Neilah 2021

Hello everyone. I’m glad you’re here in shul this evening as we are about to start Neilah. In fact, I’m really glad to see you because I need good people around me when I am doing hard things, and I know it’s going to get harder yet. But I am not afraid because you are here with me.

Rabbi Johnathan Sacks writes in the notes of the Koren Machzor that the question God asks us at Neilah is not are you perfect, but can you grow? I like that question. It speaks to me because in my day-job, I try so hard to be perfect and I fail so much at that. I want perfect experiences all the time, and I need to look around me and see that that isn’t possible for anyone, including me, including you. I need to look around and see that I am not the centre of the universe and that others are suffering, just like me. It’s not easy to go from me to we. It’s very difficult to go from focusing on the self to moments of transcendence.

But if I am here with you, I can see others prevailing, and I just might too.
The point of Yom Kippur is to make you surrender the story of who you are, and to allow you to find out who you really are. The suffering, the prostrations, the understanding that we are like dust, a broken shard, a fleeting shadow, a passing cloud, like a dream that slips away are a means to an end. And that end is to make you put aside your personal isness, and realise your shared innate magnificent beingness.

To make us surrender so that we might realise that we are part of an infinite and intact greatness that is forever. Tonight, there’s a possibility to feel ourselves as part of the whole., so that at the end of the Neilah service, we might hear the words we are saying. And that when we leave, we might remember them.

When we leave here, remembering those words, we can all hopefully experience moments of transcendent beauty. Later on, we can all incline our inner ear to the still, quiet voice of God within us, and we can all bring blessings into other people’s lives and our own. But right now, our job is to give in and surrender to our shared God.

Night is approaching and the end of this unique Yom Kippur is almost here. The day has atoned for us, and we have transformed ourselves by collectively suffering, collectively confessing and collectively praying. We have to be together though for this to work for anyone of us. So I’m glad you’re here; because you have to be in the room where it happens, as the great song goes.

Rav, one of my favourite sages in the Talmud agrees. He says, in Pesachim 85, that when it comes to prayer, the one who is standing outside the doorway cannot be included together with those praying inside. You have to be in the room where it happens. You have to be here, now.

But of course, there’s another opinion. Rabbi Yehoshua ben Levi disagrees with Rav and says even a barrier of iron doesn’t separate the people of Israel and God.

מְחִיצָה שֶׁל בַּרְזֶל אֵינָהּ מַפְסֶקֶת בֵּין יִשְׂרָאֵל לַאֲבִיהֶם שֶׁבַּשָּׁמַיִם. But most rabbis of Talmud understand that God is rarely available to us directly. Rabbi Elazar says since the day the Temple was destroyed, the gates of prayers were locked, but the gates of tears were not locked.

Ima Shalom says all gates between man and God are locked, except for the gates of wounded feelings. In other words, we are close to God’s comforting presence when we are crying and when we are wounded. The Talmud says God is there when we are studying with another person, when we are doing justice and when we are praying together. Right now, tonight the gates are ajar.

Neilah means locking, because the gates are just about to close shut and be locked again. This is our last chance. This is a rare opportunity. Together we are going into that liminal space between life and death. Our custom is to leave the Ark open when the Amidah repetition begins, and it is left open until the end of the service. And so, we stand when we can barely stand any more. I remember as a child, looking at the old women who stood and kept standing through Neilah. I can’t, I tell myself, and there’s no shame in it. But I look at the old women who are surely suffering more than me, and I wonder… It’s not about perfection, it’s about growth.

We’ve come a long way today, and we still have a way to go, although the end is almost in sight.

The apex of the service, the emotional peak of the day, is just around the corner. The whole day is a preparation for that moment. We will be saying the words that matter most.

First, we will say the shma together once. Then we will say out loud the verse we usually mutter quietly to ourselves on the rest of the year. We will say it out loud three times together and we will hear each other say it.

Then and only then, when we are exhausted and there’s almost nothing left of ourselves, we will say the clarion call of monotheism. We say it seven times. I count on my fingers as we go. If we keep saying it now, over and over, maybe we will remember when we leave here, when the gates are closed.

Adonai hu ha’elohim. Those three words were first said at Mt. Carmel by the people of Israel who fall on their faces in acceptance of God’s existence. In Kings 18.39 in response to Elijah’s demonstrations of God’s existence, the people of Israel say those words two times. Perhaps, it’s because we are a more forgetful people, we need to say them seven times. Perhaps we need to say them for those who can’t be with us, for our family, friends and teachers who are not in the seats next to us, for the living who are far away, for the dead who are gone forever.

The gates are still open, but they are in the process of closing. We still have time to let go and to let the Neilah service have its way with us, so that when we come to the part at the end, we can say those words for ourselves, over and over together, and let them sink in.

We will be here together saying these words tonight. Please God we will be here together next year.

Gmar Chatimah tova.