What can future secularists learn from the Jewish High Holy Days?

In the new secular civilization that is being born worldwide, religion will not disappear. Not only will there continue to be vast numbers of religious believers, but the civilizational imprint of religion will continue to influence secular forms of life. That will obviously be true of calendars and cultural traditions, but religion will also influence secular belief systems.

So, in a hundred years, or two hundred, there may be a vast secular civilization with many shared characteristics, including respect for science, and hopefully a deep regard for the natural world.

But in addition to these shared characteristics, there will also likely be different regional interpretations of secularism. One of those fault lines is likely to be based on the religious tradition of that particular region. So we can expect to find Judeo-Christian, Islamic, Buddhist, Hindu and indigenous-influenced forms of secularism.

It is worth considering what particular forms of wisdom each religious tradition can impart to secularism.

One thing that the Judeo-Christian tradition does much better than any form of secularism I know is deal with what they call “sinfulness.” Secularists like to say that we are as good in our behavior as any average group of religious believers—and this is obviously true—but we are also as bad.

Judaism and Christianity do not consider people to be particularly good, including Jews and Christians, and the concept of sin captures this. What we secularists might call antisocial behavior driven by evolved self-interest, beneficial to the individual but detrimental to the group, they call sinfulness.

In both religious and secular societies, there is a collective benefit to correcting for this individual tendency, by whatever name. A future secular civilization can benefit from studying and adapting the ways religious societies have done this. 

One effective way that Judaism drives this message of sinfulness home and tries to improve the believer’s moral and ethical life is through the rituals of the High Holy Days—the period of intense self-reflection that began this year with the New Year, Rosh Hashanah, on the evening of Wednesday, October 2, and concludes with Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement, which ends on Saturday evening, October 12.

The High Holy Day period may be said to represent an effort to cause the believer to live sub specie aeterni—from the perspective of eternity. Or, as the philosopher Martin Heidegger puts it, Sein zum Tode—existence with the awareness of impending death. Most of us would greatly benefit from seriously acknowledging that life is fleeting. During the High Holy Days, believers pray to have the chance of another year of life and are made aware that this may not happen. And it is a shock, for young people anyway, to think about the possibility that they will die in the coming year.

There is a particular moral aspect to this reflection. We all sin. We all fail to live our best selves. We all harm and betray other people, often the people who love and depend on us. The preparation for asking God’s pardon for one’s sins is to seek reconciliation with those persons we have wronged in the past year. This is traditionally done during the month of Elul, which precedes the High Holy Days.

This tradition is sensitive and in my experience is not often practiced among even Orthodox Jews. On the political front, this is obvious. I doubt that members of the settler movement sought reconciliation this year with Palestinian villagers with whom they have regular conflicts.

But even on the personal side, it is a tricky business. After all, a person we have wronged has the right to nurse the grievance and/or not to be reminded of it by our ostentatiously seeking forgiveness. The Talmud—the great book of Jewish practice—even tells a story that continuing to seek forgiveness from one not inclined to grant it is itself a form of violence against that person. Seeking reconciliation can be a new form of victimization. This is obviously so if we have not fundamentally changed our behavior.

Nevertheless, the basic idea is sound. We have to try to undo the harms we have caused people however we can and reconcile with them if this is possible. This is for their sakes as well as ours.

In general, secularism needs to find ways to include within secular life the examination of conscience that the High Holy Days so effectively bring about. And this needs to be done not as just a suggestion for individuals but as a form of yearly, collective practice. If we secularists can celebrate reason, we ought to be able to celebrate confession and repentance as well.

None of this should be beyond the resources of secularism. But there is one aspect of the High Holy Days that seems unattainable for the nonbeliever—forgiveness of sin. The promise of the Judeo-Christian tradition is that the slate really will be wiped clean. The Prophet Isaiah promises, through God’s mercy, that “though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they be red like crimson, they shall be as wool.”

This is not a cheap promise. The believer is not in this way left off the hook from the hard work of reconciliation and amelioration of the harms that one has caused. That work must go on even after forgiveness is granted. What is alleviated by God’s forgiveness is paralyzing guilt. During my time as a Jew, I experienced the liberating power of the forgiveness of sin and I can attest to its capacity to change lives.

Human beings need to be able to start afresh, no matter what we have done. Otherwise, we live in continuing moral darkness. If you hate yourself for what you have done in your life, you may never be able to change. God knows how starting over can be accomplished without God. Now that I no longer believe in God, I cannot even explain how I received forgiveness of sin years ago.

For now, we will have to leave matters here. There is a great deal we can learn from the High Holy Days, even if we cannot fully participate in all of its mysteries and power.