Yom Kippur | The Deep Meaning of the Day of Joy and Love - in Light of Chassidus

00:00 There’s something very interesting about Yom Kippur, and we find it in the Mishnah in tractate Taanis. The last Mishnah in Taanis says: “There were no Yom Tov days for the Jewish people like the fifteenth of Av and Yom Kippur.” The Mishnah describes what they would do on those days, the fifteenth of Av and Yom Kippur: the daughters of Israel—or, according to another version, the daughters of Jerusalem—would go out and dance in the vineyards. They would go out to the vineyards of Jerusalem and dance there in borrowed white garments, and it was a day for shidduchim. They would say: “Young man, lift up your eyes and see what you choose. Do not set your eyes on beauty; set your eyes on family.” It was a day for shidduchim. We spoke before about the fifteenth of Av and how to understand why that particular day was set aside for shidduchim. But what’s hard to understand is Yom Kippur. Picture Yom Kippur, the holiest day of the year, when a Jew fasts—“You shall afflict yourselves”—from evening to evening. A day of self-denial. A day of fasting. A day of prayer. A day of teshuvah, a day of confession. Forgiveness, pardon, atonement. The holiest day of the year. Jews are in shul all day, praying without a break, asking Hakadosh Boruch Hu to grant us a good inscription and final sealing. What did they do in the time of the Beis Hamikdash—or perhaps afterward as well, whenever the custom described by the Mishnah was practiced? There were no Yom Tov days for the Jewish people like Yom Kippur, a day when, of all things, the daughters of Israel, the daughters of Jerusalem, would go out and dance in the vineyards. What does that have to do with Yom Kippur? How can it be? On such a holy day, don’t we have anything more important to do than this? How does this express the essence of Yom Kippur? What

02:29 does it have to do with Yom Kippur? Couldn’t they find another day for this celebration? What does it tell us? What does it symbolize? What’s the connection? But actually, this very account in the Mishnah expresses the wonderful depth of Yom Kippur. In fact, the Mishnah itself answers the question, and that’s what we’ll discuss today: understanding what the Mishnah tells us about Yom Kippur. Later in that same Mishnah, the final Mishnah of tractate Taanis, it says: “Go out and see, daughters of Tziyon, King Shlomo wearing the crown with which his mother crowned him on his wedding day and on the day of his heart’s rejoicing.” That verse is quoted later in the Mishnah. The verse says: Go out, daughters of Tziyon, and see King Shlomo wearing the crown his mother placed on him on his wedding day and on the day of his heart’s rejoicing. The Mishnah asks: What does this mean? Who is King Shlomo? What does “the crown with which his mother crowned him” mean? What is “go out and see” telling us? What does this verse mean, and how does it connect to what we said earlier? So the Mishnah says these words: “His wedding day” refers to the giving of the Torah, and “the day of his heart’s rejoicing” refers to the building of the Beis Hamikdash. So we understand that there’s a message here that the Mishnah is trying to convey about Yom Kippur. “His wedding day” refers to the giving of the Torah. Yom Kippur is the wedding day. As the Gemara itself explains there at the end of tractate Taanis, and as the commentators on the Mishnah, including Rabbeinu Ovadiah of Bartenura, explain—what is the point? What is the message here? Yom Kippur is a wedding day. What happened on the first Yom Kippur in the history of the Jewish people? If we go back to the Jewish people in that first year, in the period immediately after the giving of the Torah, we’ll see what happened. On the sixth or seventh of Sivan, Shabbos was the day of the giving of the Torah in the third month. That was the day Moshe Rabbeinu descended on—

04:53 Hakadosh Boruch... Sorry, descended on Mount Sinai—Moshe Rabbeinu went up Mount Sinai, and then the Torah was given. There were no Tablets yet. There was only the wondrous Divine revelation, when all the people saw the sounds and the flames. It was the great voice of the giving of the Torah, when Hakadosh Boruch Hu Himself was revealed and spoke the Ten Commandments. Then Moshe Rabbeinu stayed on the mountain for forty days and received the first Tablets. On the seventeenth of Tammuz, forty days after Shavuos, Moshe Rabbeinu came down from the mountain with the Tablets in his hands and encountered a terrible situation: the Jewish people had fallen into sin, the gravest transgression, the sin of the Golden Calf—idol worship. Moshe Rabbeinu took the Tablets and broke them, and then a whole process began. Moshe Rabbeinu went back up to heaven to pray and ask Hakadosh Boruch Hu to forgive the Jewish people for this great sin. For forty days Moshe Rabbeinu prayed, from 19 Tammuz until the eve of Rosh Chodesh Elul—forty days of prayer and supplication that Hashem forgive the Jewish people. Moshe Rabbeinu came down Mount Sinai again and told the Jewish people that Rosh Chodesh Elul was approaching and that he was going back up to receive the second Tablets. On Rosh Chodesh Elul, Moshe Rabbeinu went up the mountain for the third time. As the Midrashim say, that was when the gates of mercy and the gates of favor opened. The whole matter of sounding the shofar—the Jewish custom of sounding the shofar from Rosh Chodesh Elul—has its source in the shofar that was sounded then. On Rosh Chodesh Elul, the Jewish people began to awaken to teshuvah, because they knew that Hakadosh Boruch Hu was going to forgive them and that they were about to receive the second Tablets. From Rosh Chodesh Elul, forty days pass until Yom Kippur. “I am my beloved’s and my beloved is mine”—these are the forty days Moshe Rabbeinu spends on Mount Sinai, while the second Tablets are being prepared for the Jewish people to receive

07:09 them on Yom Kippur. It says in the sefarim that “I am my beloved’s and my beloved is mine,” as everyone knows, forms the acronym Elul in Hebrew. That’s because this is the renewed closeness after the distance caused by the great sin of the Golden Calf. The Jewish people draw close again: “I am my beloved’s”—they return to Hakadosh Boruch Hu in teshuvah. And Hakadosh Boruch Hu, too, is “my beloved,” an expression of love. Hakadosh Boruch Hu, my beloved, loves the Jewish people and draws close. The groom draws close to the bride, and the bride to the groom. But the final letters of those Hebrew words are also four yuds. “I am my beloved’s and my beloved is mine” has four yuds, representing the forty days between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur—between Rosh Chodesh Elul and Yom Kippur. Those forty days are days of mercy. And after all that, on Yom Kippur Moshe Rabbeinu comes down from the mountain with the second Tablets in his hands. That completes the circle that began 120 days earlier. Actually, it’s a little more than 120 days, because there were days when Moshe was down below. But from Shavuos until Yom Kippur, there was an entire process of drawing close, growing distant, and drawing close again, culminating on Yom Kippur, when Moshe Rabbeinu came down with the second Tablets and Hakadosh Boruch Hu told him, “I have forgiven, as you said.” The Jewish people received forgiveness, as Rashi says, with joy and a whole heart. Hakadosh Boruch Hu forgave the Jewish people, and from then on Yom Kippur was established as a day of forgiveness and pardon. So the Mishnah says it in two words: “his wedding day.” Yom Kippur is the wedding day. But interestingly, the wedding had already begun on Shavuos. That was the first time Hakadosh Boruch Hu descended upon Mount Sinai, the Divine revelation of “I am Hashem your G-d.” In many places and many Midrashim, Shavuos is also considered the wedding day. Even so, it took a long time. There was a process here: closeness, then distance, and then closeness again.

09:23 The second, which was the second tablets. And Yom Kippur is, in effect, the wedding of the second tablets. It is specifically with the second tablets that we find the perfect joy, the fullest joy. This also explains why, according to Jewish custom, we complete the Torah-reading cycle around Yom Kippur. In all communities, the reading of the Torah is completed during this period. Of course, today we do not do this on Yom Kippur itself, because it is a fast day. So we wait until Shemini Atzeres. After the whole process of Sukkos and its mitzvos, Shemini Atzeres arrives, we complete the Torah, and then we have the hakafos and dancing. As is well known from the writings of Kabbalah and the Zohar, all this great joy is really a result and continuation of the great joy of Yom Kippur. In other words, we really ought to have all the dancing of Simchas Torah on Yom Kippur, but it was spread over several days. Yom Kippur is the day of forgiveness and pardon. It is the day when connection and closeness are restored after distance, after estrangement: a Jew returns to draw close to the King of kings, Hakadosh Boruch Hu, our Father in Heaven, and He returns to draw close to us with great love and affection. Then we prepare the wedding canopy, which is the sukkah, and all the mitzvos of the lulav and the four species, which express the inner union of Jews with Hakadosh Boruch Hu, until we reach the great dancing of Simchas Torah. That dancing is really the dance of receiving the Torah through the second tablets. This also answers a famous question that many people ask: Why do we celebrate Simchas Torah on Shemini Atzeres? What is the connection? Seemingly, Simchas Torah should be on Shavuos, when the Torah was given. We do celebrate Shavuos. There is the festival of Shavuos, the Torah reading, the Ten Commandments; we eat dairy foods, meat dishes

11:45 and observe all the customs and laws of Shavuos. But we do not find a Jewish custom of taking the Torah and dancing with it everywhere on Shavuos, or of holding hakafos. No. Shavuos is a joyous festival, but in a somewhat calmer way. Only on Simchas Torah do we suddenly have all this joy, dancing and hakafos, with the Torah scroll at the center and everyone dancing around it. What happened? This is the explanation. Shavuos was the first Divine revelation, but there was still a whole process before we reached the second tablets. The great joy is specifically at the second wedding, the wedding that took place on Yom Kippur. “I have forgiven, as you have spoken”—it is specifically the second tablets that bring about this great and wonderful joy. But why is that really so? We need to understand why we celebrate Shavuos in a more passive, calmer way, while we celebrate the second tablets with such immense joy. The answer is the fundamental idea that lets us understand the depth of Yom Kippur and, really, the depth of all the festivals of Tishrei. As we have discussed many times, the festivals of Tishrei are not just several holidays that happened to fall in one month. They form a chain, a process that begins on Rosh Chodesh Elul. We build it step by step, level by level, going further each time. What takes shape here is an entire process of drawing close after having grown distant. “Peace, peace, to the far and to the near.” The Midrash says: to the one who was far away and drew close. There is the closeness of Shavuos, and there is the closeness that comes after distance—the advantage of a baal teshuvah over a tzaddik. The Gemara in Shabbos tells us: “In the place where baalei teshuvah stand, even complete tzaddikim cannot stand.” In other words, precisely the baal teshuvah, who experienced a fall, a period of darkness in his life, a time when his life was broken, and nevertheless did teshuvah, stood up

14:14 and found his footing again, strong, and connected with Hakadosh Boruch Hu through the power of teshuvah—baalei teshuvah attain a far greater closeness to G-d. “In the place where baalei teshuvah stand, even complete tzaddikim cannot stand.” That is the power of teshuvah. And that is really the difference between the festivals we celebrate at Pesach, during Sefiras HaOmer and on Shavuos, and those we celebrate from Elul through Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, all the way to Simchas Torah. During the first festivals, Bnei Yisroel are on the level of tzaddikim. During the festivals of Tishrei, Bnei Yisroel are in the position of baalei teshuvah. How can that be? Because that is actually what happened in our history. On the day of the Exodus from Egypt, 15 Nissan, the Jewish people were like a newborn baby, as our Sages tell us. In other words, there was no prior state. This was not a festival of teshuvah; it was the festival of a newborn baby. The Jewish people were born on Pesach: a new people, a clean people, a people with no past, no baggage from the past—nothing, zero. A fresh start. A people born at that very moment. In chapter 16 of Yechezkel, the prophet describes the day of the Exodus from Egypt as a birthday, the birthday of the nation. It was born clean and clear, without any trauma, anything from the past, or any lingering baggage. That is the level of a tzaddik. That is how the Exodus began. Then comes the process of Sefiras HaOmer, preparing ourselves more deeply to be ready and worthy to receive the Torah. And then, on Shavuos, came the wondrous Divine revelation: “Hashem descended upon Mount Sinai” and gave us the Ten Commandments. The Jewish people were in the state of tzaddikim. The Gemara says that when the Torah was given, their impurity ceased. There was no yetzer hara, no darkness, no filth, nothing. There was only purity, only cleanliness, only a people filled with holiness and purity. And then, forty days later, the terrible event of the sin of the Golden Calf took place. The people fell into sin.

16:28 It wasn’t our fault. The whole story involved the mixed multitude—however it happened, the bottom line is that the sin of the Golden Calf caused an enormous crisis for the Jewish people. It caused an enormous crisis of trust between Hakadosh Boruch Hu and the Jewish people. What happened to you? Moshe Rabbeinu had been away for forty days, and the Jewish people waited, and the hours passed. As the familiar account in the Midrash goes, which Rashi cites, the hours passed and they saw that Moshe was not returning. They said, “That’s it, it’s over. We’re going back to idol worship.” And so the whole story of the Golden Calf began. But Moshe Rabbeinu did not give up on the Jewish people. He fought for them. Through the whole story of the Golden Calf, the exchanges and the argument between Moshe and Hakadosh Boruch Hu—“Moshe pleaded”—he stood and prayed, asking Hakadosh Boruch Hu to forgive the Jewish people. And then came the wondrous event of the second tablets. The Midrash on Parshas Ki Sisa says: “I will tell you the secrets of wisdom, for sound wisdom is twofold.” The Midrash says this refers to the second tablets. With the first tablets, the Jewish people received the Ten Commandments, the Five Books of the Torah and the Book of Yehoshua. Had we received only the first tablets, the Midrash says, that would have been the whole Torah: the Ten Commandments, the Five Books of the Torah and the Book of Yehoshua. It was specifically because of the breaking of the tablets, the entire process of teshuvah and the shattering the Jewish people went through—and because, despite everything, they stood and pleaded, did teshuvah and returned to draw close to Hakadosh Boruch Hu, together with all of Moshe Rabbeinu’s prayers and efforts—that on Yom Kippur came the wondrous declaration, “I have forgiven, as you have spoken.” “Sound wisdom is twofold”: not merely twice as much, but something entirely different in kind. Scripture, Mishnah, Aggadah, and so on and so forth—the Midrash lists a great many things. All the wondrous, expansive Torah we received came specifically because of the second tablets. Here we see the wonderful power of teshuvah: after growing distant, we draw close once again. That is the joy

18:41 The greatest. This is the true wedding, and this is what the Mishnah says: “On the day of his wedding” refers to the giving of the Torah. It is specifically on Yom Kippur that the true giving of the Torah takes place. The real joy comes when the king’s son has been in captivity, returns from captivity, and draws close to his father the king again. Then comes the great joy: the king’s son has returned to his father, and the king receives his son again and forgives him. The embrace, the kiss, the closeness, the love that follow are beyond compare. That is the great joy of Sukkos, Shemini Atzeres, and Simchas Torah, which come after Yom Kippur. The Baal Shem Tov tells us—and here we return to the account of the daughters of Israel dancing in the vineyards—that the word for “dancing,” cholos, comes from the word machol, a dance. “Then the maiden will rejoice in the dance,” a verse we read in the haftarah on the second day of Rosh Hashanah. “Then the maiden will rejoice in the dance.” The maiden is Knesses Yisroel, the Jewish people. What does this dance mean? The Baal Shem Tov explains that machol has two meanings. Machol is related to mechilah—pardon, forgiveness, and atonement—and machol also means a dance. And there is the machol dance that the Baal Shem Tov established. Perhaps not many people know this, but there is a particular kind of dance performed at many celebrations and weddings called the machol dance. What is it? The Baal Shem Tov explained that it is a dance in which people stand in a circle and move away from and toward one another. Sometimes they do it in a circle; sometimes in two rows facing each other, or one person facing another. There is a stage of moving apart and then coming close again, moving apart and coming close. That movement apart and together makes the joy grow greater and greater. Each time it grows still greater. That, essentially, is the point of the machol. The Baal Shem Tov says: this is Knesses Yisroel with Hakadosh Boruch

20:58 Hu. It is the circle, the dance of moving apart and coming close. There is the stage when Knesses Yisroel draws close to Hakadosh Boruch Hu: the Exodus from Egypt. “Draw me; we will run after You.” Hakadosh Boruch Hu draws the Jewish people through His great love. This was the revelation of the Shechinah on the day of the Exodus: the King of kings, Hakadosh Boruch Hu, was revealed to them in His own glory. This brought the Jewish people close. Then came Sefiras HaOmer. “We will run after You.” The Jewish people run toward Hakadosh Boruch Hu. “We will run” is in the plural. Chassidus explains that both the G-dly soul and the animal soul began the work of the forty-nine days of Sefiras HaOmer. Then they reached “We will rejoice and be glad in You,” “The King brought me into His chambers”—the great closeness of the wedding on the day the Torah was given, as it is for tzaddikim. Then there was distance again: the sin of the Golden Calf and all the days surrounding it. And then comes the next stage, after all that distance, when Knesses Yisroel does not despair. A Jew does not despair; he keeps searching. “I am my beloved’s, and my beloved is mine.” A wise son seeks his father. The bride seeks the groom and wants to return to him. “Draw me; we will run after You.” The Midrash gives two explanations. According to one, “draw me” means bringing close, as in pulling someone toward you. You draw him with love: “I have loved you with an everlasting love; therefore I have drawn you with kindness.” It is a drawing close through love. But “draw me” can also sometimes mean moving away. “When the ram’s horn is drawn out, they may ascend the mountain.” There, “drawn out” means withdrawal. When the sound of the shofar ceased, the Jewish people could ascend Mount Sinai. It was over. The celebration of the giving of the Torah had ended. So sometimes “draw me” refers to a withdrawal, and that is the difference between the festivals of Nissan, Iyar, and Sivan and those of Elul and Tishrei. In Nissan, Iyar, and Sivan, at Pesach and Shavuos, “draw me” means that Hakadosh Boruch Hu draws us close with open love. The miracles and wonders of the Exodus from Egypt, the Splitting of the

23:28 Sea, the giving of the Torah—these cause “we will run after You.” The Jewish people run toward Hakadosh Boruch Hu out of great love and receive the Torah. That is the great embrace of Nissan, Iyar, and Sivan, as it is for tzaddikim. But afterward came the other kind of “draw me.” When a father moves away from his child—when a father moves away from his child—he does not disconnect from him, G-d forbid. A father never disconnects. When the father moves away, it is because he knows his son will look for him. He knows his son is wise and will not give up. The son is bound to him by the deepest bonds of love. Precisely because of that closeness, the child feels secure, and he begins to rebel and behave defiantly because there is so much closeness. So the father steps back. He comes close, then moves away, and acts as though he is not there. But it is precisely this distance, this “draw me” that is a withdrawal, a seeming withdrawal of the Shechinah, that causes the Jewish people not only to avoid despair, but to draw ever closer and seek Hakadosh Boruch Hu with much greater depth. This is the work of Elul: the teshuvah we do, the blowing of the shofar, the Ten Days of Teshuvah, until Yom Kippur—and then, “the day of his wedding.” “I have forgiven, as you have said.” The G-dly revelation of Yom Kippur is this doubled love. “Then the maiden will rejoice in the dance.” The great joy of pardon and atonement gives a Jew a love that is many times greater. And from above, too, Hakadosh Boruch Hu draws close to the Jewish people with an even greater, doubled love. Then comes the greatest joy. Now we understand why Simchas Torah is celebrated specifically after Yom Kippur: it is with the second Tablets that the great joy bursts forth. That is why we see the Jewish people, all over the world, rejoicing most of all on Simchas Torah. And this is why, on Yom Kippur, the daughters of Israel would go out and dance in the vineyards. Now it all makes sense. It all symbolizes something much deeper. The daughters of Israel, the daughters of

25:42 Jerusalem, symbolize Knesses Yisroel. The whole of Shir Hashirim is built around this. They dance in the vineyards: “dance” is related to machol. The day of pardon brings about a day of dancing. Knesses Yisroel is there, dancing in the vineyards. “Go out and see”—to go beyond our boundaries, beyond our limitations, and draw close to the King. “King Shlomo” means the King to Whom peace belongs, the King, Hakadosh Boruch Hu, Who wants peace with us and wants to return to us “on the day of his wedding.” That is Yom Kippur. It is the giving of the Torah, when we receive the second Tablets and receive the Torah anew through the power of our teshuvah. And then we say to Hakadosh Boruch Hu, the King of kings: “Young man, lift up your eyes and see what you choose.” We ask Hakadosh Boruch Hu, so to speak, to lift up His eyes: to look at the Jewish people not at our sins, transgressions, and wrongdoings, not at the outward appearance of our everyday behavior, but to lift up His eyes and look at the Jewish people as they are at their source, as they are in their souls. See the extraordinary strength of a Jew, the burning love, the pure faith that awakens from deep within every Jew’s soul on Yom Kippur. “Lift up your eyes and see what you choose”: Hakadosh Boruch Hu chooses the Jewish people again on the Day of Judgment and seals us for a good and sweet year. “What do you choose? Do not set your eyes on beauty; set your eyes on family.” This wonderful family, this great family: the sons of Avraham, Yitzchak, and Yaakov, the daughters of Sarah, Rivkah, Rochel, and Leah. On Yom Kippur, that love awakens at the deepest level. And out of Your love, Hakadosh Boruch Hu, You gave us this Yom Kippur, this day of forgiveness of sin, this day called holy. It is from Your wonderful love that the pardon and forgiveness of Yom Kippur flow. If every year Yom Kippur symbolizes the depth of Hakadosh Boruch Hu’s love, the great wedding and the great joy of Knesses Yisroel drawing close to Hakadosh

27:43 Hakadosh Boruch Hu in a deeper, more inward place, and the power of teshuvah. All the more so this year, after everything we went through over the past year. Right on Simchas Torah, on that most extraordinary and wonderful day, the great crisis happened. That terrible thing happened, and we still do not understand what happened, why it happened, or how it happened. But it happened, and everything is through Hashem’s individual Divine Providence. This year we will merit to see the—on the contrary, this year we will merit to see Hashem’s great love, the great joy of Yom Kippur. And even before Yom Kippur, we will merit to see that love doubled and redoubled, “double strength”—the wonderful love that Hashem shows each and every Jew, all of us together, and the entire Jewish people. May we merit to see victory in the war, the victory of holiness over impurity, the victory of the Jewish people, for the whole world to see. As we say in the prayers of these days, on Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, we ask that “all evil vanish like smoke,” and may we merit to see “joy for Your land and gladness for Your city, and the flourishing of the horn of David Your servant,” speedily in our days. May we merit, this year, right at the beginning of the year—not have to wait any longer—to see the fulfillment of our Sages’ teaching: “A year that is poor at its beginning becomes rich at its end.” As Chassidus explains, “at its end” means immediately after the sounding of the shofar. That is already its end. Once the sound of the shofar has emerged from the narrow place into the wide-open place, we already receive the blessings for a good, blessed year: a year of light, a year of blessing, a year of Geulah—all the letters of the alef-beis. May it truly be a year full of blessing and success for each and every person, individually and for all of us together.