Jews all over the world are in the midst of a 10-day period called the High Holy Days. It starts with Rosh Hashanah, a celebration of a new year, and ends with Yom Kippur, a solemn day of atonement.
The overriding theme is the pursuit of human perfection and the obligation of each person to continually assess and improve his or her character, or as Mordecai Kaplan put it, “to seek reconstruction of our personalities in accordance with the highest ethical possibilities of human nature.”
It’s more than making New Year’s resolutions. The idea is to pause from our daily lives and sit in objective judgment of ourselves, to examine the state of our souls, to hold ourselves accountable, and to acknowledge any gaps between our conscience and our conduct, between the standards we profess and the actions we perform.
We may not always have the moral strength to bridge the gap between our ideals and our actions, but we have the moral duty to try. Our sins and shortcomings are compounded when we ignore or accept them.
Jews are given four specific tasks: 1) reflect, 2) repent, 3) seek forgiveness, and 4) forgive those who ask forgiveness. Although the process is clothed in religious ritual, these concepts are equally powerful in a purely secular context.
Religionists and secularists agree that humanity is unique among living creatures in the capacity to understand good and evil and to choose between them. Whether we call it morality or ethics, whether we think in terms of our souls or our character, all who have pondered the purpose and potential of human life conclude that a virtuous life is the best life.
This is Michael Josephson reminding you that Character Counts!
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Your commentaty is beautiful. My prejudice isn’t. The majority of Jews that I have had contact with are from New York and most of my experiences with them certainly don’t seem to address the four tasks of the Jews. They come across to me as pushy, rude, self-serving, inconsiderate, and subscribe to the love of money and status as their God. And when they are of a friendly nature, it is often when they want something from someone else. I’m regret, yet must admit, that this has been my percceived experience. I realize my critical mindset here and realize that I haven’t, so far, gotten past this attidude. It is perpetually reinforced. I am not a religionist but would surely want to become a Jew if the Jewish subscribers lived their religion, not just profess it. It sure would be a help to me on my path of life. I sure admit that I have enough trouble walking my talk, and I don’t need to include myself in a group that is as hypocritical as the Jewish transplants and visitors that I experience in the Southern Nevada desert. It’s arid enough here without adding spiritually arid individuals into my life.
JB, I married a New York Jew, and I completely understand how you came to your observation of this group of people. I myself am not Jewish, and had never encountered any Jewish person until I met the man who would become my husband. I too, have come to certain conclusions about New York Jews based on first hand knowledge and experience. Because I am/was not Jewish, the woman who became my mother-in-law was incredibly rude, self-serving, inconsiderate, pushy, and believed the world revolved around her, and she never let me forget that she was unhappy about her son marrying me and one of the main reasons she was unhappy was because I am not only not Jewish but also because I am not “white” (I am Chinese). I did everything to try and please her. I agreed to be married in a temple even though I was raised Baptist. I allowed our two boys to have their circumcisions performed outside of a hospital environment for a traditional naming ceremony. I have faithfully cooked a Passover dinner (and all the other holidays’ meals and rituals) for the past twenty some years and all our children went through their religious training (bar and bat mitzvahs). She was the meanest and stingiest and worst kind of mother-in-law and unloving grandmother you could imagine (she told our middle child, a son, that he was “too brown” when he was visiting them one summer, and our son was around 9 years old at the time. His feelings were deeply hurt). I realized that I could only control my actions, and not hers, and that is how I coped with her prejudice against me. She died seven years ago from lung cancer (life long smoker), and though I am relieved for my sake as well as my childrens’ to be unburdened by her hate, I do feel badly that my husband lost his mother. I can only think that I received a mother-in-law like her in this lifetime because God figured I could handle it. Isn’t there a saying that God will only give you what you can handle?
CG … Your mother-inlaw was a good teacher to let us know how not to present ourselves to the world. We all want to love and be loved, yet we seem to go about it in the craziest of ways. It is certainly difficult for me to have respect for people that practice that type of behavior. For me, I need to refocus on my errors instead of others, and try to make my focus to present a “teach only love” attitude. That gives me more work to do than I think I can accomplish in one lifetime. To fully get over my Christian fundamentalist teachings and the negative attitudes and their effects on me is, in itself, a full time challenge. In your situation as in mind, don’t we have to ask ourself, What lesson of value do I need to learn from this experience? I remind myself that it’s not what happens to us, it’s what we do about it. That’s what counts! We can handle it! We can handle anything that comes our way! Thank you for sharing your story. Peace!
We are certainly given a choice. It is written, “Choose you today who you will serve…”
JB, truly I share your position on this matter. Nevertheless, as it is with Christians so it is with the Jews and other forms of practices. Many of us Christians are just bearing that name christian. But my reflection on this is that my focus is what (the message) the writer is trying to convey and how it could help me in my daily life as a human being seeking perfection. How about that? Point rather to self than to others.
Realities such as love (not romantic, but that which puts others first), truth (objective), morality, honesty, generosity, forgiveness, repentance, and self control are all problematic for us as human beings, because we are finite and broken.
How do we handle that? In my opinion we chose some system to deal or cope with our failure. For example, we use religion to feel better about our selves (I did this bad thing, so I will do some good things to make up for it). Sometimes we simply redefine the terms to suit our own lifestyles or simply deny such virtues exist and suppress the truth.
The more positive approach is to focus on our success and compare ourselves to those who are worse, but again this does not really fix us. This is of course why religion (Do’s and Don’ts), spiritualism/mysticism, and what is currently the rage in secular society relativism/subjectivism (agnosticism and atheism) are popular; they are simply coping mechanisms, so any coping mechanism is in fact destined to fall short as none of them bring the transforming love we need (truth & forgiveness), nor the power to change, heal, and grow and no definition of what the goal is. These are all mechanisms which sooner or later fall short.
There are more mechanisms for coping with our brokenness, but only one honest response really exists. And perhaps these realities are supposed to help us come to that conclusion, to say, “I am broken and finite and I can’t fix myself. I have used religion, spiritualism, and have personalized the truth and denied and suppressed the truth that I am broken.” Now, with all the coping mechanisms aside I stand at the threshold of a discovery, GOD. Unfortunately, we are always competing with him for control, so he is often the last option.
I will not allow the imperfections I observe in others who proclaim or aspire to perfection prevent me from trying to attain perfection. I will show understanding of the imperfection of all of us on our journey to that level of perfection we so desire. Perfection and holiness is of God who ask us to ” Be perfect or holy as our father who is in heaven”. The fear of failure should never make us not to try. But then I appreciate and feel the views of JB.
Thank you for your kind and spiritually motivated response. I can certainly agree with you. T believe the real “rub” with me and with what I wrote is that so many hide behind their religion, professing rather than practicing. And they often appear to pedestal themself because of their subscribing to their religious persuasion. I admit that I am contaminated. I was reared in a religious fundamentalist and it is way to easy to be critical and judgmental myself. Oh my, the lessons life brings to our attention when we study, practice, and learn to respond to Spirit! Onward!
I seek progress rather than perfection. I measure that by how far I have come on my journey of growth rather than how far I am from reaching my destination.