People sometimes view Yom Kippur as a day of somber doom and gloom, full of long unintelligible praying, physical deprivations, and fears and anxieties about the future. Yet our Sages view Yom Kippur in quite a different light.
The Mishna in Masechet Ta’anit (26b) tells us that Yom Kippur was one of the two most joyous days of the Jewish year (the other being the 15th of Av, as explained there). Yom Kippur is a day of forgiveness, reconciliation and opportunity for a new beginning, unencumbered by the crushing deadweight of past failure. Yom Kippur is a wondrous gift of love from the Creator, the gift of a second chance. As such, despite the lengthy prayers and the physical discomfort of no food or drink, and our backs, knees and feet being sore from long hours of standing, one should cherish every moment “like the sweetness of honey” (an expression I heard from my revered Mashgiach, Rav Dovid Kronglass, zatzal). For an all too brief 25-hour period we are with Hashem, in Whose presence there is “strength and joy” (Chronicles I 16:27).
If a blind person were given one day in which to see, what would he do? How he would rush to savor the memory of color, of pattern, to notice the green of the grass, the colors of flowers, the smiles of his children. How he would hold on to everything he could see so he could imprint it on his mind and soul and consciousness, even as the physical image fades away. This last hour of Yom Kippur, as we say the Ne’ilah prayer, is very much the same. We spend most of our lives only half-seeing. If not blind, then we are at least color-blind, missing so much of the essence. On Yom Kippur, when we really focus, we can begin to see. On this day the Shechina (Divine Presence) is particularly close and the gates of Heaven are open to our prayers. But toward the end of the day that time is ending, and we will go back to our regular life, our life of half-seeing. The prayer of Ne’ilah is shorter than the rest of the Yom Kippur prayers. There are no long “al chets”. We are pressed for time and we are pushing to get those last few requests in. We are trying and striving to hold on to the special moments when Hashem is closer to us than at any other time of the year, to remember them so we can continue to keep some of the holiness within us.
And teshuva can be earned in a moment if we do it right. The gemara in Avoda Zara (17a) relates the story of Elazar ben Dordaya, who was a notoriously degenerate person. He was so degenerate that he traveled the world looking for prostitutes. Finally, he heard of one he hadn’t been with, far away. He made the trip, but she was so disgusted that he had spent so much effort to find her that she refused to be with him. This woke him up. In an instant he realized what he had become. In despair, he turned to the mountains and hills and asked them to pray for him. They answered him that they couldn’t — they had to pray for themselves. Next, he turned to the heaven and earth and asked them the same. Again, he got the same answer. Next, he turned to the sun and moon, and again was turned down. Finally, he turned to the stars, and they, too, refused him. At last he cried out that the only one who could save him was himself. All of it was on his shoulders. With this realization he cried such a pitiful cry to Hashem that his soul left his body. At that instant a voice from Heaven sounded, “Rabbi Elazar ben Dordaya has earned a share in the World-to-Come.” He had been given rabbinic ordination posthumously. When the rabbis of the Talmud told this story they would cry with the realization that in an
