Yom Kippur is about Letting Go by Dr. Deb Hirschhorn

Dr. Deb

Yom Kippur is About Letting Go

By Deb Hirschhorn, Ph.D.

When I was a kid, I did not like Yom Kippur. I already felt badly enough about myself and didn’t need a whole day to rub in how really awful I was.

Somehow, over the years, I made peace with Yom Kippur. It was just something you had to do, so I did it. I liked some of the tunes, too, and it was always a pleasure to break the fast at the end. That became a big game of how well we endured our privations.

But that’s not what Yom Kippur really is about after all.

It suddenly hit me why it’s called “Shabbos Shabbosim.” It’s really about letting go. Shabbos is just that, too. You have one day when you can’t do any work so you’re reminded G-d runs the world. OK, what else is new? We knew that.

But I was lying in bed still recuperating from my bout with Covid, marveling at how that disease had sapped out every ounce of my energy. I couldn’t even stand up without feeling lightheaded. Now that I was slowly regaining my strength back, it was so clear to me that the awful feeling that I had to go sit down when I’d just gotten up was just because of Covid.

And now that I was beginning to feel like myself, I started to worry.

Of course. I’m Jewish, right?

I was worrying about the work I’d missed and the people I didn’t see. And what would be going forward? Had I fallen so far behind that I can’t help my children? Did my clients backslide while I’d dropped them?

I reminded myself again that G-d runs the world. Then I remembered that the entire point of these Yomim Noraim – well, not the entire point but a big piece of the point – is that Hashem decides right then how much we will make, how many people we will help, how successful we will be in our goals.

And I asked myself, I mean, it was a legitimate question: Can I really let go? Can I really, like in the depth of my bones, believe this? Can I totally give up worrying after all?

That was my question.

I realized that it is absolutely not so easy to do. You’d think it would be, given that every week on Shabbos, we practice doing exactly that. We’re forced to forget our responsibilities, at least for a short while, 25 quick hours.

But by Yom Kippur, not only do we have to stop worrying, but we literally accept that Hashem is totally deciding our future and we can’t do anything about it. Except, of course, daven and give tzedakah. Unlike Shabbos, on Yom Kippur our entire fate is figured out for us, and there we are – worrying about it.

But that’s the thing, exactly. That’s exactly what we are not supposed to do. Yom Kippur is not about quaking in your boots because of what is being planned for us Above. The opposite. It is supposed to – I realized in my aha moment – bring an inner serenity.

Precisely because we can’t do anything about it, there is absolutely nothing to worry about. It was never meant to torture us. It was meant to relax us from all our burdens. If G-d does run the world after all, and we get that on a deep level, then there are no worries left to have. He’s taken care of it for us.

Hold up. What about fasting all day? And standing on your feet a lot of the day, davening? How is that inherently relaxing?

Well, let’s look at Shabbos. We’re supposed to give up our mundane worries then too, right? But let’s face it, I’m as guilty as the next person when it comes to niggling little thoughts in the back of my mind about what I need to do directly after Shabbos is over. Exactly how much break from the cares of the world do we really give ourselves?

But Yom Kippur won’t let us off the hook.

It insists we pay attention to the fact that we are most definitely not in charge here. We can orchestrate and plan to our hearts’ content, but that’s all just a joke on us. We realize the truth when we spend a day fasting – giving up – and on our feet addressing the Ribbono Shel Olam.

It forces us to let go.

It’s like this: We are always in G-d’s Hands. But do we see that? Do we realize it? Do we feel it? There’s a difference between knowing something intellectually and experiencing it in your bones. So Hashem helps us out. He gives us a day to know it. You can’t stand up davening all day on an empty stomach and not know it. Unless you’re really not paying attention (and that would be a big waste, wouldn’t it?),

So it turns out that Yom Kippur is a major gift, reminding us to let go of our worries because having them does us no good anyway. He really is in charge after all, and we can accept what comes with equanimity.

Not so fast, Dr. Deb. That does not explain why we stand there all day beating our breasts.

True. Here’s the scoop: If there’s no point to spend even 10 seconds worrying about parnassa, health, and how our life will go, what’s left?

The answer is really simple: What’s left is how we choose to live it. And we do have lots of choices after all. We could continue to yell at our spouses, blame our kids, avoid our in-laws, and do all the things that our list of aveiros says not to do. Or we could decide once and for all that we do need help with our tempers, our bad mood, our depression, our tendency to make things someone else’s fault, our proclivity to misjudge people, and the weight we carry on our shoulders that everyone else sees us wearing.

That’s what all that breast-beating is about. An opportunity to examine our child parts that sometimes hijack us and decide once and for all that we’d rather learn how to stay in Self more often and get back into it more quickly when we’ve been hijacked.

All given to us on a silver platter called Yom Kippur. What a fine day it is.

Dr. Deb Hirschhorn is a Marriage and Family Therapist. If you want help with your marriage, begin by signing up to watch her Masterclass at https://drdeb. com/myw-masterclass.