This week we welcome thoughts by our guest blogger, Sharon Separ.
The other day I opened a “Hebrew word of the day” email that I receive daily, only to find that the day’s word was קדוש, kadosh, which the instructor translated as “saint.” The brief lesson exemplified the new word in the sentence “אני לא קדושה,” “I am not a saint.” Ani lo kedosha indeed! In this month of Elul, as I engage in heshbon hanefesh, the accounting of the soul, the moral stock-taking needed to reflect upon the past year, I consider that this admission, אני לא קדושה, can be a supportive mantra even as I consider honestly and thoroughly my transgressions over the past year and seek repentance.
I am reminded this month of the traditional prayer of contrition that as a Catholic child I recited each week at mass. With a Jewish mother and a Catholic father, my siblings and I were raised in the Church. The Act of Contrition reads thus:
O my God, I am heartily sorry for having offended Thee, and I detest all my sins because of thy just punishments, but most of all because they offend Thee, my God, who art all good and deserving of all my love. I firmly resolve with the help of Thy grace to sin no more and to avoid the near occasion of sin. Amen.
I recall that this prayer always left me feeling uneasy and diminished. Considering it now, as a Jewish woman in my 60s, it occurs to me that in its breadth and vagueness, and lacking any expression of discernment or discrimination, this prayer had me confessing sins that I had not identified, reflected upon, or perhaps even committed! Unfortunately, reciting this prayer weekly reinforced a sense of deep inferiority that I then carried into my relationship with the divine. In Judaism I found an alternative to this manner of undiscerning condemnation, one that acknowledged my human, decidedly unsaintly condition.
When I first encountered the prayers recited during Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, addressing as they do one’s sins on a more personal and experiential level, I was left with a quite different feeling.
That is, they seemed less a blanket condemnation than a loving parent’s acknowledgement that yes, you are not a saint, but God and the community will nevertheless support you in your task of naming your sins and then seeking repentance. In this regard, the prayer that most moves me is the Viddui, which means confession; it is recited just before Yom Kippur, and repeated many times throughout the holiday. During the Viddui, worshipers gently beat themselves on the chest for each transgression listed. The Viddui includes the Ashmanu, an alphabetical acrostic of different sins we have committed. It is said in the first-person plural, because while each individual may not have committed these specific sins, Judaism’s view is that as a community, we have surely have done so. Reciting this prayer together entwines our fates on this holy day. I recall my first High Holiday service, almost thirty years ago now, when I recited the Viddui and read the English translation along with it. Here was a veritable laundry list of human failings and lapses, many of which I could recognize as my own during the past year. Now, however, I found not a vague and irrefutable indictment, but instead a compassionate acknowledgement of my flawed humanity and that of my community, and a sounding board for our plea that in the New Year we might do better as individuals and a community.
During this month of Elul, which finds us in an unprecedented and frightening historical moment, I hope to temper my accounting of my own shortcomings and sins with the gentle reminder that אני לא קדושה, even as I commit fully to being a more present and considerate spouse, mother, daughter, sister, friend, and neighbor in the coming year.