Empty prayers for forgiveness
Yom Kippur, the most important day of the year to observant Jews, is an empty ritual to the majority of secular Jews.
By Rachel Neeman Sep.24, 2012 | 3:20 AM
The relatively recent trend of "selichot tours" in Jerusalem and Safed answers a need among many Israelis who see themselves as secular to connect to Jewish ritual and feel that they are better Jews as a result. A return to tradition, they call it. Once a year, they sign up for a nighttime walking tour with a professional guide during the days or weeks leading up to Yom Kippur. They peek into synagogues where the traditional selichot prayers are being said, view the crowds of worshipers at the Western Wall in Jerusalem and soak up the exotic atmosphere. Tourists in their own country.
This appropriation of the selichot tradition for the purposes of domestic tourism, sometimes with the addition of role-playing actors and recorded piyyutim (liturgical poems set to music ), is parodic, even perverse. Above all, it signifies apathy to the concept of selicha, forgiveness.
To truly connect to this concept, we should ask for forgiveness every single day: from the 18 Eritrean refugees we turned away at the Egyptian border; from Moshe Silman, who we abandoned to his fate; from Omar Abu Jariban, who we dumped at the roadside; from the refugees we lock up in detention camps; from Rachel Corrie; from the Palestinians we have been mistreating for decades. We should acknowledge our responsibility for these actions, protest against them and take action to insure that they never happen again.
But the selichot tour participants are engaged neither in forgiveness nor in making amends. Rather, they are engaged primarily in the realization of the "me culture." Its members, in addition to consuming designer labels and foreign travel in search of fulfillment, also feel a need to cushion their world with "meaning" - "meaning," that is, in the sense of a consumer good to be purchased, absorbed and eventually, inevitably, found wanting. Then Yom Kippur rolls around, and they find it lacking as well, an empty shell.
http://www.haaretz.com/opinion/empty-prayers-for-forgiveness.premium-1.466451
