A story is told about Fiorello LaGuardia mayor of New York city from 1934-1945 during the worst days of the Great Depression and all of World War 2, a story I think helps us focus on our goals for tonight and the next 24 hours. On a bitterly cold night in January of 1935, he turned up at a night court that served the poorest ward of the city. He dismissed the judge for the evening and took the bench himself. Within a few minutes, a tattered old woman was brought before him, charged with stealing a loaf of bread. She told LaGuardia, and all those assembled there, her daughter was sick, and her 2 grandchildren were starving. But the shopkeeper refused to drop the charges. The shopkeeper said in anger, “It’s a bad neighborhood your Honor, he told the mayor, she’s got to be punished to teach other people around here a lesson.”
La Guardia sighed. He turned to the woman and said, “I’ve got to punish you. The law makes no exceptions—ten dollars or ten days in jail.”
But even as he pronounced sentence, the mayor was reaching into his pocket. He took out a bill saying, “Here is the 10 dollar fine which I now remit; and furthermore I am going to fine everyone in this courtroom 50 cents for living in a town where a person has to steal bread so that her grandchildren can eat. Mr. Bailiff, collect the fines and give them to the defendant.”
And so the following day the papers reported that 47 dollars and 50 cents were turned over to a bewildered old lady who had stolen a loaf of bread to feed her starving family, 50 cents of that being contributed by the red-faced grocery store owner, while some 70 petty criminals, traffic violators, and NY police, each of whom had paid 50 cents for the privilege, gave the mayor a standing ovation.*
For a shining moment in the dark of night in New York, everyone was equal in their responsibility to their fellow citizen, everyone was complicit: those who had broken the law and the police who maintained it, the judge paid the penalty for the wrongdoer, and a message went out that injustice against one is injustice against all.
As we welcome Yom Kippur this year, I’m particularly amazed and delighted the way this story that reminds us all that we’re all human, all mortal, all responsible, all complicit. For one full day, sundown to sundown, there are no distinctions among us at all. We are the old woman in the story, and we’re the shopkeeper, and we’re the mayor. No one’s more holy or more virtuous than anyone else. There are no political parties, we’re not divided into nationals and orioles fans, into redskins and ravens fans. We are all human and we’re all here as imperfect, flawed and fallible. It sounds harsh since we don’t use the word sin so often but we are all sinners, all of us struggling and striving to confront what we’ve done wrong. We do this while also recognizing so many of us sitting here tonight have been wronged and are sitting here in pain. How do we find the path again? We can’t do it alone.
Our ancestors knew that we need each other’s support and help not only doing the painful times when we can’t help ourselves, but all the time, every day, knowing we’re there for each other. And nothing is worse than going through Yom Kippur feeling as though we’re alone. For some of us, we may be surrounded by hundreds of other people tonight and still feel alone. Knowing we’re there for each other, even if we feel alone someone’s there for us, is vital for our Yom Kippur holiday that begins tonight, and our Rabbis made sure to explain this very clearly before we hear Kol Nidre lest we begin Yom Kippur frustrated, angry, and lonely.
And so just before the Kol Nidre Cantor Kappell recited in such a moving way, we recite, “Bishivah shel malah…by the authority of the court on high and of this court below, with divine consent and with the consent of this congregation, anu matirin lehitpalel im ha’avaryanim…we grant permission to pray with those who have transgressed.”
At first pass it may not seem to be the most community building, ‘love your fellow human being’ message to hear before Kol Nidre.
But that’s exactly what happens tonight through tomorrow night – we’re all here together. We realize we’ve all missed the mark, all of us in some way or another, and this is then highlighted even more surprisingly immediately after Yom Kippur. After a day of self-reflection, prayer, and fasting we finish at Neilah, and then in the short weekday Mariv service after Neilah that follows we say slach lanu Avinu ki chatanu and hit our chest again – what could we possibly have done wrong between the end of Neilah and Mariv? We didn’t even leave shul yet! Still, there’s something there, at the very least our pride in thinking that we were completely cleansed. We’re all in this together.
The Rabbis explain Ta’anit sha’ayn bah mi’poshey Yisrael aynah ta’anit (Keritot 6b) – a fast in which no sinners of Israel participate is not considered a fast and our prayers will not be accepted.
And so in truth, even if we all were clean as a whistle and free from sin, we’d have to ship in some sinners from somewhere else.
Our Machzor suggests the permission to pray with Avaryanim is a way of making us all feel welcome as we come here tonight burdened with guilt and perhaps a sense of being unworthy to join with our community in prayer.
Rabbi Joseph Soloveitchik underlines the importance of all of us praying together in a lecture he gave in Boston 50 years ago, where he taught, “The communal atonement effected by the very day of Yom Kippur is compromised if any members of the Jewish people are excluded. We therefore make this declaration that we are permitted to pray with those who have sinned…” (Machzor Masoret Ha Rav Yom Kippur, p. 66)
Then in our morning prayers, we will ask God to help us become agudah achat, one people, one nation bound together. The word agudah takes us to Sukkot, the binding that holds the lulav pieces together is called an Egged, like the bus service in Israel that ties one location to the next. The Rabbis teach us that each of us is like one piece of the lulav and etrog combination, and all the pieces together resemble the entire nation of Israel, none of the pieces can be left out and the Rabbis conclude that each person then, whatever his or her misdeeds, whatever he or she is struggling with now, that each of us michaprin zeh et zeh, that each of us atones for each other. It’s like the game where we stand in a circle facing in, then turn to face the back of the person in front of us, pull the circle a little tighter, and then we all sit down, each of us supporting the next person in the circle. We’re all involved in supporting each other and balancing the whole community. We need everyone’s voice, everyone’s presence, everyone’s input, everyone’s energy and the holy power of each person’s soul otherwise our Yom Kippur just doesn’t work.
But with all this said, Avaryanim, the word used in the paragraph before the Kol Nidre prayer, is a strange word to use for sinners. There are other more common words for the same thing. Rabbi Alan Lew notices this unique word and he believes it “suggests an even deeper reality that all of us share. Not only are we all imperfect. We are all impermanent, all of us mortal. In its simplest meaning avar(from the word AVAR-yanim) means ‘to pass’. We are the Avaryanim. We are the ones who are just passing through, every one of us…” We must confront this reality first before we can renew ourselves, and what better way to recognize our humanity, our fragility, than surrounded by friends, family, and fellow community members.
This Yom Kippur, this year, I pray we see the people around us, the people we know, the people we don’t know yet, as our fellow travelers in our passing through this life, through this world. Today there are no distinctions among us, we are each other’s keepers, we are responsible for each other, and if we could think this way for one full day then what miracles could we accomplish together in the days ahead knowing in our hearts, in the depths of our being, that we’re connected to each other by invisible lines?
We will not ever all agree with each other of course, and that is a good thing, too much unity begins to become uniformity and God topples the Tower of Babbel in the days after Noah’s ark lands and makes us all speak different languages for just that reason -- but we also cannot continue to be as polarized as we are, otherwise we risk cutting those invisible lines of connection between us. We once visited a synagogue in New Jersey where some members mentioned to us that they recently moved their seats because they did not want to sit next to other synagogue members nearby who held to different political views. The ancient Rabbis were familiar with dissension in communities and the houses of the Great Rabbis Hillel and Shammai, who vehemently disagreed on nearly all matters of Jewish thought and practice, still maintained social relationships with each other – they were friends, their children married each other.
Tonight each of us can be like LaGuardia at the night court, recognizing how we’re all tied together by links of tradition, family, friendship, and being part of this community we’re creating every moment we gather – all of us here, guests, extended family members, people of all faiths with us. Hearing Kol Nidre tonight reminds us of a critical lesson from our Sages that just as a person lights one candle from another and the original flame is not diminished, so too we are strengthened when we pass our internal flame to another. May our observance of Yom Kippur strengthen us to do so every day of this New Year.
Tzom Kal u-mash-ma-u-ti, an easy and meaningful fast for those who are fasting, and ketivah ve’hatima tovah, may we all be written and sealed in the Book of Life. Amen.
*I initially heard this story from a pastor friend in New Jersey. He quoted the La Guardia story from the book The Ragamuffin Gospel by Brennan Manning.
