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THE
HAPPIEST DAY OF THE YEAR
My grandparents first met each other on a September night
at an Ann Arbor synagogue in 1934. They should have been
inside davening
the Kol Nidre service. Thank God, instead they chatted
outside that shul. One thing led to another and forty
two years later there was me. A holiday known as the Day
of Judgment certainly doesn't evoke the same possibilities
for romance as a more festive holiday like Purim, or Valentine's
Day for that matter. But the timing of my Bubbe
and Zayde's
first meeting on Yom Kippur was not unprecedented.
The rabbis tell us that Yom Kippur and the Fifteenth of
Av
are the happiest days of the Jewish calendar. Why, you
may ask? Of course we all feel closer to the Divine after
having confessed the wrongs of the year and having resolved
to be better in the year to come. Our spirits are naturally
lifted when we are at peace with other people and with
God. But the rabbis point to a custom of the Second
Temple that at first seems to run counter to the spiritual
nature of the day.
The young women of Jerusalem would dance in the vineyards
on the afternoon of Yom Kippur. They would all wear
borrowed white dresses so as not to embarrass the poorer
of the lot. According to the rabbis (Taanit, 26b), the
girls would say:
Young man, raise your eyes and behold what
you choose for yourself. Do not set your eyes on beauty,
but on a good family. "Grace is deceptive and beauty
is vain; but a woman that fears the Lord, she shall
be praised." (Proverbs
31:30)
We can explain this custom in several ways. The anthropological
impulse is to explain it as a "mass mating" ritual,
simply designed to carry on the race. After all, the
ritual took place in a vineyard and occurred days before
Sukkot, the fall harvest holiday. And certainly the
emphasis on family over a pretty face points to the
custom as part of a scheme to promote population growth.
But the emphasis on substance over flash also converges
with the spiritual nature of the day. The thoughts of
the repentant man should be on heavenly pursuits, not
earthly ones. So when the bachelor chose his mate, it
was with a clarity of purpose attained through prayer
and fasting. As sexual contact is strictly prohibited
on Yom Kippur, even those least affected by the spirit
of the day were less likely to choose the material over
the spiritual. During the afternoon prayer service of
Yom Kippur, we read a selection from Leviticus that
concerns forbidden marriages. Some argue that this was
intended as further divine regulation on the courtship
of the Jerusalem maidens.
The ritual of the dancing girls on Yom Kippur comes
down to an issue common to the High Holidays in general:
choice. Inherent in the notion of true repentance is
the admission that a person can improve her or himself
through personal choice, not simply through divine
decree. The young women ask the young men to "choose
for yourself." Contrary to the ways of the shtetl centuries
later (where marriages were fixed by the families of
the bride and groom), the decision is made by the individual,
for better or worse.
So, why is Yom Kippur one of the happiest days of
the year in the modern time, when nice Jewish boys (like
me) don't have the advantage that men in Jerusalem did
around the Second Temple? We learn from that custom
the need for both God and love in our lives. If we can
truly put our hearts into the meditations of Yom Kippur,
we can achieve the clarity of vision to make even the
most earthly of our decisions holy throughout the year
to come.
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