Yom Kippur: Don’t Beat Yourself Up, Raise Yourself Up

I recently read a story about one of the most successful magazine entrepreneurs in the world. The man was raised by a single mother in the Midwest, struggled growing up, and was failing out of high school. He promised his mother he would take the SAT test, though he didn’t expect to get a good score. He was shocked to learn he got a 1480 out of 1600 on the SAT. His mother, knowing her son, asks, “Did you cheat?” He swore to her he didn’t. And suddenly, things started to change.

In his senior year he decided since he’s smart he should attend classes. He stopped hanging out with his old crowd. The teachers and kids seemed to notice. They started treating him differently. He graduated, attends community college, went on to Wichita State, and eventually to an Ivy League university. He went on to become a successful magazine entrepreneur.

This story is not about someone who was really smart all along but just needed the standardized test to unlock his potential. Twelve years after his fateful SAT exam, the man gets a letter in the mail from Princeton, New Jersey. He doesn’t think anything about it. The next day his wife asks him if he’s going to open the letter.

He opens it. It turns out the SAT board periodically reviews their test-taking procedures and policies. He was one of 13 people sent the wrong SAT score. His actual score was half of what he thought he got: 740. People had been saying his whole life changed when he got the 1480. What really happened is his behavior changed. He started acting like a person with a 1480.

The Point of Yom Kippur

In some ways, that is what Yom Kippur is about. Many mistakenly think that Yom Kippur is a day to feel worthless, a total failure, an underachiever. After all, we spend this day literally smacking ourselves and counting one by one the ways we have failed, the mistakes we’ve made.  It seems a bit much. Yes, it is sobering and productive, but can’t we just say the vidui confession once and then move on? Why do we hit our chests and confess over and over and over again?  Is perpetually beating ourselves up what this day is all about?

We say towards the end of our Yom Kippur silent prayer, “God, before I was formed, I was unworthy, and now that I have been formed it is as if I had not been formed.”  These words seem debilitating and deflating. They come from the Talmud (Berachot17a) – Rava said them at the conclusion of the Amida every day. I was nothing before, I am nothing now, what is the point of living at all?

Rabbi Avraham Yitzchak HaKohen Kook reads this disheartening prayer in a very different way – it’s actually empowering, inspiring, and motivating. It’s the answer to the imposter syndrome, to feeling like a worthless fraud. Explains Rabbi Kook, “Before I was formed, I was unworthy” means that each of us enters the world at the exact moment when we are needed. Before we were formed, there was no need for us. God sends us into His world at the exact moment when we are worthy — that our skills, talent and abilities and even our challenges are uniquely needed by the world, by our neighbors, family and friends. We are precisely what the world needs at the moment we arrive and for the time that we are in it.

Yom Kippur is not about beating ourselves up; it’s about raising ourselves up. To use 25 hours for an honest look in the mirror, to admit the potential that is inside us, to regret the ways we have failed to realize it and to pledge to make our existence purposeful, meaningful and impactful.

Until now I wasn’t needed, but if I am here, I must answer the call, live up to that potential in me, recognize my ability and be the person the world was waiting for and needs at this moment. Rabbi Kook is teaching us that the vidui confession of Yom Kippur is a list of rules and regulations we violated per se, rather it is more an admission and confession of failing to realize the potential inside us, indulging in temptations, urges and impulses that distracted us from our core mission, from who we are meant to be. If we forsake our mission, if we squander our time and resources, if we fail to see the potential inside us and to believe in our power, then “now that I have been formed it is as if I had not been formed.”

Rise Up

Yom Kippur is not about beating ourselves up; it’s about raising ourselves up. To use 25 hours for an honest look in the mirror, to admit the potential that is inside us, to regret the ways we have failed to realize it and to pledge to make our existence purposeful, meaningful and impactful.

The world didn’t need you until you were born. That was God’s decision.  But now that you are here, what will you do with it? Take one step at a time. One great parenting moment or marriage moment of patience, love and affection.  One gesture of kindness.  One act of tzedakah. One Torah class. One blessing. One demonstration of faith and trust in God.

Don’t wait for the world to recognize your greatness. Unlock your potential, act like the person you are meant to be, and people will treat you like that person. More importantly, you will see yourself, treat yourself and believe in yourself as that person.