse all of it – “including [the animal's] innards and legs” – in a purifying mikveh.
This is the case as well with the mitsva of family purity, which immerses one of the prime examples of materialistic needs, those needs perceived as belonging to the less pure and less sacred of human needs. The purifying immersion in the mikveh grants these needs the quality of sanctity, not only as a symbol, but as an essentially tangible substance.
Requesting one’s own existence’s needs of God is a mitsva that celebrates a leading role among the practical commandments, and its primacy is given reinforcement – which is rather unexpected and disconcerting to those who seek transcendental sanctity, who look down upon this lowly world and its lowly needs, from the heights of detachment – by tsimtsum, in which God acts to reduce or limit the Godly presence. This reduction is designed to clear a space for human initiative, to enable and to encourage hisarusa dilitasa, “the awakening of the lower one”.
The goal of this awakening is for human beings “to rise in order to come down,” as in Moshe’s rising to Har Sinai in order to bring Torah down to the world. In the sense of “capturing a prisoner [from heaven]” in order to give it over – a gift for mankind.
Through study of Torah and through observance of Torah, God’s servant creates a Godly presence that is the work of human hands. This paradox incarnates the perfect merger inherent in the covenant between the Creator and the human being. It is an achievement by both sides, uniting both sides of the covenant.
Up to this point, leit mahn dipalig, no one disputes these statements. The idea of creating Godly presence by one’s own human hands sits easily in every sensitive heart, and is acceptable to every heart open to the dimension of sanctity.
What is somewhat more difficult to accept, for the one who would embrace kedushah, is his own ability to fill the space that has cleared by the reduction of the Godly presence, by his own transforming of the mundane into something intrinsically sacred.
Yet although “a well cannot be filled by its own wall,” there is one well that can. There is one hester panim, “hiddenness of God’s face” that has no equal for effecting gilui panim, “the revealing of God’s face.” These are the animalistic needs of existence. As materialistic as they may be – the materials of the mundane can be transformed into a presence higher than any other, as implied in: “One who returns to God out of love – his acts of willful malice are transformed into merits.”
This statement of Chazal's refers, among other things, to the request - the prayer - for one’s own existence’s needs. The very fact that one is turning for these needs to the source of abundance on high, brings down – through these needs – an abundance of supreme presence, a presence more tangible than any other, that has no equal for filling the place that has been cleared of Him, yisbarach, in order to grant man the opportunity of grace, the opportunity of filling this cleared space with the sanctity of physical matter, thereby achieving the perfect union between matter and spirit.