The weight of sin has shifted over the last few centuries. There was a time when sin was directed primarily against God, when it meant the throwing off of His yoke, or the betrayal of one’s nation or community. For the mystic, it was the cause of vast, often irreparable, cosmic damage. Sins weighed heavily upon people’s shoulders back then — like the burden of the tradition they had carried for 3,000 years, like the myriad spiritual worlds that rested upon each human deed.

Today, we look at sin somewhat differently, feeling the desecration of our lives more than that of the tradition, the debasement of our homes and families more than that of our nation. And, of course, we have sinned against the earth, the consequence of which now bears down upon us no less ominously than the supernal worlds once did.

Of all the great Hasidic masters, none felt the burden of sin more acutely than Rabbi Nachman of Breslov. Though raised in the traditional, Eastern-European world, he foresaw the rise of the modern era and its problems. His approach to sin is unique and original.

Whereas the entire kabbalistic-Hasidic tradition that preceded him saw sin as a concealment of God’s face, R. Nachman saw it as a moment of revelation — an encounter with the Divine that tells us as much about ourselves and our task in this world as any direct communication. For R. Nachman, the problem of sin is never in the act itself, nor even in the damage it causes, which is always repairable. Rather, it

lies solely in the context within which we frame it. If our failures lead us to despair and hopelessness, then we have doubly sinned; if they motivate us to change, then they are redeemed.

The problem is that there is an inherent blind spot in the human psyche that allows us to see only the negative repercussions of our deeds, especially in areas in which we repeatedly fail, to the point where correction seems unlikely, if not impossible. Then it is easy to fall into what R. Nachman considers the greatest sin — the sin of despair.

Yet, as R. Nachman points out, if a person has fallen a thousand times, it means that he or she has also tried rising a thousand times, thus making the fall an indispensable part of each new beginning. Seen this way, precisely that which pushes a person away from his goal is actually propelling him closer. Starting again is so important — R. Nachman would say, the most important thing — because it partakes of God’s own essence as the fountain of life and renewal.

This leads R. Nachman to make an extraordinary statement: “It is to a person’s great advantage that he has an inclination to evil (yetzer ha-ra), for he can then serve God with that very inclination, overcoming it in the heat of his passion and channeling it to the service of God. Without an evil inclination, his service would not be worth anything. To this end, God allows the evil inclination to completely overwhelm a person — especially one who truly longs to come close to Him — to the point that he commits great sins and spiritual damage. But it is all worthwhile to God — for the sake of that small, noble effort a person makes to escape from it, in the midst of being overwhelmed. This is more precious to God than a thousand years of service without the evil inclination.” (Meshivat Nefesh 37)

It is as though the whole vast edifice of sin and transgression, of failure, guilt, and despair exist only so that, in the face of repeated transgressions, we learn the meaning of hope and renewal. To God, it is all worthwhile for the sake of that brief moment when we say in our hearts: “Tomorrow, I will be better.”

To R. Nachman, sin creates the empty space in our lives that allows for the creation of something new. This is the hidden treasure that sin carries within it — though it cannot be seen in the moment of the fall, lest the impetus for change be lost. Our sins should weigh heavily on us, for they provide the leverage that propels us higher — to live a new life in God’s light. “The main thing is for a person to forget everything that happened, and start again.”

In his three-volume collection of essays, aphorisms, and diary entries published posthumously as Orot ha-Kodesh (Lights of Holiness), Rav Kook (1865-1935) buries what appears to be an incidental comment about sin in a longer discourse on messianism:

“Attachment to God, in its most exalted and pristine manner does not stand in opposition, in any way, to the world or life in general. Rather, attachment to God serves to both prepare and expand the world in all its facets. If Israel did not sin they would not have been presented with correctives from the outside [i.e., general culture], all of which are needed in order to perfect themselves in every manner of their existence. However, sin (also) caused the concealment of supernal thought. What remained was only a shadow of its [Israel's] existence, which does not have the capacity to embrace the absolute nature of divine thought. These outside influences cannot serve to expand [and redeem] the world until they are directed toward accomplishing this attachment to God, a [synthetic] talent which is lacking [in Israel, as a consequence of exile]. Therefore, Israel needs to be scattered in exile (pizur hagalut) in order to correct this inherent lack in its own constitution — to absorb the best qualities in all the nations in order to perfect its essential character…”[author's translation]

In this passage, sin is constructed as both a consequence of Israel’s weakness and an opportunity for its healing. I am taking license to translate Kook’s “general culture” (an enigmatic term in Kook’s writing) as secular culture, often viewed by tradition as something to avoid. Yet Kook suggests that exposure to this “general/secular culture” (and transforming it) is the very thing that will correct Israel’s constitutional weakness and bring it to its completion. He suggests that secular culture can provoke in the individual and collective a drive to create a synthesis, or at least a symbiosis, between autonomous human creativity (secularity) and the “religious” goal of fulfilling divine will (Judaism). The integration of one’s expanded religious vision — consisting of the best of what secularism has to offer (art, music, literature, free-thought, human autonomy) — is not a concession but a corrective to Israel’s sin.

According to Rav Kook, what Israel lost through its sin (apparently the sin of the Golden Calf) was its ability to comprehend how human creativity is not in conflict with human devotion. One of the ideational foundations underlying the rabbinic construction of “law” (halakhah) is to protect Israel from blurring the boundaries between the sacred and profane — that is, erecting barriers so that Divine demands are not undone by human desire. This even produces a rabbinic ethos of making “fences around the Torah,” ( Mishna Avot 1:1) encouraging supererogatory behavior to prevent the abrogation of the law. Rav Kook argues here that the dualism that too easily results from this perspective does not ultimately protect us from sin but rather perpetuates what sin produced. He suggests that sin, resulting in “the concealment from supernal thought” produces a society that moves — perhaps unwittingly — outside its impenetrable castle, becoming exposed to dimensions of “culture” that are required for it to recognize the false notion that the holy is self-contained. In his reading, the fullness of the holy is reached only by expanding rather than contracting the borders of the holy by taking from the secular and making it part of its collective devotional life. If we had not sinned, so the argument might be extended, we would continue to live in the illusion that Divine demands were sufficient to achieve our individual and collective goals. Here exile and sin are linked — the former as a consequence of the latter — but the former, and only the former, provides the tools for its own dissolution. Repentance from sin, therefore, is to “correct this inherent lack in its [Israel's] own constitution” (a consequence of its exile) by “absorbing the best qualities of all the nations into itself.”

Turning to the High Holiday season, Rav Kook offers an intriguing meditation on sin and repentance. Our response to sin, he suggests, should not be enclosure but expansion. Secular culture is not a temptress, nor is our participation in it a concession. Rav Kook suggests a “holy acculturation” whereby a constructive engagement with secularism (this category remains under-defined in Kook’s writings) exposes us to the qualities of human autonomy and creativity that can enable us to integrate the world into our devotional lives and bring those sensibilities to matters of global concern. This expansive mode of “correction” in Kook may also extend to Israel’s relationship with the world. One reading may be that Israel should expand and become more deeply invested in the global community, closing the chasm between itself and the world, an unfortunate fissure produced, in Kook’s mind, as an artificial (if understandable) response to centuries of oppression and persecution. Sin exposes the weakness of our own constitution (and tradition) and (also) provides the necessary seeds for its own undoing.

Susan Berrin: Aveirah and cheyt are two Hebrew words for sin. What happens when we translate them into English?

Marc Margolius: Like others, I’ve often considered the word cheyt in terms of archery — missing the mark — while for me aveirah connotes crossing a boundary or transgressing a line. Both metaphors are useful in thinking about categories of impropriety.

Richard Hirsh: I used to find that a comforting derivation — cheyt and archery. But I no longer find the metaphor “life as a darts game” credible. It’s a modern, Jewish, liberal dodge to think that if we just try a little bit harder next year we’ll get closer to the circle. And it underestimates the propensity for corruption in human life and the tendency toward wrongdoing. Our lives are measured not only by what we do, but also who we are.

Ruth Langer: The essence of the question about sin is tied up in the larger question of understanding ourselves as metzuvim (commanded), of our relationship with God — and our understanding of commandment. Not relating to God as the source of commandment and direction on how to live, challenges how we understand the categories of sin, of what we’re transgressing.

Nehemia Polen: Sin, though certainly important, is a second stroke. The first stroke is cultivating, maintaining, and augmenting one’s relationship with God. The biblical assumption is that the connection is basically healthy and intact, but like any good relationship it needs attention to flower even more. A sin puts that connection in danger; it can even rupture it. I would broaden the terminology to include avon and pesha, which are central biblical concepts about sacrifice, about making the correctives in our relationship with God. The Hasidic masters read mitzvah against the grain — not as commandment but as tzavtah, a mode of connection with the divine.

Jan Uhrbach: I want to defend the philological analysis — we have so many different words for sin. This reflects a subtlety in understanding the varied ways in which the relationship with God can go awry, the wide spectrum of ways that we can understand mitzvah, the broadest sense of a divine call that is addressed to the Jewish people as a whole, and to each of us as individuals. Cheyt, being off the mark, then, isn’t simply a way of avoiding a liberal discomfort with traditional notions of sin, but of expanding it in a very powerful way.

Langer: But being off the mark acknowledges the attempt to be on the mark.

Hirsh: Is the trajectory between teshuvah and sin linear or cyclical? Are you trying to get to a place you’ve never been, or are you trying to restore a state that you know you once had? The discussion in Yoma, in the Talmud, explores how teshuvah changes the idea of sin: is it seen, then, as inadvertent or as if it never happened? From a contemporary psychotherapeutic perspective, one can never pretend something didn’t happen, though it can be reframed; deliberate sin becomes inadvertent sin. But from God’s point of view, in the theological realm, you’re off the hook. God has moved on as if the sin never happened. From a Reconstructionist perspective, though, this is not what God said but what Jews have said about God. In that sense it’s both important, and yet not binding in its particulars. It becomes a conversation about what other people thought was sinful — ritual and moral transgressions — and then we must ask, to whom are we accountable? Where accountability rests is a very large problem for non-fundamentalist versions of any religion, certainly Judaism.

I’ve started thinking about the importance of leaving room for what Marcia Falk refers to in her Book of Blessings as white space. We read the al cheyt so fast — one line and then the next, and then the next. If we left a minute of silence at the end of each verse, people might have a chance to think about whether that transgression applies: did I do that this year?

Margolius: Yes — and ideally, the kahal, the community, could be a place that felt safe enough to tolerate a deeper level of honesty, in which Jews might actually share their failures of the previous year. Candid acknowledgment of sin is the starting point for teshuvah, the process by which we can actually grow ethically and spiritually. If we can honestly acknowledge our capacity for making mistakes, rupturing relationships, creating cracks in the world — rather than averting our eyes, as we usually do both individually and collectively — we discover amazing opportunities to heal those cracks and strengthen our connection with God.

Langer: The liturgy of the Yamim Noraim is framed in the plural. It’s the community standing before God, especially by the time one gets to Yom Kippur. Individual work happens outside of that communal framework. In popular understanding in the Christian world, God forgives me no matter what I do, which undercuts the relationship between sin and repentance.

Uhrbach: The question of what is sinful is related to whether or not we believe in eternal truths, values, and ideals that exist, whether or not we can know them. Even if we can’t know exactly what God considers sinful because our categories are only human attempts at discernment, through the process of erring and repenting we arrive at a deeper understanding of what sin is. So, do we confess in subsequent years for sins that we did teshuvah for in previous years? When I go back to past behaviors, for which I’ve gone through the process of teshuvah, I understand differently the depth of pain I caused, the nature of my error or sin. We can do this both on the personal level and the deeper theological level — coming ever closer to an understanding of the true nature of sin and its impact on our relationship with God.

Langer: One of the problems in our world is that people don’t know how to be constructively self-critical. The traditional categories of sin help us make this move. One of the things that distinguishes and makes Judaism beautiful is that we have an ideal to strive toward, but we’re also not punished for falling short of it. What we are expected to do is keep reaching toward it, and to do that requires the ability to look at oneself and enter an honest process of self-evaluation. To label one’s shortcomings as “sin” is thus a necessary and positive part of a process of growing.

Margolius: I agree that sin and guilt are essential categories. For those who may be overly perfectionistic, though, these words activate an unhealthy degree of shame; they imagine that if they’ve not reached an imaginary ideal, they’re worthless as human beings. Judaism teaches us to strive for perfection, while understanding that it’s unattainable and that we’re forgiven for falling short.

Uhrbach: The category of “sin” is essential, provided that when we teach about sin or confront the liturgy in the High Holy Days, we do it both with balance and in context, and very much with love. We have to make explicit in our teaching what these categories mean and don’t mean, rather than getting rid of them.

Margolius: The imagery of God shifting from the kiseh shel din (the Throne of Judgment) on Rosh Hashanah to the kiseh shel rachamim (the Throne of Compassion) on Yom Kippur is often lost. People often miss the nuances of the process during these holidays in which we move with God from the strict judgment of din to the compassion and acceptance of rachamim — a process that ultimately leads to rebirth, our climbing (figuratively) out of our own casket at the end of Yom Kippur, at Nei’lah.

Uhrbach: The structure of the Torah reading, having two people standing on each side of the reader to correct errors, is a way of saying there is no expectation of perfection; there’s an expectation of error and correction that will be done with love — l’shem shamayim.

Hirsh: Sin is an inevitable and authentic category and it’s disingenuous to evade or avoid it. We have a therapeutic model of sin and atonement and resolution, and a religious model; where do they overlap and where are they different? Many Jews go to therapists; they don’t go to rabbis. We’re missing an opportunity because Judaism has something to say about Israel, and politics, and also about one’s personal quest to transcend what sabotages life. Richard Rubenstein teaches that one of the differences between priests and prophets is that the prophets are unforgiving, uncompromising, what we do is never good enough for them. And the priests are forgiving, knowing we’ll be back next year. If my neighbor’s house goes up for sale, who do I want to move in: Amos or Aaron? I’d much rather Aaron, because he’ll understand that I’m going to screw up sometimes. On Yom Kippur morning, everyone wants to talk about the haftorah because it’s uplifting and the Torah reading is about animal sacrifice — primitive. But the real story going on is in the Torah.

Langer: Sin and repentance are not only for the High Holidays; they’re a daily, if subtle, motif in Jewish life.

Margolius: The majority of American Jews consider being a good person a crucial aspect of being a good Jew, which creates an opening to teach ways in which Judaism offers a daily practice of reflection, of moral stocktaking, of cheshbon hanefesh. It provides a set of spiritual tools by which to continually improve oneself as a human being and deepen one’s connection with God. We may highlight these tools at this time of year, but they’re meant to be part of a daily practice, both individually and in community.

Langer: If individuals have work to do they can do that on their own time. But when a community comes together for this conversation, it’s much more complex.

Hirsh: Is there an analogy between Yom Kippur and the Last Rites in the Catholic tradition? If you’re a practicing Catholic communicant engaged in an ongoing cycle of taking communion, and accepting the absolution of sin and salvation, why are last rites important?

Langer: Technically, they aren’t anymore. There’s a gulf between popular theology, which continues the old way of thinking, and the official post-Vatican II teachings. Today, the sacrament of anointing the sick is for all serious illness and repeatable. The viaticum, the Eucharist given to the dying, is understood to help erase the temporal effects of sin, that which remains even when sins are forgiven through the Eucharist and the sacrament of reconciliation. But it isn’t crucially important if it isn’t received. Trying to die with one’s mortal sins forgiven so that one can be reconciled with God in Heaven is what’s going on behind these efforts. The aggregate, and especially the sacrament, of reconciliation are more analogous to Yom Kippur.

Uhrbach: Many Jews, in addition to being uncomfortable with the idea of sin because it’s associated primarily with Christianity, are also unaware of our own deathbed confession.

Hirsh: Most of us don’t recite the Vidui, the deathbed confession, consciously, but what we say at the end of Nei’lah is the ikar, the essence, of what’s in the Vidui. Marc’s analogy of emerging from the coffin or emerging from death is so apt — we say the Vidui at the end of Yom Kippur because it is simultaneously like death and rebirth. On Yom Kippur there is a collective act that creates a magical undercurrent, a sense that on one day of the year you really get to start over.

Langer: Teshuvah is necessary but not sufficient. There is a need for ritual, to feel cleansed, to feel a genuine expression of humility because we need to rely on something beyond ourselves, beyond our own control to achieve the goal of renewal. There’s something very magical about our need for ritual. This is the great tension between the Torah reading and the haftorah on Yom Kippur. On the one hand the Torah speaks to the role of ritual — of kaparah, which if we do it exactly right (even though it’s completely incomprehensible to us, and it actually has no implication in terms of repairing whatever wrongs we’ve done), on the ritual level it works. But that’s not enough. The haftorah tells us that we also have to look at and repair our own behavior.

Uhrbach: Paradoxically we’re a culture of self-sufficiency and it’s counter-cultural to think we need God’s help. And at the same time we live within a culture that denies personal responsibility, that sees behavior as a function of environment and the chemical composition of the brain. The will is probably the most underrated aspect of humanity in our time. So our notion of sin challenges both of these assumptions. On the one hand, we are responsible, we have choices, and we have a will so we’re therefore accountable; and on the other hand, neither are we self-sufficient.

Margolius: At the heart of this discussion is a paradox: on the one hand, we have the capacity to control our destinies, to make correct moral decisions; on the other hand, we’re often floating down rivers not of our own making and subject to forces and behavioral patterns of which we’re often completely unaware. Still, we’re responsible to be as conscious of our condition as we can, and to stick our oars in the water and try to steer.

Hirsh: There’s a redundancy in the liturgy that is so perplexing for people who sit through a traditional service. By the time they get to Nei’lah, it’s like, again? Again? Again? But those 25 or 26 hours are a capsule version of life, and so every time we come up to the al cheyt, for example, we’re in a different place.

Uhrbach: I like to connect the five confessions on Yom Kippur with the five levels of the soul, which takes the congregation to ever deeper levels from Ma’ariv through Nei’lah. We say the same words but we intend them differently, from a deeper level of understanding or a different place in our being.

Polen: I recently read a Hasidic story of a rabbi who was chosen as the hazan and a number of the Hasidim were a bit surprised, maybe he didn’t have the best voice. So they asked why this particular hazan was chosen for Yom Kippur, and the rabbi said because he sings the “Vidui ” with a joyous melody.

At the most intense moment of the Jewish liturgical year — Yom Kippur/the Day of Atonement — the tradition dictates that the portion we read from the Prophets, the haftorah, is one that challenges the very practice embodied in that holy fast day. The reader chants the words of Isaiah, as Isaiah channels the fury of God: “Is this the kind of fast I have chosen, only a day for a man to humble himself?…Is it not to share your food with the hungry and to provide the poor wanderer with shelter…!”

Feeding the hungry and providing shelter for the homeless (together with clothing the naked) are established as the prerequisites of righteousness. It is impossible for an individual to make a claim on piety without first having passed this threshold. This sentiment was translated from the language of the prophetic harangue to the day-to-day language of law — both directly (Maimonides’ statement in his code of Jewish law: “Any fast day on which the people ate and rested and did not distribute charity to the poor, behold they are akin to murderers.” Mishneh Torah: Laws of Fast Days: Chapter 9:4 ) and indirectly as the sentiment behind the social welfare legislation in the Jewish legal system.

Isaiah’s righteous rage for personal piety was also translated into the idiom of communal obligation. The city is defined in rabbinic law as a community of obligation. Becoming a resident of a city — becoming a “citizen” — is defined by assuming the obligations of the city. These are varied: “At 30 days [one is assessed for] the soup-kitchen, at three months — the welfare fund, at six months — the clothing fund, at nine — the burial fund, at twelve — the city’s infrastructure.” (Babylonian Talmud Baba Bathra 8a)

Defining the city as a community of obligation means that the needs of the poor are seen on an equal footing with legal privileges, such as private property. For example, the Talmud, in discussing the obligations stated above, says that once the money is collected, it can be put toward any of those obligations as long as the   “needs of the poor” are addressed; the 12th-century Spanish Sage, Meir haLevi Abulafia wrote, the poor have a claim on that money. While discretion may be exercised in deciding whether the soup kitchen or general welfare fund should get the money, that discretion does not extend to using the money for other communal purposes (building a synagogue or study hall, e.g.) since the money is owed to the poor.

In another case the Mishnah (Baba Metzia 8:6) does not allow a person to evict a tenant if the eviction will result in the tenant being “thrown in the street.” (Maimonides Mishneh Torah Laws of Hiring 6:7)

The Mishnah (Pe’ah 8:8) teaches that “[If a person is poor and needy] we do not obligate him to sell his house and his utensils [so that he be eligible to receive money from the community].” In other words, owning a house is not considered a privilege that would disqualify one from receiving money from the community.

When an individual or the community is obligated to provide “support” ( parnassah ) for another — whether an individual’s support for an ex-wife, the community’s support of a widow, a master’s support of a Hebrew slave — that support always includes housing (mador). ²

This obligation of the community to provide housing was explicitly articulated by scholars beginning in the 12th century. The Spanish scholar Rabbi Joseph ben Rabbi Meir HaLevi ibn Migash (1077-1141) is the first to have explicitly included housing among the “needs of the poor” mentioned earlier. In quick succession, however, many others followed.³ It seems clear that this was the next step in translating Isaiah’s vision into legal reality.

In our day, Isaiah’s vision is far from reality. In Los Angeles, the city in which I live,   homeless people (over 60,000 according to the 2007 Los Angeles Homeless Service Authority study) number more than the populations of many cities. Over the course of a year more than 100,000 people are homeless in Los Angeles according to the same study.

Homelessness strikes at the heart of what cities are. There is a basic way in which the fact that people live unsheltered — without roof or sustenance — deconstructs the very idea of a city. Cities whose citizens feel no obligation to those who live under their freeways and on their sidewalks claim their ancestry from Sodom.

Homelessness is, however, a complex problem to understand and address. The web of urban dysfunction that leads to homelessness includes: the lack of a living wage; a dysfunctional health care delivery system and an inadequate educational system; a failing infrastructure that allows those with housing to lose it; insufficient market, consumerist, and government incentives for creating mixed-income housing; insufficient housing stock; an exclusionary vision that allows development to displace people.

These are daunting, though not impossible, challenges. The reward for success will be a future in which, once again, our cities will be “filled with justice, where righteousness dwells.” How can we aspire to anything less than that?

1 There is a debate on this point. Some say the money can be redirected to any communal use. However, the opinion we are championing is very forcefully held by many of the medievals.
2 Tashbetz III:301 (Responsa of Rabbi Simeon ben Tzemach Duran, 1361-1444)
3 Rabbi Meir Halevi Abulafia, Rabbi Shlomo ben Adret, Rabbenu Hananel