 Last week we spoke about Rosh Hashanah and basically What we discovered what we should know about Rosh Hashanah is that it's the day to wake up That's one of the reasons why one of the central Aspects one of the central rituals of Rosh Hashanah is hearing the shofar blown a hundred times and It's the blasting of the shofar that is meant to essentially wake us up out of the routine that we fall into during the year it's a long year and We unfortunately get caught up with our busy lives with our routines and busyness overtakes us and It's hard really to focus on what is important in life So Rosh Hashanah is all about waking up The shofar is a starting bell for this period Kulia Sarasya made Shuva the ten days of returning Returning ultimately to who we could be in life and during Rosh Hashanah, we saw that the Central work that was supposed to do is to try to envision What our lives could look like next year to try to come up with a vision a Mission statement for ourselves. How do we see ourselves next year? and That's the judgment of Rosh Hashanah. God is going to essentially let us judge ourselves Are we seeing ourselves as worthy of another year of life is the vision that we come up with? worth investing in and so Rosh Hashanah is two days where we try to come up with our conception our Imagination our vision for the coming year the period between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur This is a ten-day period altogether But the days between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur is a time where we're supposed to work on Aligning ourselves with that vision. So once we develop this vision This idea of what really our lives should be like in the coming year So we now have a period of time before Yom Kippur to begin working on ourselves To try to line our lives up with that vision now again as I mentioned last week To be truthful We should be doing this all year long This is not life should not be like cramming for a final exam Right if you're really a diligent student you study every day And we should be working on ourselves every day We should be thinking about what our lives could be like every day, but look the Torah is realistic and Most of us unfortunately are professional procrastinators And so for normal people who don't engage in this every single day of the year So the Torah dedicates for ourselves 40 days The month of Elul before Rosh Hashanah to begin getting into the mood Rosh Hashanah to develop the vision The days between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur to begin working on aligning ourselves with the vision And then finally Yom Kippur as a day of forgiveness the day of purification the day of atonement Now we say a special Psalm During the 10 days between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur and it's Psalm 130 and one of the lines in that Psalm we say Ki imchah haslihah Lema'an tivare Because with you there is forgiveness and therefore I will be terrified so when you think about it this verse doesn't make a lot of sense because if There's forgiveness. Why am I terrified? And this is a question that was asked by the holy Baal Shem Tov And he explained very simply that what we're coming to understand here in this Psalm Is that there is during this time of the year the potential for forgiveness There's the potential for reconciliation. There's the potential for renewal But there's a lot of Ifs at stake Meaning that it's not a done deal simply because there's greater potential now for us to Grow and to renew ourselves and to be forgiven So the Psalm is saying With you God, there is the possibility Of forgiveness. There's the potential for forgiveness And that's why I'm terrified Because look at how much is riding on this period of time. Look at how much is at stake And there's a lot that I am now responsible for The intensity of Yom Kippur Again is the last of these 40 days And because this period of time has been building and building and building We come to Yom Kippur at the end of the 40 days And there's a special mood to Yom Kippur I mentioned that Rosh Hashanah has the mood of a wedding A wedding is both in some ways joyous and in other ways terrifying Because it's a day where there's so much unknown because there's so much potential at the beginning of a year What's going to be it's a big question mark and there's a lot that's really unknown and unclear Are we going to rise to the occasion? Are we going to fulfill our potential? So Rosh Hashanah is both a thrilling day a joyous day We have Yom Tov meals holiday meals. We celebrate in many ways. I'm Rosh Hashanah and yet it's a bit scary It's called a day of judgment Yom Kippur is a little bit different The Torah has laws for everything And one of the laws in the Torah are laws of war There are actually laws in the Torah for how to make war how to conduct war And one of the laws that we're told is that when you lay siege to a city if you're going to attack a city So the Torah tells us don't surround the city on all four sides If you're going to try to attack a city to conquer it Don't totally surround the city on all four sides allow a little side Allow at least some opening in one of the four sides of the city For people to escape Now why is that it's not simply for humanitarian reasons That we don't want to kill everybody and let them escape if they want that's part of what's going on But the other thing that's going on it's for our benefit if we're the attacking force And we're laying siege to a city So what happens to people if they feel they're surrounded on all four sides and there's no way out So what happens is it turns regular normal people into literal Super people Right when you have your back up against the wall and you know you're fighting for your life and there's no way out So you are transformed into A much more powerful fighter than you would have been otherwise So the Torah very wisely tells us if you're attacking a city Allow some room for people to escape Because they don't feel at that point that their back is against the wall and they have no way out In some ways, that's how we feel on Yom Kippur We are like that city that's under siege, but there is no way out Yom Kippur is the last stand. Yom Kippur is the 40th day And our backs are against the wall and this is it This is it And so there's a tremendous feeling of intensity on Yom Kippur an incredibly intense feeling But I want to get more into the actual mood of Yom Kippur And we'll do that by looking at the opening prayer. It's not really a prayer, but the opening part of the Yom Kippur liturgy Yom Kippur begins with something called Kol Nidre Now Kol Nidre is probably The most famous and well-known Part of the entire Liturgy in the Jewish Prayer books And all of our prayer books, if you wanted to get the prayer that's most well-known It's probably Kol Nidre Virtually everyone who comes to a synagogue during the year They're going to make sure that if they're there for any part of the year, they're going to make it there on time for Kol Nidre I suspect That many people don't really understand What Kol Nidre means I suspect that if you had in the synagogue, you know On the wall a bouncing ball that took you word by word what we're saying and people actually knew what is being said When we recycle Nidre, I don't think they'd be so excited about coming to the synagogue It's basically a very dry legal paragraph Of technical legalese that's repeated three times By the Chazan by the prayer leader Now I want to read it and then we'll try to understand Why in the world are sages decided to begin Yom Kippur with Kol Nidre? This is the art scroll translation Kol Nidre all vows prohibitions oaths Consecrations conom vows conom conos vows or equivalent terms Thereof that we may vow swear consecrate or prohibited upon ourselves From the last Yom Kippur until this Yom Kippur and from this Yom Kippur until next Yom Kippur May it come upon us for good Regarding them all we regret them henceforth They will all be permitted abandoned cancelled null and void Without power and without standing our vows shall not be valid vows Our prohibitions shall not be valid prohibitions and our oaths shall not be valid oaths And again, we repeat this three times and I feel That if people really understood that this is what is being chanted three times at the beginning of Yom Kippur People would be scratching their heads What in the world is this doing here? And why did the sages choose to begin the holiest day of the year? With this strange technical dry legalese paragraph We could say That maybe it's the haunting tune the haunting melody that's used that people are drawn to right the chazan Recites col Nidre Col Nidre The sorae The king may and he goes on And it's a little bit scary And it's haunting and maybe that camouflages The incredibly dry nature of the text itself But let's try to understand what col Nidre really is And why our sages decided I think very wisely to begin Yom Kippur with this text First of all Nidre the word Nidre col Nidre all of the vows all of the oaths And Nedre a Nedre is a vow For example a person might take a vow That they're going to get up every morning at five o'clock to study Torah before they go to pray Now We're all supposed to study Torah during the day But we don't necessarily have to get up an ungodly hour in the morning to study Right you could decide you're going to study at night for a half hour Or during the middle of the day for 45 minutes But a person might feel ambitious and they might feel they want to get their day off to a great start So before they pray they're going to get up at five o'clock And study Torah for an hour and then they're going to go to the synagogue and pray the morning prayers Or a person might feel you know what? I don't want to be overly involved with superficial Things like how I look We often get too involved with how I dress and how I look So it's possible a person might take a vow a Nedre I'm not going to wear makeup ever again I don't need makeup who needs makeup. It's it's vanity So there are all kinds of vows or oaths that a person might take Meaning well because they feel they want to improve their lives But what happens if you realize That you know this is just too hard And if I would have known how difficult it was I really wouldn't have made such a vow Are you stuck? So the truth is that a vow a Nedre Is something that's biblical You know we have 613 commandments in the Torah There's no commandment that says thou shalt not wear makeup But if you take a vow a Nedre that you're not going to wear makeup So for you there are now 614 commandments And one of them is not to put on makeup What do you do? What do you do if you feel that you bit off more than you can shoe? What if you realize now A few days later a week later a month later It's killing me to get up at five o'clock every morning I'm a zombie So we have something called Hatarat Nedarin Which is a procedure where a person is allowed To go before a bait din a rabbinic court Or a court of three judges You don't need rabbis you can go to before any three people they can constitute a court And you approach the bait din and you explain Gentlemen you know I made this vow and I had all good intention But had I known how difficult it would have been Had I known how it would have been killing my life I wouldn't have made such a vow And the bait din or the court is allowed to essentially nullify the vow Release you from the vow. This is called Hatarat Nedarin the release from vows The question is how does this work? How does it work when the court releases you from your vow? So one possibility is that the vow that you took still exists. It's still on the books It's still on the books, but you are no longer held to it meaning that you're not required to fulfill the vow It's not binding on you anymore. The vow still exists, but it's no longer binding on you But another way that this works another way that the Hatarat Nedarin works Is that the bait din the court retroactively blows the vow out of the water as if it was never made It's not that it still exists and you're no longer responsible for keeping the vow When you approach the court and you ask them to nullify your vow They basically retroactively revoke the vow as if it was never made There's a famous quote One of the great literary Giants, I think it was Whittier, but I'm not sure said In matters when it comes to tongue and pen he says The saddest words the saddest words of tongue and pen are these It might have been The saddest words in life Are the words it might have been During the year we come to regret A lot of things that happen to us during the year. We regret things that we've done We regret things that we haven't done And it weighs us down It's depressing. It's upsetting It's difficult to go on with life Feeling fully human when we're weighted down with regret Col Nidray Expresses The greatest gift that God has given us one of the greatest gifts Which is that if we go through Yom Kippur properly We have the ability To erase the past And I believe that's why our sages chose Col Nidray as a way of beginning Yom Kippur They were looking for a halachik, a Jewish legal paradigm Where do we have a paradigm of our ability to go back into the past? And wipe it out as if it never happened It sounds like it's science fiction. It shouldn't be possible And the truth is that Yom Kippur Doesn't really work necessarily by itself to restore relationships Between us and our friends us and our family members There we have to approach them directly and apologize Yom Kippur is not here to repair our interpersonal relationships But Yom Kippur is here is here to repair our relationship with God And when you think about it once we've done something to destroy our relationship And the bible says that what destroys our relationship with God is sin The sages tell us the sages the the prophets tell us that our sins separate us from God So you would think that if a person has Rebelled against God has betrayed God has done the exact things that God has said not to do Or the person has ignored doing all the things God told him to do That doesn't bode well for our relationship But once we've done that what do we do it happened already? You know if I insult you I could apologize 400 times it still happened And you could forgive me and forgive me and forgive me But it's still in your brain. It's still there. It never really goes away It's still in the background So here we have our relationships with God And we do the wrong things and we don't live up to our expectations And Yom Kippur comes around and God says I'm giving you a gift That if you go through this day appropriately and properly You have the ability to wipe out the past as if it never happened Our sins are washed away We become totally pure And a tremendous weight is lifted from our backs And that's why Yom Kippur is such a joyous day That's exactly why this day is such an incredibly joyous day I'll give you a few examples to prove it You know Jewish music is notoriously sad It's almost always in a minor key But think about the tune that's used for the confession on Yom Kippur The main part of the liturgy on Yom Kippur There are 10 times where we confess our sins Confess our sins, it's called the Vidui But what is the tune that's said for the Vidui? Ah Yeah, Yeah, Yeah, Yeah, Yeah, Yeah, Yeah O Shammu That's not a very sad tune Our melody, our tune, Yom Kippur is an uptune. It's a happy tune. It's a joyous tune because on Yom Kippur we're racing the past as if it never happened. What happens after Yom Kippur is over? Now many people probably will say, okay the day is over go and eat. That's not quite the correct answer. So really after Yom Kippur is over this day is over but now comes the next calendar. The Jewish day begins in the evening. So if Yom Kippur is over let's say on a Wednesday night the Wednesday night we begin saying the evening prayers for Thursday. So really the first thing that happens after Yom Kippur is we begin the prayers for the next day. But something happens before that between the ending of Yom Kippur and the prayers for the next day and before any eating goes on. If we experience Yom Kippur properly something else happens and if you've experienced this it's dramatic and it's powerful. And one of the places that you're more likely to experience this is in Yeshiva. In a school where people are not working they're spending all their time studying and they're very focused on what it means to go through Yom Kippur. And when I was in Yeshiva in Jerusalem after Yom Kippur was over before we started the prayers for the next day that night there was at least an hour or two hours of dancing. Incredibly lively joyous dancing because we were high. At the end of Yom Kippur if you go through it properly you are high because it is such an incredibly joyous day. It's a day where we're pure. We're clean. This tremendous weight has been taken off our back and that's why the Kabbalists say that Yom Kippurim that's what it's called in the Torah. Yom Kippurim they say is Yom Kippurim. It's a day like Purim. We always associate Purim is overtly the most happy day. People are getting drunk on Purim and it's really in an outward way very very joyous and a tremendously celebratory day. And they say Yom Kippurim, Yom Kippur is a day like Purim. That's how happy and high and joyous Yom Kippur is. But we have one more problem. If you recall when I read the text of Konidre it didn't just speak about annulling the vows that we made last year. It speaks also about a future language of the vows that we're going to make in the up and coming year. There's a future language to Konidre as well. Why do we have this? So the truth is that all of us were here last year on Yom Kippur as well. We were all here. We all went through Yom Kippur and we all made fancy resolves and fancy resolutions and we failed. And so the big question that we're confronted with every year on Yom Kippur is do I really have the ability to be different? Do I have the ability to change? Do I have the ability to be a different person next year? That's a question that we have to be able to answer. It's not enough to say that the decks have been cleared from last year and that our account with God is now up to zero. We're bad at zero balance. The question is can we go further in life? Can we make positive changes? Can we be bigger people in the coming year? And this is where the fast of Yom Kippur comes into play. The Torah tells us about Yom Kippur that on this day the Torah says, ve initem et nafshotaychem. You're to afflict your souls. Now what does it mean to afflict your souls? It's not obvious. The sages tell us that there are five things that we don't do on Yom Kippur. There's no eating. There's no drinking. There's no sexual relationships between couples that are married. There's no wearing of leather shoes. There's no bathing and there's no anointing our bodies. We most intensely think about Yom Kippur as a day of fasting, not eating and drinking. And people often make the mistake of thinking about Yom Kippur as a sad day precisely because we're fasting. They almost associate Yom Kippur with Tisha Ba'av, also a day of fasting. But the truth is on Yom Kippur our fasting is not morning. We're not morning for anything at all on Yom Kippur. The fasting of Yom Kippur is a fasting of joy. It's a fasting of Simcha. Why is that? Because we get in touch on Yom Kippur with how spiritual we can be and how spiritual we are at our core. We realize on Yom Kippur that we're able not to eat or drink. We can go without eating or drinking for 25 hours, which is something that's not that easy to do. We realize on Yom Kippur that we have very deep spiritual reservoirs. We recognize on Yom Kippur that we're much closer to God than we are to beasts and to animals. Animals can't volitionally decide they're going to give up eating for 25 hours. A human being is both physical and spiritual, but the more powerful part of who we are can be our soul because our soul has the ability to trump our body. And so our soul is able to say no to the body and to demonstrate that at our core we really are spiritual. We have immense spiritual potential. And we realize that on Yom Kippur we can be free from the physical which normally so powerfully drives us. So Yom Kippur teaches us how high we have a right to reach. Yom Kippur tells us that because we have so much spiritual potential, we have the right to reach very high because we can control our futures. We can control our destinies. We have much more spiritual strength than we normally imagine. And that's why Rav Sudhakha Koyen of Lublin used to say that not only does a Jew have to believe in God, we have to believe in ourselves as well. We have to recognize that God didn't create junk. And that God created us with human beings that have free will. And that free will is powerful. And that free will which is wielded by our soul has the ability to make changes in life. Change is possible. Judaism does not get off the ground without recognizing that we are able to change. We may not succeed every year, but we have to go into Yom Kippur recognizing and understanding we can do it. If we work on it, especially if we begin 40 days before Yom Kippur preparing ourselves, there's a very, very good chance we're going to succeed. Now the question is why now, why do we do this work at this time of the year? So we saw that there is a historical precedent for Rosh Hashanah. Rosh Hashanah marks the creation of the world. And so it also marks my creation and your creation. And so on the day of the anniversary of our creation, on Rosh Hashanah, we take stock. But there's something else that happens historically as a precedent for Yom Kippur and this entire 40 days of the year. Our sages tell us as a verse in the Bible, dear Shuh Hashanah, we should seek out God when he is accessible. And they say that at this time of the year, God is especially accessible. The Hasidim say that the king is now in the field. Usually the king is in the palace. And the normal common person can't just go into the palace and see the king. Try seeing the Prime Minister of Canada or the President of the US just like that. You can't. But we're told that during this time of the year, God is in the field, so to speak. God is very accessible. And why is that? So we know that the first major catastrophe in Jewish history was when shortly after receiving the Ten Commandments at Mount Sinai, we built a golden calf and we worshiped it. And which was even worse than that, we didn't just worship it. We really got into it and we were dancing around it as well. This was a catastrophe and God pretty much resolved that that would be the end of the Jewish people. He was prepared to wipe us out and start again with Moses. Moses engages in 40 days of intensive, intensive prayer, praying for the Jewish people, pulling out every stop, using every argument in his repertoire. And after 40 days, he basically gets a reprieve. He gets a reprieve. But Moses wanted more than a reprieve. He wanted a reconciliation. And so he goes back and he prays for another 40 days. And at the end of those second 40 days, he brings down from Mount Sinai the second set of tablets, the second set of the Ten Commandments. And that day when Moses comes down from Mount Sinai with the second set of tablets of the Ten Commandments, that day was Yom Kippur. Yom Kippur is the anniversary of that day of ultimate forgiveness by God of our ultimate trespass. And a today which basically shouts out, this is a day of reconciliation. This is a day of making up. This is a day of coming back together. This is the day of purification of atonement. Forgiveness is in the air during this entire 40 day period. As I mentioned, the central ritual of Yom Kippur for us is the vidui, is acknowledging that we fail during the past year. And we have a long list of things that we confess. I'd like to just point out a number of things about this list of things that we confess. One thing, and it's worth going through the list before the holiday, one thing that you'll notice is that the majority of things that we confess to involve speech. You know, when you think about it, how many things did we really do during the year that are so terrible with our hands and feet? Not as much as with our mouth. If you look at the essence of a human being, the essence of the human being according to the Torah is our power of speech. That's what made us uniquely human. And unfortunately, that's the part of ourselves that we most normally misuse. We're not always truthful. We sometimes gossip about other peoples. We pray without really meaning it. We confess without really meaning it. We give bad advice. We curse people. So on Yom Kippur, we go through a long list of things that we've done wrong. But we come to realize that the thing that trips us up the most is our mouth. And it's basically important to get in touch with that during this time of the year, to learn how to control our tongues. Another feature of the the vidui of the confession is that it's in the plural. We say, we have sinned before you. It's not in the first person. It's in the plural because number one, we have to recognize that we are all responsible for each other. If any one of us is making a mistake in life, part of that is because the culture we live in doesn't make that kind of behavior impossible. Different cultures have different levels of what is considered to be normal. And in our world, unfortunately, many behaviors which are inappropriate become tolerated. So we have to wake up to the idea that I'm not just in this for myself. I'm in this for the members of my family, for my community, and for the whole world. One of the great Musser teachers used to say that if there wasn't a slacking off in terms of studying Torah in Volusion, Volusion was the Jerusalem of Europe. He would say, if there wasn't a slacking off in learning Torah in Volusion, there wouldn't be a desecration of the Sabbath in Paris. Paris was a place where people were not as religious as into their Judaism. But there was a recognition that the people in Volusion, the way they conduct their lives sets the spiritual tone for the rest of the world. And so we confess our mistakes in the plural. Another thing to realize is that we don't really, in Hebrew, use the word sin. We say, a hate is really a mistake. It's an error. A sin is something which is cosmic and you really can't even do much about it. A mistake you can correct. A mistake you can fix. We strike our heart when we confess each one of these mistakes. One of the things we're doing is we're saying, it's because of you. It's because of you that I've made these mistakes. Usually it's not our mind that leads us astray. Usually it's our heart that leads us astray. It's a verse in the Bible as well, that our heart is usually what leads us astray. So we strike our heart in recognition that this is really what gets us into trouble. We also strike our heart because we're in pain. My heart hurts because of what I've done. My heart hurts because of how I've failed. And I've let many people down, including God. One of the things that is not well known, but one of the interesting themes of Yom Kippur is vomiting, believe it or not. Where do you see this? So on Yom Kippur, read the story of Jonah, the famous story of Jonah and the big fish. And Jonah is told by God to go to Ninveh, the great non-Jewish city, and to warn them that God is angry with them and he can destroy the city. And Jonah does not want to go when he runs away. He goes into a boat and the boat's about to sink. So the sailors throw him overboard and get swallowed by a big fish. And we're told that at the end, the fish vomits him out. That's the word that's used in the Bible. The big fish vomits Jonah up onto this shore. There's another place where this word comes up on Yom Kippur. That one of the Torah readings on Yom Kippur explains the sexual perversions that Jewish people are commanded to avoid like the plague. And the Torah tells us that if we commit these kinds of sins, the land of Israel will vomit us out. The Torah tells us that the land of Israel is a very spiritually sensitive place. And the land itself does not tolerate certain kinds of behavior. So that's a second kind of vomiting on Yom Kippur. But a third vomiting is when we confess. Because what happens when you're vomiting? You've eaten something that doesn't belong in your stomach. And that's why I disagree with you. It doesn't belong there. And so your body as a defense mechanism gets rid of it. So what we're saying on Yom Kippur is this behavior, it's not me. This is not me. You know, they used to say that Jewish parents were told, don't tell your kids that what you did is bad, that you're a bad. That's not the way you discipline children. What you say to a child is, this is pastnished. This behavior is not becoming of you. You're bigger than this. You're better than that. So on Yom Kippur, we recognize that those things that we've done during the year, it's not me. Those behaviors are not me. Deep down inside, I'm bigger than that. I'm better than that. And that's why what we're doing in confessing these mistakes is we're expelling them from ourselves. We're expelling them from who we are, because it's not me. One last thing, I mean, there's much more to say about the video or the confession, but I'll show you one last thing. You'll notice that they're written in alphabetical order. They're written in alphabetical order. Why is that? So Ravitzav Vorki, one of the great Hasidic masters explained that they're written in alphabetical order because you have to know when to stop. You know, one of the things that we are unfortunately guilty of is we tend to beat ourselves up much too much. We tend to be overly harsh with ourselves. And so it's possible that a person could get into the rhythm of confessing and confessing and you could go on and on and on and you could engage in this endless beating up of the self. And so Ravitzav Vorki says, no, you have to know that there's a time to stop. We don't spend our entire life confessing. There's an appropriate amount. One of the activities on Yom Kippur as well is the recitation of Yisker, which is remembering those who have passed away, our relatives who've passed away. And the truth is that we do this several times during the year. And one of the reasons it's done on Yom Kippur that we have this time to remember those who've died is to again get ourselves in touch with the fact that our lives are hanging in the balance on Yom Kippur. It's part of the heaviness of the day that I mentioned. It's interesting that one of the things that we do on Yom Kippur, at least many people do this, is that men will wear a kittle. Kittle is a very simple white linen garment and some women will wear white clothing on Yom Kippur. But the kittle is an interesting garment. The kittle happens to be a burial shroud. Jews are buried in a kittle. It's also what a man will wear on his wedding day. Again, like Rosh Hashanah, Yom Kippur has these two elements to it. This heaviness, this day of crisis, this day of being on trial, but also a day of incredible joy. As we come to the end of Yom Kippur, we have a special prayer called Na'ilah. Now, what's interesting is that during the year, there were three prayer services that take place every day. Every day during the year, there's a morning service, shaharit, there's an afternoon service, mincha, and there's an evening service, arvit. On holidays and on Shabbat, we have a fourth prayer service called Musaf. And the Musaf corresponds to the additional sacrifices that took place in the holy temple. The final service on Yom Kippur is called Na'ilah. Na'ilah means the ceiling of the gate, the closing of the gates. There's a sense on Yom Kippur as we approach the end of the day that the doors are closing, the gates are closing on us. And one of the lines of the prayers that we say during Na'ilah is we say that we want to be forgiven for the theft that's in our hands, that we recognize that there's something about our lives that we've been stealing. Now, this is not speaking about the fact that we pickpocket people or we go into stores and we shoplift. What it's saying is that when we live our lives beneath our potential, we're really stealing from ourselves. We're really robbing ourselves of the kind of lives we could have had. They say that the moment of Yom Kippur, that's the holiest moment, is those moments during the day when you cry. The Kabbalists say that that's when the judgment is taking place. That's the point of the day which is the most critical time when we're crying. And there was a time in our history when people cried very easily on Yom Kippur. One of my first teachers told me that when he was beginning his career as a rabbi in New York, so there was an old man, an old European Jew that was leading the services. And during the middle of the services on Yom Kippur, this old man just collapsed and he was weeping on the floor. And everybody rushed over to him and they were concerned, are you okay? Is everything all right? Should we call a doctor? They didn't know what was going on with this poor old fellow. So he looks up at everyone and with very sad eyes and he says, you know, back in Europe, if a Jew wasn't crying on Yom Kippur, people thought something was wrong. Now you're crying in a synagogue in Yom Kippur. They want to take you to a mental institution. It's so very sad. But crying should be our natural response to Yom Kippur. Crying of fear a little bit, crying of joy, crying of being high. There's so many emotions. They say that when the Israeli army recaptured Jerusalem in 1967, so there was a platoon of soldiers from a religious unit. And they were all standing at the western wall. Can you imagine after not having had the Kotel Hamar Ravi, the western wall for so many years, finally there's a group of religious soldiers that are standing there and they're all crying. And they're looking over on the side and there's someone from the platoon that doesn't happen to be particularly religious. And he's standing there, he's crying as well. And everyone looked at him and says, why are you crying? He says, you know, I'm seeing everybody else crying and I don't know why everyone else is crying. That's why I'm crying. I just don't understand why there's there's a reason to cry here. But if we really understand Yom Kippur, you know, if we cry at weddings and we cry at operas and we cry when we hear very sad news, this is certainly an incredible day to cry. So I mentioned before that Yom Kippur ends, we hopefully will dance for an hour or so. And then we start the evening prayers for the next day. And in the evening prayers for the next day, the first thing we say, before we say the blessings for the Shema, as we say, that God is merciful, he forgives sin. And then we say the Shema and then we recite the Shmone Sray, the 18 benedictions. And one of the benedictions is, forgive us our father for we have sinned. There's a very big problem here. What in the world are we doing confessing our sins five minutes after Yom Kippur is over? What in the world could a person have done on Yom Kippur? Who's, you know, whose house were you going to rob when you were in the synagogue the whole day long? And who were you going to insult if you were praying and have a prayer book the whole day? On Yom Kippur it's impossible practically to sin. And Yom Kippur is a day where you've been wiped clean of all your sins, a day of purification. So what are we doing right after Yom Kippur? The first thing, the very first thing we're asking God to forgive us of our sins. All of our sins were forgiven already on Yom Kippur. So Shlomo Karabach explained that you know why we're asking forgiveness after Yom Kippur? He said because deep down inside we really don't believe that God forgave us and we're asking forgiveness. We're saying God forgive me that I don't really believe in you that much that I believe that you could forgive me. And what's lying at the root of this is that we have difficulty forgiving ourselves. We're not ready to let go. We're not ready to forgive ourselves. We unfortunately get overly occupied with beating ourselves up and never getting past our past. And so at the end of Yom Kippur we acknowledge according to Yom Shlomo, you know what? This is wrong. I have to ask forgiveness because if I really went through Yom Kippur properly, I would really believe that I'm clean. I would really believe that it's a new year. I would really believe that my sins have been forgiven. I would really believe it. And I'm asking forgiveness because you know what? I don't really believe it fully. There's a part of me that just not willing to forgive myself. And so I want to give each of us a blessing that we should be able to go through this Yom Kippur as a day of holiness, as a day of purification, as a day of joy, and to really feel that if we go through the preparation of the Yom Kippur properly, we will reach this incredibly joyous day. And it should be so for all of us. Thank you so much.