The second “Al Chet” that we read in every confessional list on Yom Kippur is for “imutz ha-lev” – the intentional hardening of the heart. The GRA, the Vilna Gaon, in his Siddur, describes the sin as not giving tzedaka with a full heart or not helping someone in need by callously ignoring a plea for help. But this year, over two hundred years after the GRA’s death, we might understand this sin a little differently. All this disappointment may be hardening our hearts to God, pushing us to withdraw from or ignore another’s vulnerability or our own because life has been hard for us this past year.
Many of us are approaching this Rosh Hashana with a surfeit of disappointments that we don’t know how to manage. We’re happy to wish good riddance to 5780 and will pray with urgency for a better year ahead. There were great losses we never anticipated when we sat together in shul last year for the Yamim Nora’im, hopeful and blissfully unaware of what was to come. 5780 brought sickness and death, isolation and loneliness, job loss and mental health problems to every part of the globe. U’netaneh Tokef presents some existentially difficult scenarios, but no one anticipated this year’s pandemic in its somber lyrics.
COVID physically separated communities and families who could not share joy or mourn together. Medical dangers everywhere were overlaid with racial protests and a political landscape pockmarked by hate and rancor. And along with the tragedy of the great losses, came a host of smaller losses that need to be acknowledged as we approach these holiest days of the year and try to make sense of the year past. Despite the many blessings that all of us have counted with greater intention and gratitude than ever before, there’s no denying it. This was a year of disappointments that has taken a profound spiritual toll.
As Jews, it should surprise no one that we have six different words for disappointment.
These capture the emotional nuances that disappointment carries, from frustration to a sense of delusion, from deception to dishonor. For this season, we’ll focus on the very last. מַפַּח נֶפֶשׁ – translated literally as a soul puncture, it is more commonly known in English as disillusionment or despair. This feeling of disappointment might be rather trivial. We go to a restaurant and are disappointed by the meal (although for some, this is not trivial at all!). But disappointment can also be immense and overwhelming. And that is why the term soul puncture seems apt to describe the year we just ended. 2020, with its play on perfect vision, was supposed to be different. When we all stood together last year on Rosh Hashana and Yom Kippur, not one of us could have imagined a shul shuttered for months, school taking place on a screen and face masks with name brands on them.
There have been so many soul punctures. We’ve been disappointed that major milestone events – weddings, bnei mitzva, graduations, birthday parties and retirements – have all been deferred to who knows when or happened on such a scaled down version that they couldn’t help but disappoint. Occasions that people spent years saving for and designing in their heads didn’t happen. Work got done, but the serendipity of simple meetings in hallways was gone. Having fewer boundaries between work and home inspired one broadcast journalist to change the expression ‘working from home’ to ‘living at work.’ No one should live at work.
And then there’s the disappointments of school: virtual classrooms where only some learning took place and even that precipitated exhaustion and despair for both teachers and students. Conferences and vacations were cancelled. Visits to family and friends were postponed indefinitely. Those looking forward to taking both small and giant steps into the future - starting a year in Israel, going to college, or starting a new job - have had to adjust expectations. Sometimes radically.
Why reference all the things that have gone wrong when instead we could approach the new year charging forward without looking back in anger or sadness? Because how we manage our disappointments is foundational to the very notion of teshuva. When we name what we’ve done wrong, we’re addressing our disappointments with ourselves. When we confess to hurting someone else, we’re confronting the disappointment they have in us. When we tell someone that they’ve hurt us, what we mean is that they let us down. When we’re honest with some of the pain we feel towards Hakadosh Barukh Hu this year, we can begin to sort out our emotions and work on that relationship. No doubt, God, too, has been disappointed in us.
Emily Dickenson describes disappointment masterfully in her poem, “It Dropped So Low in My Regard.” Disappointment is a china plate that’s put too high on a shelf then hits the stone floor and shatters. One of the hardest things to hear from a parent, teacher or friend is “I’m disappointed in you.” It hurts because what we are in essence saying is that you’ve let me down. I had higher expectations of you. You are not worthy. It’s most often expressed from a person with power to someone with less power and can leave scars for a lifetime.
Ronit Baras, a parenting coach who has faced a lot of disappointment as a person with special needs who lost two of her own children, offers this parenting advise: “For every time you have said, ‘I’m disappointed in you’, or worse, ‘You disappoint me,’ say 10 times, “I trust you to do well,” “I trust you to do your best,” “I trust you to do the right thing.”
But what are we to do with this mountain of disappointments, especially when there are, no doubt, more ahead? How can we reconcile ourselves to the religious costs this has had on us, the soul punctures, great and small, that we’ve suffered?
One of the most powerful biblical texts on disappointment happens where we least expect it, in Shir Hashirim, the Song of Songs. It also tells us how to repair disappointment if you read the book carefully.
In a centerpiece of Shir Hashirim, the young lover goes to meet his beloved on whim in the middle of the night. Not expecting company, when he knocks on the door, she dithers and hesitates:
אֲנִ֥י יְשֵׁנָ֖ה וְלִבִּ֣י עֵ֑ר ק֣וֹל ׀ דּוֹדִ֣י דוֹפֵ֗ק פִּתְחִי־לִ֞י אֲחֹתִ֤י רַעְיָתִי֙ יוֹנָתִ֣י תַמָּתִ֔י שֶׁרֹּאשִׁי֙ נִמְלָא־טָ֔ל קְוֻּצּוֹתַ֖י רְסִ֥יסֵי לָֽיְלָה׃
פָּשַׁ֙טְתִּי֙ אֶת־כֻּתָּנְתִּ֔י אֵיכָ֖כָה אֶלְבָּשֶׁ֑נָּה רָחַ֥צְתִּי אֶת־רַגְלַ֖י אֵיכָ֥כָה אֲטַנְּפֵֽם׃
דּוֹדִ֗י שָׁלַ֤ח יָדוֹ֙ מִן־הַחֹ֔ר וּמֵעַ֖י הָמ֥וּ עָלָֽיו׃ קַ֥מְתִּֽי אֲנִ֖י לִפְתֹּ֣חַ לְדוֹדִ֑י וְיָדַ֣י נָֽטְפוּ־מ֗וֹר וְאֶצְבְּעֹתַי֙ מ֣וֹר עֹבֵ֔ר עַ֖ל כַּפּ֥וֹת הַמַּנְעֽוּל׃
פָּתַ֤חְתִּֽי אֲנִי֙ לְדוֹדִ֔י וְדוֹדִ֖י חָמַ֣ק עָבָ֑ר נַפְשִׁי֙ יָֽצְאָ֣ה בְדַבְּר֔וֹ בִּקַּשְׁתִּ֙יהוּ֙ וְלֹ֣א מְצָאתִ֔יהוּ קְרָאתִ֖יו וְלֹ֥א עָנָֽנִי׃
I was asleep, But my heart was wakeful. Hark, my beloved knocks! “Let me in, my own, My darling, my faultless dove! For my head is drenched with dew, My locks with the damp of night.”
I had taken off my robe— Was I to don it again? I had bathed my feet— Was I to soil them again?
My beloved took his hand off the latch, And my heart was stirred for him. I rose to let in my beloved; My hands dripped myrrh— My fingers, flowing myrrh— Upon the handles of the bolt.
I opened the door for my beloved, But my beloved had turned and gone. I was faint because of what he said. I sought, but found him not; I called, but he did not answer.
This middle-of-the-night rejection hurt them both. The disappointment was thick. The lover, no doubt, skulked away from the scene, likely embarrassed that he made the journey only to face a locked door. When the beloved finally rises, after slowly washing and robing herself, she realizes she was too late. She missed him and then, in mad pursuit, rushed onto the streets and harassed the town watchmen, trying, but failing, to find him.
Sometimes we miss the moment, and sometimes it misses us. The timing is off. The expectations are different. A simple misunderstanding turns into a great regret and a tremendous setback. A dream gets tucked way for another time.
Yet this is not where Song of Songs ends. We have three and a half more chapters. The book ends with the lovers leaping in parallel to a mountain of spices instead of charging alone into a mountain of disappointments. They finally find each other and go off together.
Why should the most famous love song in history contain this story of disappointment at all? And what has their happy ending to do with 5780?
Please be patient and ‘enjoy’ another story of disappointment that is shared in a book called Accidental Saints: Finding God in All the Wrong People. Nadia Bolz-Weber, its author, is the founding pastor at the House for All Sinners and Saints in Denver, Colorado. There, she describes a conversation she has with all new members:
"It’s my practice to welcome new people to the church by making sure they know that House for All Sinners and Saints will, at some point disappoint, let them down. That I will say or do something stupid and disappoint them. And then I encourage them to decide before that happens if they will stick around after that happens. If they leave, I tell them, they will miss the way that God’s grace comes in and fills the cracks left behind by our brokenness. And that’s too beautiful to miss."
Then Pastor Nadia describes a moment when she really let two of her congregants down. They met in her church and after years together, decided to get married. Of course, they wanted Pastor Nadia to officiate and booked her 18 months in advance. By accident, two weeks later, Pastor Nadia double-booked herself to speak in Australia. When she realized the conflict, she felt awful and tried hard to get out of the travel, even at personal expense. Nothing doing. She volunteered to get the couple another colleague. They were upset and really wanted her.
She felt absolutely terrible…until the couple sent her a text. “This is that time, isn’t it?” Pastor Nadia had no idea what they meant until she got the next text message: “When you do or say something stupid and disappoint us.” She woke up the next day to an email from them absolving her from doing the wedding that concluded. “We love you. And we forgive you.” Pastor Nadia read it and cried. She calls it the sting of grace, when you get love and forgiveness you don’t totally deserve but really, really need.
Shir Hashirim didn’t need to include a story of disappointment, but if it didn’t it wouldn’t have been true or authentic to every one of our relationships, and it wouldn’t depict real love. We disappoint, and we are disappointed. We reject and are rejected. We can and often do leave relationships just at that moment. But Shir Hashirim tells us that if we do that, we’ll miss out on the incredible love that comes from being in a relationship and going through those disappointments together. We’ll miss out on the kindness that is at the soul of forgiveness. For every soul puncture, there’s a dollop of hope and kindness that fills it.
Wouldn’t it be a gift if before we began any relationship – with a friend, a future life partner, an organization, a shul, a job, and even Hakadosh Barukh Hu – if we first said, “I am going to disappoint you. Will you stick around with me after that happens?”
So this year, when we clop our hearts and ask to be forgiven for the sin of “imutz ha-lev,” hardening our hearts, we’ll think of the way this year’s disappointments could have done us in or made us withdraw from life as we know it. We’ll feel grateful that we’re still here, that we have the capacity to make hundreds of mistakes and disappoint others who will, nevertheless, still love us anyway. That maybe God has disappointed us, and maybe in letting go of some of our own religious expectations, we’ve disappointed God. But we’re still in a loving relationship because we all mess up and are loved anyway. That’s what commitment is, as the immortal words of Hoshea remind us:
וְאֵרַשְׂתִּ֥יךְ לִ֖י לְעוֹלָ֑ם וְאֵרַשְׂתִּ֥יךְ לִי֙ בְּצֶ֣דֶק וּבְמִשְׁפָּ֔ט וּבְחֶ֖סֶד וּֽבְרַחֲמִֽים׃
וְאֵרַשְׂתִּ֥יךְ לִ֖י בֶּאֱמוּנָ֑ה וְיָדַ֖עַתְּ אֶת־ה'׃ (ס)
And I will espouse you forever: I will espouse you with righteousness and justice, And with goodness and mercy,
And I will espouse you with faithfulness; Then you shall be devoted to the LORD.
That kind of commitment only happens over a lifetime of failing and loving.
We know what the good years look like, and we call upon the joys of those years to help us transcend the disappointments, to soften our calloused hearts and help us look forward. And as we turn towards tomorrow and the year ahead, let us say louder than ever before in the “Bareikh Aleinu” passage of Shemoneh Esrei – וּבָרֵךְ שְׁנָתֵנוּ כַּשָּׁנִים הַטּובות.
Bless our year as You blessed the good years.