The Mirrors of Yom Kippur
Rabbi Deborah Wechsler
One of the hardest things you will ever do in your life will be to look in a mirror. No disrespect intended, it’s just that you look in a mirror and what does it show you? It shows you the truth, real and unvarnished. Not made up, not beautified, not dressed up, and not covered up. It shows you all the things that you don’t see when you look through a plain piece of glass. But add a little silver to that glass and it becomes a mirror.
A rabbi tells the story of a member of her congregation, a self-made man who used to be an involved member of the community and philanthropic when he was just starting out and still struggling to make a good life for himself. Ironically once he established himself the man seemed more focused on those luxuries he could provide himself and his family.
The rabbi asked the man to look out the window and tell her what he saw,
"I see my neighbors, my friends, the people I live among."
Then the rabbi invited him to look into the mirror she had behind the door and tell her what he saw.
The man looked, and smiled at what he saw: professional haircut, nice coat, beautiful tie. "I see myself." He said.
And the rabbi replied, "The difference between plain glass and a mirror is the reflective layer of silver on the back. Sometimes when we add a little silver, all we can see is ourselves."
And what the mirror shows, we do not always want to see. It shows that we just couldn’t shut our mouths and stop telling a story that wasn't our own, it shows that you were nowhere near the kind of parent you wanted to be, it shows you that you didn't invest the kind of time in your marriage that you did in your business, it shows you that you had no self control, it shows us what we really are and at least one day a year we should admit to ourselves and to God that there is much in us that is deeply flawed.
On Yom Kippur we do what might seem impossible, we look in a mirror for 25 hours straight. Yom Kippur does not make looking in a mirror easier, nor does it make it harder. Yom Kippur simply makes it possible.
Today is when we see the failure to address the reality of our lives, to address the failures of our reality. In Hebrew the word for mirror is re’ee from the root word, ra’ah to see. A mirror is that which makes it possible to see. Last week on Rosh Hashanah we spoke about nurturing the ability to see wells in the wilderness; to be able to see what is unseen and imagine a different future for ourselves. But before we can do that, before we can see what isn’t there, we have to see what is there. Because before you find the courage to see something that isn’t there, that’s only imagined, first you have to find the courage to see what’s actually in front of you. And that’s what Yom Kippur is about. No mirages, no imagination, no lush landscapes, just a reflection.
Ever wonder why reflections are referred to as “cool” or clean? Because there’s no warmth from a mirror. Nothing to smooth out the edges. For reflections we use the words of the fall season – crisp, cool, clear, bracing. It is that shock of recognition.
Have you ever had the experience of passing in front of a mirror and not recognizing yourself? For a split second you look at that person across from you and either admire or recoil away from them before realizing that it is your own reflection which you failed to recognize.
It was Claude Levi Strauss, the French Jewish Anthropologist who died this past year, who remarked that astronomy developed as the first science among human beings because the stars are very far away. Anthropology, the study of humanity, came much later. It is easy to study what is distant, far more difficult to study ourselves.[1]
Like all of the Jewish holidays, Yom Kippur has several names – last night we mentioned Shabbat Shabbaton, and in our blessing over the festival lights we called this festival yom ha kippurim. The Rabbis make a play on words from that and say that Yom Kippur is Yom ki Purim, a day like Purim.
How is Yom Kippur like Purim? Because on Purim we put on masks so that when we look in the mirror we see someone else. On Yom Kippur we take off our masks. Some of us wear the mask of the intellectual, we use big words in every conversation to cover up the doubts we harbor about our own abilities. Some of us wear the mask of the cynic, we make jokes in every conversation to cover up our fears and inadequacies. Some of us wear the mask of the nice guy, we never take a stand, we avoid controversy so that no one will dislike us or disagree with us. [2] Some of us wear the mask of the joyful, we smile and deny to ourselves and to others the sadness we feel inside.
On Yom Kippur we take off those masks so when we look in the mirror we see our own true selves, stripped away and naked. One of the five restrictions of this day is on sexual intimacy which makes perfect sense since we sometimes use intimacy as yet another way to wear a mask. We bare our bodies so that we don’t have to bare our souls. But let me tell you, baring your body is easy compared with baring your soul. You think its hard to look at yourself in a mirror when you are naked? Every flaw, every bump, every scar, every spot, every wrinkle - it's all there. But even that is nothing compared to seeing the same bumps and scars on your very character.
Yom Kippur is a paradoxical day when we both act out our own deaths and also behave as mourners. We observe most of the same restrictions as with mourning as we use that knowledge of our mortality to more fully embrace life. But the paradox is that we are mourning for ourselves. With a few exceptions, one of the most glaring is that we don't usually associate mirrors with death. As Jews one of the first things that we do following the death of a loved one is to cover the mirrors in our homes.
There are several reasons for this. Since a mirror is the symbol of vanity itself, covering mirrors reminds us that shiva is supposed to be about the deceased not about us. We don’t worry about how we look or what we are wearing. Also since the shiva house is where prayer services are held we cover the mirrors because it is forbidden to pray facing your reflection.[3] Mostly that’s about avoiding the appearance of praying to yourself. There is a mystical reason that says that mirrors capture images of the soul and we don’t want to trap them here. But one of my favorite reasons is that mirrors have no memory.
Everything that we come into contact with has some kind of memory. Human beings of course possess memory, faulty though it may be. We remember the people with whom we have come into contact, relatives, friends, even acquaintances. But even inanimate object seem to have a memory of sorts. An old suit of clothing reminds us of the person who wore it. A favorite chair can not be seen without recalling the person who sat in it. We enter a house in which we lived for many years and it too is full of memories. The one object which seems to possess no memory at all is the mirror. One moment we stand before it and the image is sharp and clear. The next moment the mirror is reflecting the next person standing there. It is as if we were never there. One moment a mirror sees, the next moment it has forgotten. That is why during shiva we cover mirrors, as a promise to our loved ones that we will not forget them.[4]
But while there are times in our lives when it is appropriate and correct to cover the mirrors and all they show us there are other times, like today when we uncover them and embrace what we find.
William Makepeace Thackeray, a contemporary of Dickens, found his greatest fame in his novel Vanity Fair. He wrote about how imperialism and capitalism had emotionally crippled and morally bankrupted every social class of his generation. The illustration for the front of the serialized novel was of a young man looking into a cracked mirror. Because Thackeray in his own words admitted that he was always looking into a “cracked and warped looking glass to see his own weaknesses, wickednesses, lusts, follies, and shortcomings.”
In Vanity Fair he wrote that, "The world is a looking glass, and gives back to every man the reflection of his own face. Frown at it, and it will in turn look sourly upon you; laugh at it and with it, and it is a jolly, kind companion; and so let all young persons take their choice." Yom Kippur is our looking glass as the gates of repentance prepare to close for another year. [5] We uncover the mirrors of our life and our deeds and embrace what we find so that we might make meaningful changes to ourselves.
[1] Rabbi Elliot Cosgrove
[2] adapted from Rabbi Jack Reimer
[3] Shulchan Aruch, Orach Chayim 90
[4] Rabbi Kass Abelson, The Eulogy, p.36
[5] Rabbi Amy Perlin
