Yom Kippur: Our Marriage to God

The most memorable rock concert in my life was not when my mother climbed a tree with me on her back to see Janis Joplin, nor was it the first Kinks concert I saw on my own when I was a teenager. It wasn’t even the Elvis Costello show at the Royal Albert Hall in London where I almost fainted when Elvis brought out Van Morrison to sing with him. No, it was the small intimate gig with Billy Bragg, a British folk rocker, in a beer garden near San Diego that made the biggest mark on me, and it has everything to do with Yom Kippur.
Bragg stopped in the middle of the concert to address fans concerns over a lyric which bothered them. It goes something like, “I don’t want to change the world. I just want to find me a new girl.”
He said that he understands that on the surface the lyric sounds chauvinistic, but he wanted to explain his deeper intention. For Bragg, the intimate relationship between loving partners is the core of improving the world because in that relationship we learn about and experience love, trust, honor, respect, sympathy, empathy and personal growth. With these at the center of our lives, we cannot help but make the world a better place.

This summer, as I prepared myself to lead the Shabbat service on Tu B’Av, I learned that in the Talmud Rabbi Shimon ben Gamliel [said] there were no greater festivals for Israel than Tu B’Av and Yom Kippur. On these days the daughters of Jerusalem would go out... and dance in the vineyards. And what would they say? ‘Young man, raise your eyes and see which you select for yourself....’ (Talmud, Taanit 26b)
When I read this, my Billy Bragg memory jumped forward from the recesses of my mind. Of course, it would be unfair to expect the same egalitarian sensibilities from the Talmudic rabbis as we can expect from Billy Bragg in our time, but the messages are very similar. Bragg sees intimate partnership as the center of improving the world and so did the rabbis. This also explains why Tu B’Av is mentioned before Yom Kippur in the list of Israel’s greatest holidays because Yom Kippur and the 15th of Av are the respective betrothal and marriage dates of God and Israel. Yom Kippur, which comes first in the Jewish calendar, is the day on which the second set of tablets were given to Moses, marking the fulfillment of the covenant at Mount Sinai and the day of Israel's betrothal to God. Tu B’Av represents rebirth after the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem and can be seen as the consummation of this marriage.
To teach our children that the Jewish people are married to God is a beautiful framework for discussions about our rights and responsibilities as partners with God, but it is still a metaphor and, as such, it is open to misinterpretation. Marriage in contemporary society is constantly threatened by divorce, and we would hope not to impress upon our kids that they can divorce themselves from God, but marriage is a choice and that gives the chooser a sense of ownership which is key to feeling good about a relationship.
By using the marriage metaphor, we also level the playing field. God may be our king and ruler, but “[the Torah] is not in heaven” and we are the managing partners of the world. In this role, we have many rights and responsibilities, but we lose strict justice. As it says in the Talmud, “If you seek to have a world, strict justice cannot be exercised; and if you seek strict justice, there will be no world…You can have only one of the two. If you do not relent a little, the world will not endure. (Genesis Rabbah 39:6)” This is God’s way of telling us that the world is neither black nor white. It is gray and full of compromise. It also brings new light to Billy Bragg’s lyric, “I don’t want to change the world. I just want to find me a new girl.”
As we enter the New Year, 5769, let’s make all of our relationships full of love, trust, honor, respect, sympathy, empathy and personal growth so that we too can be God’s partners in repairing the world.