Blessing for Torah Study
Baruch atah Adonai, Eloheinu melech ha-olam, asher kid’shanu b’mitzvotav v’tzivanu la'asok b’divrei Torah. Blessed are You, Adonai our God, Sovereign of all, who hallows us with mitzvot, charging us to engage with words of Torah.
Beginning with Our Own Torah
Think of a moment when you apologized or felt the need to apologize on behalf of someone else. Why did you feel this way? What prompted you to do so?
(21) Aaron shall lay both his hands upon the head of the live goat and confess over it all the iniquities and transgressions of the Israelites, whatever their sins, putting them on the head of the goat; and it shall be sent off to the wilderness through a designated*designated Meaning of Heb. ‘itti uncertain. agent.*agent I.e., another participant—aside from the high priest, who must remain in the sanctuary. Trad. “man.” See the Dictionary under ’ish; Agent.
This is an abbreviated confessional prayer that first appeared in the prayerbook of Amram Gaon in the 700s CE. It is used in Sephardi communities in daily, Selichot, and Yom Kippur prayers. In Ashkenazi communities, it is used on Selichot and Yom Kippur.
We have trespassed [against God and man, and we are devastated by our guilt]; We have betrayed [God and man, we have been ungrateful for the good done to us]; We have stolen; We have slandered. We have caused others to sin; We have caused others to commit sins for which they are called רְשָׁעִים, wicked; We have sinned with malicious intent; We have forcibly taken others' possessions even though we paid for them; We have added falsehood upon falsehood; We have joined with evil individuals or groups; We have given harmful advice; We have deceived; we have mocked; We have rebelled against God and His Torah; We have caused God to be angry with us; We have turned away from God's Torah; We have sinned deliberately; We have been negligent in our performance of the commandments; We have caused our friends grief; We have been stiff-necked, refusing to admit that our suffering is caused by our own sins. We have committed sins for which we are called רָשָׁע, [raising a hand to hit someone]. We have committed sins which are the result of moral corruption; We have committed sins which the Torah refers to as abominations; We have gone astray; We have led others astray.
The Book of Daniel was composed during the 100s BCE and set in the 500s BCE. In this part of the text, Daniel is anticipating the destruction of Jerusalem.
(5) We have sinned; we have gone astray; we have acted wickedly; we have been rebellious and have deviated from Your commandments and Your rules, (6) and have not obeyed Your servants the prophets who spoke in Your name to our kings, our officers, our fathers, and all the people of the land. (7) With You, O Lord, is the right, and the shame is on us to this very day, on the men of Judah and the inhabitants of Jerusalem, all Israel, near and far, in all the lands where You have banished them, for the trespass they committed against You. (8) The shame, O LORD, is on us, on our kings, our officers, and our fathers, because we have sinned against You. (9) To the Lord our God belong mercy and forgiveness, for we rebelled against Him, (10) and did not obey the LORD our God by following His teachings that He set before us through His servants the prophets. (11) All Israel has violated Your teaching and gone astray, disobeying You; so the curse and the oath written in the Teaching of Moses, the servant of God, have been poured down upon us, for we have sinned against Him.
"Our Sins? They're Not All Mine!" by Rabbi David Teutsch, PhD, We Have Sinned: Sin and Confession in Judaism - Ashamnu and Al Chet, ed. Lawrence Hoffman, pg. 134-138 (2012)
Jewish tradition holds that reconciliation with God must be preceded by reconciliation with other people. The month of Elul and the period from Rosh Hashanah to Yom Kippur are designated as a time to accomplish that task, which requires not only apology but also a concerted effort to repair the damage to others that has resulted from the transgressions. Yom Kippur focuses on the relationships between people and God. If the confession is the individual's effort to return to God, why does it repeatedly say "we" rather than "I"? There are several answers to this question, and they are not mutually exclusive.
Sometimes, sins are not simply between one person and another; they entail complicity across an entire community. A communal confession allows for the possibility that any single wrong may well have occurred in part because of invisible sins of silence when tochecha [rebuke] should have been offered.
Another function of communal confession is its emphatic statement of behaviors the community considers unacceptable. We can understand this as a general form of admonition, by which the community proclaims its expectations to its members. "We" affirm the standards of our community together.
"We Have Sinned: An interview with Rabbi Lawrence A. Hoffman," Reform Judaism Magazine (2013)
Why do we confess as a community to a manufactured list of misdeeds most of us have never committed?
These public confessions reflect the issue of sin as it impacts the body politic, the community, rather than just the individual. While we are expected to make our private confessions, coming to terms with God for our own sins, Judaism is not just for individuals as sole isolates, but for individuals as members of communities; it worries about the nature of the community in which we take our stand and which helps form us. It teaches that to assure a just society, all of us must be held at least partially accountable for one another—even if we did not personally commit a particular sin, we likely stood idly by when others committed it.
Then, too, the two confessions remind us that we may be metaphorically guilty of larger transgressions than we realize. We may never have committed murder, but we may have belittled another person to the point where he/she felt like dying.
אמר רבי יוסי בן דורמסקית סימן זה יהא בידך כל זמן שאתה מרחם על חבירך המקום מרחם (עליכם) [עליך] אברהם מפני (מה קנה) [שבקש] רחמים על אבימלך ונתפלל בעדו מיד נטל שכרו שנ' ויתפלל אברהם [אל האלקים] וירפא אלקים את אבימלך ואת אשתו (בראשית כ' י"ז) ומה שכר נטל שנפקדה אשתו וילדה לו בן שנאמר וה׳ פקד את שרה [כאשר אמר] ויעש ה׳ לשרה כאשר דבר (שם כ"א א):
This is a medieval collection of midrash which were composed in ~600–900 CE.
R’ Yose ben Dormaskit said: take this sign in your hand – so long as you are merciful upon your fellows, HaMakom (God) will be merciful upon you. As soon as Avraham prayed for mercy on behalf of Avimelech, he received his own reward, as it says “Abraham then prayed to God, and God healed Abimelech and his wife…” (Genesis 20:17) And what was the reward which he received? That his wife became pregnant and bore him a son, as it says “The LORD took note of Sarah as He had promised, and the LORD did for Sarah as He had spoken.” (Genesis 21:1)