Lie Witness News (Kol Nidre 5777)
Before the first 2016 presidential debate, Jimmy Kimmel’s team took to Hollywood Boulevard for another episode of what he calls, “Lie Witness News.” For those of you who don’t know, Kimmel, the late night talk show host, sends a person out onto the streets of Hollywood to ask people if they saw or heard about something, often absurd or ridiculous, that may or may not have really happened.
Sadly, people lie most of the time, not only saying, “yes,” to the absurdity or falsehood, but then giving their opinion or additional facts about the incident, or the person who is supposedly involved. These little forays on the streets of Los Angeles prove how easy it is for people to lie, straight up lie, about what they didn’t really see or hear.
Staffers asked unsuspecting people about their reactions to the first debate, which hadn’t even taken place, yet. Every single person in the video lied. They believed that Trump and Clinton had a pull up contest, perhaps auditioning for America’s Got Strength! (last line is mine.)
Kimmel’s correspondent asked one woman “Wasn’t it cute, though, when right after the closing statement, they gave each other that cute little kiss? That peck on the lips?” To which the woman responded, “It showed that there’s, like, peace between the two parties.”
I saw on TV, but is also reported in http://www.usmagazine.com/celebrity-news/news/jimmy-kimmel-tricks-people-with-presidential-debate-questions// Another article:http://thelamron.com/2016/10/07/societal-pressures-reflect-lack-political-engagement/
In another episode, people commented about the first spouse debate and shared their views of comments made and their opinion of who won. There was no first spouse debate, America!
I’m so sorry. Enough about Hollywood, and comedy, and politics. That’s not what you came here for tonight, is it? You came for Judaism. Good. So did I.
So, did you hear the one about the rabbi at Yom Kippur services?
One Yom Kippur, just before the Al Chet prayer, a rabbi turns to his congregation and tells them that he is going to give a sermon about lying and liars. He asks them, “How many of you have read the chapter in the Book of Proverbs on Lying and Liars?” (pause) Most of the hands in the congregation went up. “Good,” the rabbi says, “you are just the group I want to speak to, then, because there is NO such chapter in the Book of Proverbs!”
For centuries, Jews were believed to be liars, because we came into our synagogues on Yom Kippur and recited the Kol Nidre, a prayer that basically says that if we can’t keep our vows and promises that we wish to be absolved of them.
But, the Kol Nidre prayer is not about promises made to others in business, which we must always keep according to Jewish law. Kol Nidre is not about promises to other people, which we are also supposed to faithfully keep. Kol Nidre is about failing God, by lying to God, by force or willingly, in secret or out in the open, shamelessly or by mistake. Kol Nidre is aboutnot keeping a vow to God.
We promise God so many things in a moment of need or anguish:
“Please God, help my loved one recover and I promise to go to temple every week.”
“Please God, let me win the lottery and I promise donate half of everything I win to charity.”
“If you help me lose weight this time, God, I promise I will never gain it back, again.”
“Please God, help me get through this test and I promise I’ll stop mouthing off at my parents, for good.”
And then, beyond the crisis, too often, most of the time, our vows to God come to naught.
The Kol Nidre prayer was also about the promises we had to make to stay alive as Jews. How many times in our history were we forced to convert or die, forced to pledge loyalty to church or ruler in order to save our lives and the lives of our families?
Those vows we were forced to make against our God and our Judaism, weighed on our people, and they needed to be relieved of the burden, as they took risks to live as secret Jews and to pray on this holiest day.
That is why it is so tragic that so many people willingly and shamefully abandon this day, their Judaism, and the promises made at Bar and Bat Mitzvahs to pass the Torah to their children without coercion by others, or the fear of death—willingly breaking faith with God.
We spent tonight admitting to being guilty of many things. We said the Viddui confession, banged our chests for theAshamnu and then, read the first of many lists of sins for the Al Chet, admitting our arrogance, our transgressions, and our failings of the past year. And we will continue to list and atone for all of these sins, and many more, for the next 24 hours.
In every way, Yom Kippur is our moment of truth. Kol Nidre and Yom Kippur remind us that we must stand before God with hearts open to being honest about who we are, who we have been, and who we want to be.
An outside observer would think that we are not a particularly trustworthy crowd, listening to our litany of confessions tonight, and might be very tempted to send us all to Hollywood Boulevard, or to say that it was further proof that people in the Washington area are crooks and Jews are liars. But, we know better.
Just as revealing the ignorance and stupidity of our fellow citizens is tragic comedy, seeking to expose the sins of others has become a tragic reality, and an excuse for justifying one’s own sins in life.
Human beings are the most judgmental creatures on our planet. We judge everyone, even people we don’t even know. We seem to be hardwired to believe the worst, to accept lies if they are recited with sincerity, and we often indulge in the need to sniff out and salivate over the sins and failings of others.
Yet, when it comes to our own personal conduct, as Jews, we are told to spend time getting our own house in order, to look no further than our own backyard. Yom Kippur is not about pointing a finger at someone else. Yom Kippur is about looking in the mirror and being truthful with ourselves.
Remember that our only fact checker is God and with God, the truth is all that matters. We see the need and wisdom of submitting ourselves for an annual review by an independent accountant, the Almighty, the God of our ancestors, the God with whom we have a covenant, a binding relationship.
We recite the words of our prayerbook, amazed at how relevant they are for our lives and the world in which we live, hundreds of years after being written. And we seek forgiveness for all of the times we fell short, in our relationships, in what we have said, promised, and done.
We especially come into our sanctuary on the High Holy Days to be held accountable for all those times we failed, were less than honest in our opinions and assessments of ourselves and others, and for all those times we sinned. Oh yes, Lord, we have sinned!
But, don’t worry. According to Jewish teachings, God expects all human beings to sin. But, Judaism teaches that sin is a choice. We have the ability to choose to sin and we have the ability to choose not to sin.
Most of the High Holy Days, we are repenting for the little sins we chose to commit, which the Torah calls “chet.” “Chet” is a generic sin, which comes from the Hebrew root “to miss the mark, as an archer misses the bulls’ eye with his arrow. “Chet” is that flaw of character that enables a person to lie to himself or someone else.
No one is all good or all bad. A good parent or friend, may be a negligent employee or a horrible spouse. We prefer to think in binary choices, that someone is totally wicked or totally righteous. But, human beings are a million shades of gray. To use a metaphor from Passover, we are the wise one, the wicked one, the simple one, and the one who doesn’t know how to ask, at various points in living out our lives. We just hope we are the wise one enough of the time.
I pray that the vast majority of us are not here to beat our breasts to ask for forgiveness for criminal acts, crimes against humanity, or breaking the law. Instead, we ask for forgiveness for our sins of chet, less criminal, but sins nonetheless.
From a Jewish perspective, intention matters. We are obligated to scrutinize our actions, as well as the intentions and motivations we had in committing them. That is why in our Al Chet confessional prayer, we are given the six categories of sinful intentions. (Gates of Repentance, p. 271)
1- B’Ones. Sins committed because you were forced, for which forgiveness is automatic. The captive, the prisoner of war, the abused child or spouse, the secret Jew, are not judged in same way for sins they were forced to commit.
My great-grandfather, Abraham, for whom I was named, was forced to eat pork by the Russian army, as the initiation rite for Jews. For the rest of his life, he kept strictly kosher. I decided to become kosher for a host of reasons at the time of my Bat Mitzvah, but his example of living a kosher life after being forced and humiliated was definitely a part of my decision.
2- B’Ratzon. Sins committed willingly and willfully. You actually choose to consciously break the law, break a confidence, hurt another human being physically or mentally, with malice aforethought.
3- B’Shgagah. Sins committed by mistake or in error. Those are the “I didn’t mean to” sins, the most human mistakes, easily forgivable, because there was no malicious intent. They are the times that it should be easiest to say, “I’m sorry,” as long as you have a conscience and take responsibility for your actions.
4- B’Zadon. Brazenly. Some of the worst sins are perpetrated B’Zadon. You deliberately intend to hurt someone or a group of someones in a painful way. You spite God or another person, and then, you make excuses for your actions, telling yourself it is okay because you were wronged or you have moral superiority. The rumormonger, shamer, and slanderer know what they are doing.
And those who rush, brazenly, to publish and release and expose others in this social media age should take the words of Rabbi Israel Salanter, the 19th century Russian moralist to heart:
“Not everything that is thought should be said.
Not everything that is said should be written.
Not everything that is written should be published.”
5- B’Seter. Sins committed in secret. These are the sins that you know you have committed, and God knows. Secret sins can eat away at the human soul and can cause great fear or shame. Secret sins, once revealed can destroy lives and families, nations and trust. But, most of all, secret sins are lonely sins that cause so much pain.
6- B’Galui. The sins that are openly perpetrated for all to see and hear. These are the sins of the mouth. Sins of lying, humiliation, and verbal bigotry – hateful and hurtful and so often, heartless. These are the sins of violence and the sins of disregard for human dignity. These are the hardest sins to forgive.
We are taught that to be holy is to emulate God, and our God is a forgiving God. That is why one of the greatest sins is not seeking forgiveness for any one of the six categories of sin.
Reb Menachem Mendl of Kotsk taught, “The main element of sin is not how a person sinned, for he is only human…The main element of sin is that one may repent at any moment, but does not; and this sin is greater than the transgression itself.” Perhaps the worst lie of all is to tell oneself that there is nothing to atone for.
In Judaism, there is no pass, no forgiveness, and no atonement without admitting you were wrong. And where God always forgives vows that couldn’t be kept and failures in faith, our fellow humans are far less forgiving. Judaism teaches us that we must go to the people we have hurt.
We must seek forgiveness for words and deeds that caused harm and inflicted pain. It is not enough to say you are sorry to God, or to make a blanket statement of admission. We must apologize and even more, promise not to do it again, directly to the people we actually hurt.
Step one is always to admit you were wrong. Step two is the promise to change. Step three is keeping that promise. That is why we say Viddui, Ashamnu, and Al Chet. All three are admissions of guilt and misconduct, a first step. In essence, Yom Kippur is about being truthful to ourselves, and to our God- the Supreme Judge of all of our actions.
On another Lie Witness News, testing the lack of knowledge of our Supreme Court after the death of Justice Scalia, people were asked what they thought of the newly nominated Supreme Court judge, and a host of people were substituted for Merrick Garland.
When asked if deceased British citizen, George Harrison, of the Beatles, would be a good choice for the Supreme Court, one man said yes, that Harrison’s 18 years of experience would make him a wonderful choice. I guess being dead and British didn’t disqualify him.
Then, to coincide with the return of Game of Thrones , they asked a bystander whether the person thought nominee Tyrion Lannister would be a good choice. I confess that I had to Google who Tyrion Lannister was, living here in my Jewish Beltway bubble, but I already knew for certain, that he was not the Supreme Court nominee. Tyrion Lannister is a prominent fictitious character on Game of Thrones.
With a straight face, the interviewer asked about this Supreme Court nominee: “Do you think Tyrion Lannister will bring peace to all Seven Kingdoms, or is he gonna be a divisive figure on the Supreme Court?” The woman responded, “I think he’s gonna be divisive. Nowadays we have so many kingdoms, … and everybody’s pulling for this kingdom, that kingdom. We’re gonna see how it runs.” I had no idea that the Supreme Court dealt with kingdoms at all. What I do know is that the only kingdom we need to be concerned about today is God’s.
And that there is only one judge. When God is our judge, we know we are accountable for what we say, and how we say it, what we do and think, and for the intentions behind our actions.
No matter what you believe about God, Judaism teaches us that when we live as if there is a Higher Authority than ourselves, that we show more accountability for our actions, and spend less time focused on the failings others.
We are only human, created by our God with flaws. Judaism acknowledges that we were created with the ability to sin, and those sins may be forced or willing, by mistake or on purpose, in secret or openly committed for all to see and hear.
It is only when we come together to admit our failings, when we stop lying to ourselves and to others, and when we wholeheartedly repent on this Day of Atonement, that we will find the truth and forgiveness we seek.
And so we will pray at every service in the coming year: May the words of our mouths and the meditations of our hearts, be acceptable to You, O God, our Rock and our Redeemer. Amen.