Repenting as a Community

Written by Rabbi Elliott Karstadt — 6 October 2022

A dead body is discovered on the road. This is not in the bustling street of one of the nearby towns, but the deserted highway that runs between them. No one was witness to the killing, and no one comes forward to claim responsibility. Perhaps this person was killed by accident. Perhaps they were murdered. Perhaps it was a robbery gone wrong. Ultimately, there is no way to know.

The elders of the closest town assemble. The mood is grave. A leaden cloud hangs over their meeting.

‘How do we rid ourselves of the blood guilt that stains the land near our city?’ Asks the president of the council. Many shrug their shoulders, at a lost as to what to do, until one particularly wizened elder tentatively raises her hand.

‘There is an ancient ritual,’ she says, ‘that might help us to rid ourselves of the guilt we all feel; the responsibility we all feel we hold.’

‘What does this ritual entail?’ They ask. The old woman explains that they are to find a cow that has never been worked, that has never felt the burden of a yoke on its neck, take it down to the ever-flowing river just outside the town, and break its neck. Once they have done this, they are to wash their hands over the broken neck of the cow and say the following:

‘Our hands did not shed this blood, and our eyes did not see. Atone for Your people Israel who you ransomed, and do not put innocent blood in the midst of Your people Israel’ (Deuteronomy 21:7-8).

The elders listen in silence as she describes this ritual of atonement. ‘From where does this ritual come?’ They ask. But the old woman is unable to answer them. They turn to the city scribe, who informs them that it originates in one of the ancient scrolls that resides in the city archive. Some call it the Book of Deuteronomy.

An objection is raised: ‘Surely,’ one of the younger members of the council says, ‘breaking the neck of a cow will not set right what was done!’

Another chimes in, saying, ‘Why are we doing anything at all? If we are saying that we have no responsibility for what happened, surely we can leave it at that.’

The scribe replies, ‘Well, perhaps, but one version of the scroll suggests that the reason for performing this ritual is that we do have a responsibility for it. After all, the victim was discovered on-route away from our city – perhaps he appeared here seeking food and board and we refused it and sent him away.’

‘Still,’ the questioner says, ‘If he had just remained within the city limits, this would not have happened to him.’

‘Well, perhaps,’ replies the scribe, ‘but another telling suggests that such victims would not be killed were it not for the fact that such things go on within the city all the time.’

‘Yes!’ Says another of the elders. ‘After all, we know what people in this city can do to each other every day – killing, maiming, stealing, intimidating, taking advantage. Why should we imagine that he would have been safe had he simply stayed within the city walls?’

As the common saying goes: some are guilty; all are responsible.

The ritual of the breaking of the cow’s neck and washing our hands over it is not how we seek atonement today.

But this idea, of collective responsibility for individual suffering in the world, is one that is core to Yom Kippur. We stand, beat our chests and say ashumnu – ‘we are guilty’; bagadnu – ‘we have betrayed one another’; gazalnu – ‘we have stolen’. We say that we did all these things, despite the fact that, individually, we probably didn’t.

Like the elders of the town who wash their hands in the river, we take communal responsibility for the world around us and the people in it. But we do not do so simply as individuals – we do so as part of a community. Like the elders of the town, we speak on behalf not only of ourselves but on behalf of the community.

When we beat our chests and chant Ashumnu we are committing ourselves to taking communal responsibility; to being part of a community and an institution that does good in the world. Not only that, but we are committing to strengthen that institution in whatever way we can.

In Hilchot Teshuvah (The Laws of Repentance), which we have been studying in our Chavruta Project over the last five weeks, the medieval philosopher Moses Maimonides tells us that sincere teshuvah (sincere repentance) will always save us. Yet, there are a number of sins that m’akvin et hateshuvah – that withhold or arrest repentance at least for a time. Top of Maimonides’ list is one who leads the community into sin, and following that, the one who had the opportunity to protest someone else’s wrongdoing, but instead remained silent.

So, when someone leads others into transgression, or when we fail to tell others where they may be doing harm, it is worse than if we were doing that harm simply on our own.

At the same time, Maimonides tells us that, while as individuals we face a hard deadline for repentance at Yom Kippur, for the community, the gates of repentance never close. They are permanently waiting for us to pass through.

Maimonides is telling us: our sins are graver and our repentance more profound when we do them together with our community.

Community matters – religious institutions matter. Being in community is how we make ourselves powerful – being part of an institution gives us the power to act on those things that we believe are important to society.

In turn, institutions need to be strong in order that they can act in the world. If we start with weak institutions we are unlikely to get much done.

When individuals in in London Borough of Barnet wanted to establish a Night Shelter for those facing homelessness, it was not individuals who took people in. It was religious institutions that banded together to provide the means to establish a shelter that has now been going for twenty years.

Although members do frequently act as individuals to alleviate the effects of poverty, it is so often through Alyth that they decide to act in, for example, bringing food to the foodbank run by our friends at All Saints Church, Childs Hill. People are more likely to contribute when prompted by their institutions to do so.

Individual members would have little way of addressing the situation in which refugees find themselves in our society. But through Alyth they have the opportunity to volunteer for our refugee drop-in – another activity that can only happen when run by an organised community.

When the pandemic hit and isolated individuals in our community were unable to go shopping for food for themselves, it was Alyth as an institution that stepped in make sure they were cared for – not central or local government, not even necessarily individuals.

(While there are stories of many individuals who ran such efforts and such operations in the early days of the pandemic, it is institutions – and specifically religious institutions – that have had the ability to continue to provide them now.)

There are new and equally threatening potential health crises, the spectre of which loom over us. One of these is the worrying rise of instances of the Polio virus. Public health officials have looked to religious institutions to facilitate rolling out a new emergency vaccination plan for those aged 1 to 9 in our area, and Alyth will be playing its part in that.

With the combination of extremes of heat due to the ever-growing challenge of climate change, and the cost of living crisis leading to more and more people facing the prospect of a winter with only limited heating, our institutions are increasingly being called upon to be a cool place in the summer and a warm place in the winter. For that we need to have a building that is fit for purpose.

For all these things to happen, we rely on our members to remain committed to the project of religious community. To step up and, as Rabbi Colin said at Rosh Hashanah, to say hineni, here I am.

Churches, synagogues, mosques – religious institutions are understood to be strong because of the relational power within them. Because the individuals that make them up have a network of obligations to each other and to the institution itself.

But being part of a community is not simply an outward-looking good. We should not just want to be members of an institution because of what it does in the world outside our doors. There is a value to us in being part of the community in and of itself.

It is the community that can prevent crippling social isolation, can make us feel that we are valued and seen by others, can make us feel included in a way that no other social artifice can.

As Rabbi Josh said in his sermon last night, communities like Alyth are a place for the opportunity to encounter people who are different from us – places in which we can grow by grappling with diversity, opening ourselves up to new experiences.

Which is why, as part of our response to the cost-of-living crisis, we have launched the Alyth Membership Support Fund. We do not want anyone to be faced with the prospect of having to leave the community because they feel they cannot afford it. The Support Fund affirms the importance of living in community – which is not just a nice thing to have, but a crucial right that we want to extend to everyone.

There is one more profound power the community has and our religious institutions hold, and that is they give us avenues of action in a world that can seem entirely random and unfathomable.

In the last couple of years we have all become more and more aware of supply chains. Whether it is because of Brexit, Covid, or the Russian invasion of Ukraine, we are more aware than ever how contingent our global existence is, and how easily many of the things that seemed so readily available in fact relied on a precarious balance that is now being thrown into turbulence. Whether it is computer chips coming from Asia or gas from Russia, we are aware more than ever of how little control we have, and how little knowledge we have, of how they can be delivered to us.

We live within complex systems that are often incomprehensible even to the biggest business and the most astute minds.

And this lack of knowledge can make us question our agency – how much effect is there to anything I do in the world. How can I possibly know what the effect will be of my actions? And how much can I be held accountable or responsible for anything that I as an individual do?

Think of the poor bloke who stumbled across the body lying at the side of the highway. What possible meaning can he find as an individual for his experience? But, as he watched the elders make their way down through the city gate and towards the ever-flowing stream, he may just have understood that this ritual was being performed also on his behalf – that they were taking responsibility on behalf of the whole city, and acknowledging the communal responsibility that they all held, and committing as a community to be better: to be more influential outside the walls of the city, but also to be stronger within.

As Rabbi Josh said last night, Alyth is not perfect. As a community every year we stand up and say Ashumnu. Like the elders of the city we strive to stand up and resolve to be better. So, this Yom Kippur, on this Day of Atonement, may we stand and take on the responsibility of community – not only for what might have gone wrong in the last year, but for building towards a better year in 5783.

Gmar Chatimah Tovah