The World Recreated to Allow Second Chances: Yom Kippur 2023
On Rosh
Hashanah 5784 years ago, the world was created for a second time. How could that be?
According to a
Midrashic tradition, the physical creation, in which God says, “Let there be
light,” (Genesis 1:3) began on 25 Elul. Therefore, the sixth day – when “every
living soul,” including Adam, was created – was the first day of Tishrei. In
this creation, which we read about in Genesis chapter 1, everything was created
through speech, so it was clean and
orderly. Every day the results were graded and declared “good.” I understand that to mean, not
only was creation was clean and orderly, but also that it met
expectations. On the sixth day, the process ends with the creation of humanity, male and
female, and everything that God had done was
declared “very good.” If the good components of creation were
clean, orderly, and met expectations, it is reasonable to understand that the
overall creation, which was
declared “very good,”
was very clean, very orderly, and met all expectations. But, no.
In Bereishit
Rabbah (9), a series of rabbis give the word “very” varied meanings that
are not necessarily good. Among other things, they suggest that the word is
intended to include Gehinom, the angel of death, Roman rule, and the evil
inclination in creation.
Each understands it
differently but together they mean that the created world was “good
but complex.”
If we continue
reading in the spirit of Midrash, the following chapters in Genesis detail
events that happened on the sixth day, when humans were created, but did not live up
to expectations. The creation of humanity introduced complexity. As soon as Eve
and Adam ate the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, contrary
to God’s instructions, the second creation began, according to the teachings of
Rav Yitzchak Hutner (Warsaw, 1906 – Jerusalem, 1980).
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| Exodus 34 in the Leningrad Codex (Sefaria) |
Where does this concept come from? Not from a direct interpretation of Genesis, but from the 13 Attributes [Middot] of Mercy: “The Eternal (Y-H-V-H), the Eternal, God merciful and gracious...” (Exodus 34:6). A widely-accepted exegetical rule states that there are no superfluous words in the Torah, so the second occurrence of the Ineffable Name, Y-H-V-H, requires explanation. Immediately after the statement in the Talmud that establishes the 13 Attributes as a component of prayer, the Gemara explains: “The Eternal, the Eternal – I am God before a person sins and I am God after a person sins” (Rosh Hashanah 17b). This explanation is well-known and accepted – it appears in our Yom Kippur Machzor twice – but I find it puzzling. If the Ineffable Name represents the Deity who is “past, present and future” God was surely Godself before a person sins and also afterward. That’s how I always understood it, and therefore, I asked why it needed to be said.
Then I studied
Rabbi Hutner’s sermon in a lesson with Rabbi Tali Adler of the Hadar Institute.
First, Rabbi Hutner understands that the “person” here is Primordial Adam and
not just any person. Further,
he understands God’s name not as representing God’s eternity but rather as expression of the force that called
the world into being. The first appearance
of the Name refers to the first creation in Genesis 1, when everything
was indeed perfect. But in perfection there is fragility. Rabbi Hutner explains (based on Rabbi Adler’s
translation): “The first instantiation of creation: its power only lasted up
until the moment of Adam’s sin. The moment of sin was the endpoint of that
existence [created by] the first ineffable name in the 13 Middot, ‘God before
the sin.’ But here a new world is created with repentance which is represented
by the second ineffable name comes.” At that moment, the power of creation came
into play again and the world was recreated, in a second and improved edition
that includes the option of repentance. Rabbi Hutner goes on to compare teshuva
to the splitting of the Red Sea, a primordial miracle. Primordial and
difficult.
I hope I’ve
managed to convey some of the homiletical beauty of this teaching. If not, at
least I hope that the message is clear. The second edition of the world, after Eden,
was created to allow for second chances. Moreover, the renewed creation
exemplifies them. Although humans were created in the image of God, their
behavior does not meet divine expectations. In the transition to physical
matter, disorder entered the Divine image. But the Creator did not give up, but rather
tried to fix things.
The
possibility of repentance came into the world, but there is no sign that Adam
and Eve grasp this possibility. When God asks, “Did you eat of the tree from
which I had forbidden you to eat?” (Genesis 2:17) each one passes the
responsibility on. They neither apologize nor ask for forgiveness. The power of
repentance remained potential.
Their son Cain
commits a major sin and repents just a little. At first, he too shirks
responsibility, but when punished, he does grasp what is happening, and pleads,
“My punishment is too great to bear!” (Genesis 4:13). Although this is not an
admission of guilt but rather a complaint about the severity of his punishment,
the very fact that Cain responds is a first step. God complies and gives him a
sign for protection. This is an initial spark and “bearing punishment” becomes
an Attribute of Mercy.
Bereishit
Rabbah (22) describes this development through a conversation
between father and son. When Adam asks Cain about his sentence, “‘He [Cain]
said to him, ‘I have repented and there was a compromise.’ Adam hit himself on
the face, saying, ‘Thus is the power of repentance and I had no idea.’”
Cain learned
whatever he learned, but the general situation continued to deteriorate, until
the Creator could no longer stand the mess and brought a flood to clean the
earth. At the end of the process, God begins to understand the complexity of
humanity and declares, “Never again will I doom the earth because of humankind,
since the devisings of the human mind are evil from youth; nor will I ever
again destroy every living being, as I have done” (Gen. 8:21). Slowly, God and
humans learn to live and work together.
People sin not
only towards God, but also against each other. On the social level,
too, time is required to develop the possibility of repentance, reconciliation,
and forgiveness. Esau and Jacob reconcile without apology or explicit words of
forgiveness. The first to show actual processes of learning and teshuva
are Judah facing Tamar, and all the brothers facing Joseph. Their repentance
took decades, and they paid heavy prices, the death of Judah’s two sons, famine,
detention, and exile.
Skipping ahead
to the generation of the Exodus. Adam received one mitzvah. At Mount Sinai, the
Israelites accepted the Ten Commandments, which included an absolute prohibition:
“You shall not make for yourself a sculptured image, or any likeness… You shall
not bow down to them or serve them…” (Exodus 20:4-5). This time, they held out
for forty days until Moses was late returning to the camp. Desperate, the
people demand a physical representation instead of an abstract deity. Aaron
succumbed to public pressure and very shortly the people are dancing around the
Golden Calf. After what was commanded at Sinai, God’s immense wrath is not
surprising. Moses’ daring mediation saves us and the punishment stops short of total
annihilation, but is not completely canceled (Exodus 32). The 13 Attributes are
declared only after the price is exacted (Exod. 34:6-7).
When Kings
Saul and David sin, they do confess guilt after a prophet rebukes them, but
confessing “I have sinned” does not eliminate their punishments.
Jonah, the
recalcitrant prophet, about whom we will read about at Minha, was the one
chosen to introduce teshuva that preempt punishment to the world,
according to the
eye-opening reading of Mira Bernstein (a mathematician). The Book of
Jonah itself is not dated, but a prophet named Jonah ben Amitai appears in the
Second Book of Kings, at the time of Jeroboam ben Nevat, and he may have been
the first of the latter prophets.
His prophecy,
“Forty days more and Nineveh shall be overturned,” does indeed turn things
upside down. The people of the city and their king express sorrow and return
from their evil ways. Therefore, “God renounced the punishment that had been
planned for them and did not carry it out” (Jonah 3). The threat of
punishment was not fulfilled. This is the first time that repentance cancels
the evil decree altogether. Jonah is angry when he realizes what is happening,
but God remains firm, sparing the city and all its inhabitants, men, women,
children, and beasts (Jonah 4). Once again, God Godself demonstrates the improved
edition of the world and teshuva. Davka abroad. Repentance is not part
of the covenant between the people of Israel and their God, but the inheritance
of all humanity.
Let me add:
The possibility – which is not a promise – that repentance will nullify
punishment does not make repentance easy. It’s still hard to confess and say,
“I sinned.” It is even harder to change patterns of behavior. As difficult as
the splitting of the Red Sea. Therefore, God is willing to accept even the
initial steps of the people of Nineveh despite their wrongdoing. Presumably,
God could judge human's sincerity at any given moment. Therefore, God is willing to
take a risk and prefer mercy to judgment, so as not to waste the potential
inherent in a moment of repentance.
It is also
important to note: the people of Nineveh did not repent individually, but as a
group. Similarly, we are here together today even though the real work of teshuva
is internal, personal. Individual prayer and communal singing alternate, so we
can feel the support of the togetherness while doing our individual work, in
the hope that saying “we have sinned” will pave the way to the “I have sinned”
necessary for true repentance.
Allow me to conclude
with a sentence Lea Tal used to include in the additional readings for the High
Holidays: “As long as the candle is lit, repair is possible.”
Shoshana Michael Zucker
Kehillat Hod VeHadar, Kfar Saba
