The following thought is in part a development of a marvelous sermon given on the “Shabbat of Repentance,” by Rabbi Jonathan Rosenblatt of the Riverdale Jewish Center. All weaknesses are my own.
As I write these words, traditional Jews are sitting down at their tables and eating of fine linens for the “seuda mafseket”: the final meal eaten before the fast of Yom Kippur begins. According to the custom, the seuda mafseket is to be eaten in state, using the fine linen and dishes of a Shabbat or a festival meal — though the day before Yom Kippur is not a festival.
Why the celebration? One would think that, in keeping with the mood of contemplative solemnity that accompanies the day of atonement, the final meal before the fast would be subdued, modest, and filled trepidation, rather than boisterous and celebratory. After all, we will soon stand for judgment before the Highest Judge — how are we able to eat at all?
Rabbenu Yonah Gerondi, the medieval Catalan Rabinnic sage and moralist, gives a possible answer in his work Gates of Repentance: throughout the period of repentance, indeed, throughout the entire year, Israel has been racked with obsessive worry for its own repentance and forgiveness. Continually, we have been forced to ask ourselves: “am I acting appropriately?” “what if I screw up?” “what if I cannot repent?” “what if my sins cannot be atoned for?” But mostly, looking forward toward the Day of Atonement, we have been asking ourselves: “what if I never reach that day?” “what if I die with the stain of sin still contaminating my person?”
But, says Rabbenu Yonah, this agony of constant worry that is the hallmark of the commanded life, is whisked away in one glorious sweep on the day before Yom Kippur, as we reach the allotted time for our atonement, when our repentance combines with the terrible power of the day to purge us of our iniquities. As we witness our salvation upon us, on the very horizon toward which the sun sinks, we celebrate that finally, after a year of trepidation, our sincere repentance will bear fruit.
A little presumptuous, no? Immanuel Kant (1724-1804 – described in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy as “the central figure in modern philosophy”) thought so. In his treatise Religion Within the Bounds of Mere Reason he rails against “Statutory Religion” – that is, religion of rites, ceremonies, and rituals – of which Judaism is the prime exemplar. How, Kant asks, can man be so arrogant as to trust that God will do anything for him that he does not deserve, because of some metaphysical hocus-pocus? Indeed, how can we expect God to do anything for us that we cannot do for ourselves? Religion, according to Kant, is at its heart the sanctification of universal, philosophical, moral imperatives, a morality that can be deduced from reason without any help from an outside divine legislator. As such, all we can do (indeed all we should do) is attempt the best we can to make ourselves into better people. Beyond that, any requests for divine forgiveness as such are foolish and superfluous. God will forgive us just because we wish that he will? Just because some set day of the year rolls around? Superstition!
Indeed, according to Kant, forgiveness itself is an impossibility. God, after all, will not do anything for us that we cannot do for ourselves. How can we absolve ourselves of past transgressions? They’re water under the bridge. And because true religion is merely a set of moral obligations to which mankind is expected to conform, there is no conceivable supererogatory actions that can serve to counteract the bygone sins. There is merely the bar, and below the bar. And we are all below it, with no hope of ever reaching it. Kant hems and haws to get out of this bind, but ultimately comes up short.
Put otherwise, according to Kant, there are three types of human beings: damned, damneder, and damnedest.
I will not address here whether Kantians tend to be more negative people than non-Kantians. But I will point out that Kant’s depressing picture of impossible repentance was answered by the Talmud more than a millennium earlier. The opening of Tractate Avodah Zarah tells a story of an end of days in which the nations of the world stand before God, and complain of their lack of reward. After all, they claim, God never gave them commandments to fulfill. They had no chance!
God responds by reminding the nations that they had in fact received commandments – but hadn’t fulfilled them. The seven Noahide laws, which many thinkers link conceptually to basic moral precepts, were issued to the nations of the world at the time of Noah, long before the giving of the Torah to the Jews. But the nations of the world could not even live up to this basic standard.
So God repealed the Noahide laws.
The voice of the Talmud (and, presumably, Kant) immediately protests: “They couldn’t fulfill the laws, so You repeal them? This is reward for misdeeds! How can you simply absolve of responsibility one who doesn’t reform themselves?”
Answers the Talmud: Don’t think that the repeal of commandments is such a mercy. True, the nations will no longer be held responsible for their malefaction, but henceforth, they will cease to receive any reward for the performance of commandments — even if the lives they led were utterly blameless.
The Talmud elaborates that one who is commanded, and performs, received greater reward than one who is not commanded, and performs.
This is the answer to Kant. Because the stylized gentiles in the Talmud refused to treat moral precepts as commandments of a higher, external being, they become only what they were before: moral precepts. And a life without commandment — Kant’s life, a life merely of obligation — can not yield such reward, only punishment.
Kant obligated life has no possibility of atonement, only of differing levels of sin. It is a life only of agony. But the commanded life of the Torah offers reward, and with it, forgiveness. It also is a life of agony, but the agony of the commanded life can, at times, give itself over to sublime ecstasy in the realization of good and the actualization of forgiveness. It holds within it the ecstasy of return to God. This is cause to celebrate.
The Yalkut Shimoni states what Kant could never utter:
Said Rabbi Levi: “Great is repentance in that it reaches until the Throne of Glory, as Scripture said: ““Return, O Israel, unto the Lord your God”
So now, on the eve of our stance in terror, let us eat, drink, and be merry.
