Not-knowing and Sharing, Kol Nidrei sermon by Rabbi Sandra Kviat

Do you know what night it is tonight?

I know, that you know, that it’s Kol Nidrei, the start of Yom Kippur; but it's also an anniversary. According to the rabbis it's actually the day that Moses came down with the two tablets…not the first set though, as they were destroyed during the Golden Calf incident during the long days of summer, supposedly on Tisha B’av. That first set was purely God’s work, but this second one, the one that we have carried with us, in our tradition, is the set that was a collaboration between Moses and God. According to the rabbis it was finished and delivered to the people on Yom Kippur[1].

It's a short midrash[2], a rabbinic story that tries to explain oddities and gaps in the Torah text, or what we’ve referred to before as rabbinic fan fiction. Here the rabbis were discussing a very small detail of the text relating to how the tablets were held, and in their conversation they created a beautiful image; as the tablets were six handbreadths wide, God’s hands took up one third, Moses’ hands also took up one third, and the last one third was a shared space between them. If you can imagine it, it would be a bit like a Jewish spiritual Venn-diagram.

The most touching part of this image, is the ‘two handbreadths in the middle’, that liminal, creative shared space that is neither God’s nor Moses’ but “the dynamic space of encounter between the human and the Divine and of interpretation and creativity” as Rabbi Dalia Marx has written about it[3]. There's something deeply fascinating about the image of God holding on to the other end of the tablets. What happens to our understanding of prayer and our tradition if we don't envision it as all in God’s hands, but in ours too? If what we do and say is part of the collaborative space between us and God?

But then the midrash continues with a struggle or a tug of war between God and Moses, one side pulling on the tablets, and the other responding pulling back. I think it is a struggle that we can recognise, for we struggle with the concept of God and with the prayers as well. For some the whole idea of a God, in whatever shape or form they imagine God, is too implausible, and just does not fit their life experience nor the world around them. For others the difficulty lies in the prayers themselves that are too full of certainties and demands. For most modern people, prayers and God feel like a tug of war between reason and spirituality.

And yet, perhaps it does not have to be this way. I want to caveat what I am about to say, with the understanding that I value science, and the scientific method, reliable facts, and everything that comes with it. Judaism found a way to reconcile religion with science more than 800 years ago. We are not afraid of science, nor try to deny it, nor think that the big bang, or dinosaurs or all of that is somehow wrong or that knowledge of this undermines Judaism. There’s a reason why so many Jews have become scientists.

What I want to highlight is something that was made fascinatingly clear in a recent radio series about the history of ignorance, by Rory Stewart. He pointed out just how much we in the Western world prize knowledge. Something we have done for at least the past 400 years, and in many cases rightly so, as it has vastly improved our lives. However, the problem is perhaps in the resulting negative perception of ‘ignorance’. Seeing ignorance as dangerous. As Stewart says;

“But ignorance is inseparable from what we know. Knowledge can distract us, mislead us and endanger us. While ignorance is often the most fundamental insight about our human condition. Ignorance is not simply the opposite of knowledge, but a positive force with its own momentum that can give meaning to our lives. It drives scientific discovery, fosters creativity and can be psychologically helpful.” Seeking to make a radical case for embracing the concept of ignorance; he wants to “encourage a way of ‘knowing’, in which knowledge and ignorance can exist in relationship with each other[4]”.

It’s such a loaded word now that in our society to be called ignorant has become a way of dismissing others and can be considered an insult.  Yet as Stewart shows “a greater awareness and appreciation of ignorance can help us become more clear-thinking, humble, empathetic and wise”.

To not know something is a fundamental part of Judaism, and I think is why we don’t tend to dabble much in theology or ‘God-knowledge’. As Maimonides said over 800 years ago, all we can truthfully say about God is that ‘God is not…’. And even that approach can be a stretch, allowing us to say something about which fundamentally we cannot know anything about.

I've always found it spiritually refreshing to know that the most sacred name we have for God, the yud hey vav hey, the four letter word that we pronounce as Adonai, does not have any vowels, and therefore is the only word that we are clear that we do not know nor should know how to pronounce. At the core of our tradition lies the ‘ineffable’ and fundamental acceptance of ‘not knowing’.

I think there's a deep act of humility and expression of wisdom in this ‘un-knowledge’. We cannot know nor understand the Divine, we cannot pronounce certainties (as other faiths do). We know that we do not know. And in that not-knowing we find a form of religious and spiritual freedom.

It can be hard to have to accept that we cannot know, and yet I think it is freeing, not just in relation to the Divine, but also in relation to prayers. For prayers are not newspapers, or encyclopaedias; they are not meant to reflect a scientific or literal description of the world. Our prayers are far more akin to poetry. They are descriptions of the world, our society, our responsibility, our roles, our longing; using language that tries to hold us through our fundamental ‘un-knowing’.

Prayers are there to make us think, feel, sometimes educate us or open our eyes. Sometimes they are there to comfort us, other times to rile us up. Sometimes we recognise ourselves in the words, at other times they help us see and understand others. Prayers can be uplifting. Sometimes the ancient words can say what we were not able to formulate by ourselves. Sometimes our prayers are just a scaffold or structure that we need to hold us when we are in mourning or at a loss for words.  Sometimes they are like the diving board, with a word or phrase suddenly resonating and opening a thought pattern or just the emotional space to engage with feelings we hadn’t previously been able to access.

We all understand the prayers that are used in rituals: who does not love a baby blessing, welcoming in a tiny new soul to our community.  Or the moment a nervous Bnei Mitzvah student reads their Torah portion, while the whole family holds their breath until the young person finally looks up in equal measures of pride and relief. Or the look of the newlyweds under the chuppah, with their expressions of joy and hope, and that slight sense of giddiness radiating from them?  Or the most profound ritual of all, when we gather for a funeral or a shiva, standing alongside the mourners, together by the graveside, or crammed into living rooms to share tears and laughter as the loved person is remembered.

In these special moments we can suddenly feel ancient words become a hope, joy, balm or comfort; as the scaffold for our feelings or a light helping us to chart a course through difficult times.  
So how are you feeling about the many prayers we have already read tonight? Or the prayers that are yet to come over this long day of reflection and renewal? How will you find meaning in them, make them relevant, despite their language, and certainties, and demands?

As Rabbi Zalman Schachter Shlomi, an amazing teacher drawing from chassidism and the 1960s spiritual awakening, would counsel:

Another way to approach prayers and the idea of God is to think of them as outlines. To see the siddur, our prayer book, as like a colouring book, where each prayer represents an outline, each waiting for us to begin filling the image in with life, background and context.[5]

Perhaps see our prayers as a mindfulness drawing book, with those intricate images to which we can add the colour, depth and shading. Imagine if each time you engaged in prayer, you could add colour to your prayer book? Adding shade and life into the ancient words, making them your own? For that is what we do as we engage in prayer.

In the midrash about God and Moses holding on to the two tablets, it says the rabbis had different views of what then happens. With one seeing a struggle, a tug-of-war, between God and Moses; while another focuses on how they were holding the tablets aloft together.  Yet another suggests that as God lets go, the words fly off; while a fourth suggests when God let go the tablets suddenly become too heavy for Moses to hold on his own. Our midrash, as with our prayers, is rich with discussion and ideas seeking to use story or poetry to create meaning.

Our tradition, and our prayers are a shared space, between us and God, between us and each other. Between me and you. Our different voices bring colour and layers of meaning. All of us are holding at least a handbreadth, carrying our tradition together; with both reason and ‘un-knowing’, alongside our prayers, helping us to hold aloft the tablets.

We know that these days of awe matter, that the time and space we give to ourselves, sitting next to each other for hours upon hours, are different to any other time else in our lives. We might have had a glimpse of something else, or perhaps it is just the feeling we get after the High Holy days that tells us something important has happened.  We suspend the critical thoughts, the doubts, and let the prayers roll. For we know that there's more to what we are doing that can be explained.

So when the words of our prayers ask us to imagine the Books of Life and Death, and the one lying open in between, as they await God’s inscription of our name. Or when we imagine that the Gates of Prayer are slowly closing and we rush to send just a few more promises to God to help nudge us towards the Book of Life. In all these words upon words upon words of Yom Kippur; through our prayers we are holding on to the ultimate act of ‘un-knowing’; that what is beyond our comprehension is unknowable, that what lies in store for the year to come and the years beyond that, is ultimately unknowable. And in this world of ignorance and uncertainty, we seek the shelter of these prayers.

And at such a time we remind ourselves of the symbolic or real colouring pens in our hands and our voices. As we engage with the prayers we also fill in the images with colour, the colours of our lives and shade of our fears. Each of us, like Moses, standing here holding our two handbreaths of our tradition, struggling with God or working in partnership, while God holds God’s own two handbreaths of that tradition. And together may we meet and share the handbreadths in the middle.

Gmar chatima tova - may we all be inscribed for a good and colourful life.