The Confessional “It is customary to tap the heart while reciting the confessional, as if to say, ‘It’s our inner impulse that drives us to act incorrectly.’” Magen Avraham, Orach Chayim 607:3
On Yom Kippur, at the end of each Amidah, we recite the confessional. For the evening prayer, it is on pages 71–76. The core of teshuvah (repentance) is to regret a past transgression and resolve to not commit it again. Jewish law also specifies that we must verbalize our teshuvah by stating our transgression and our commitment to improve. This is offered privately to G-d, not to any other person—unless one has to ask forgiveness of another for wronging them. If remorse transpires in the mind alone, it can remain abstract. Verbalizing this forces us to confront our actions in a more tangible way and strengthens our resolve to not reoffend. The Yom Kippur prayers feature approximately ten repetitions of the Vidui, the confessional prayer, providing us with numerous opportunities to reflect on our wrongdoing and resolve to be better moving forward. As you read the confessional, you may notice that some of the listed transgressions are not things you struggle with. Nevertheless, we all recite the entire text. First, every transgression has more subtle manifestations, and those need to be considered on this day. Second, the entire confessional is written in the plural, “We have transgressed,” and so forth. This is not an instance of the “royal we”; rather, we address
G-d on this day not as single individuals but as components of a larger whole. We don’t view ourselves and our destinies as unrelated to our fellow Jews; we are one people, on one vessel, sharing the same voyage. What one does and does not do is felt by all, which is why all Jews are responsible for each other. We invoke this mutual obligation by confessing our sins. What is our emotional state as we recite the confessional? Yes, we seek to feel genuine remorse. But the heart can simultaneously feel two different and even opposite emotions. We’ve all experienced these dualities of feeling: love and fear, anticipation and apprehension, disappointment and hope— both, respectively, at the same time. In the same way, we can experience remorse and regret over a past wrongdoing and, at the same time, rejoice over the opportunity for teshuvah. The Baal Shem Tov once prayed in a synagogue on Yom Kippur where the cantor chanted the Vidui in a joyous tune. He was puzzled by this, because it was not the norm, and he later asked the cantor why he had done so. Replied the cantor, “When the king’s servants are cleaning the royal palace of the accumulated dirt in anticipation of his arrival, do they not do this work joyously?” The Baal Shem Tov was pleased with this explanation.
YOM K I P P U R
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