Waiting for Rain: Reflections at the Turning of the Year

Chapter Six The Last Psalm

Chapter Six
The Last Psalm
”Seek the Lord while He can be found, call to Him while He is near” (Isa. 55:6): R. Abbah bar Abuyah said these are the ten days between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur. (B. RH 18a) These days of close religious encounters are days of teshuvah— repentance. It is during this period that we seek God’s light, yearn for His shelter, and strive to realign our relationship with Him. The ten days of teshuvah culminating in Yom Kippur are filled with moments of retrospection. Teshuvah, the Hebrew word for repentance, also means return. The Days of Awe flash us back to the year past. However, it is on Yom Kippur that our entire life passes before our eyes. In addition to looking back, we are catapulted toward our death—from dust to dust. In his article “Teshuva and Authenticity,” Yehudah Gellman makes the following observations: We are unable to anticipate our own death. We are deprived of its center of authenticity until it is upon us. . . . That is why the Holy One, Blessed be He, gave us Yom Kippur. Yom 111 Kippur is an attempt at simulation, a confrontation for each of us with his own moment of death. . . . The very act of fasting . . . simulates in the individual a turning towards death. He begins a process which, if it were to continue would bring about his own death. . . . The conceptual analogue between turning toward death and Yom Kippur is preserved in the nature of the judgment of Yom Kippur. . . . Contrary to popular conceptions, the teshuvah of Yom Kippur does not relate to the wrongdoings of the previous year, as such. The unit of time over which we must confess our sins is the whole of our past lives. (See Maimonides, Teshuvah 2:8.) . . . On Yom Kippur I must look at the whole of my life and confront it as I must when turning towards death. . . . As Yom Kippur approaches I cease eating and drinking . . . [and] don the raiments of the dead, and in that posture confront the whole of my life and its bearing on eternity. In this enactment exists the possibility of turning into myself, withdrawing from the entanglements and attachments of life, into an authenticity which makes teshuvah possible . In this state of mind I say the confession said by the person who is dying. (Gellman, 251-252) The 10 Days of Repentance are described in the mahzor as days of teshuvah, tefillah, and tzedakah. We raise our voices and passionately declare: “repentance, prayer, and charity cancel the stern decree.” We do our best to mend our ways, engage in acts of tzedakah, and actively immerse ourselves in the world of prayer, imploring God for teshuvah, which also means response. Our hopes are fervent but our goals often not attained. We often do not receive the response for which we hope. Yearning, retrospection, and prayer blend during the 10 days between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur. This coalescence is exemplified in the persona of one great man whose name was David. Many are the characters in Scripture who challenged death with 112
Waiting for Rain supplication; however, David, King of Israel, nobly confronted death through his many voices of prayer. In the book of Kings, David’s death is described in singularly mundane terms. “King David was now old, advanced in years; and though they covered him with bedclothes, he never felt warm” (1 Kings 1:1). The text goes on to tell us that David took a concubine, Abishag of Shunam, in an effort to alleviate his discomfort, with limited success. In the larger framework, this vignette forms part of a royal succession narrative. David’s son Adonijah, a pretender to the throne, was displaced by Solomon after David’s death, and subsequently lost his life when he asked Solomon for the hand of Abishag. A curious midrash preserved in the Talmud (B. Ber. 62b), however, sees great significance in the Bible specifically telling us of David’s inability to stay warm. Earlier in his life, as a fugitive from King Saul’s insane and murderous jealousy, David snuck into a cave where Saul was sleeping and cut off a corner of his cloak. As a punishment, garments provided David with no relief in his old age. Perhaps this midrash is trying to tell us that all things that we do when young and impetuous come back to...