In some ways, the High Holidays (and Yom Kippur in particular) are ‘artificial lines in the sand.’  Meaning, the intense internal work that we seek to do for our own lives, and the health of our community can be done at any time, but for the vast majority of us, it is not.  Life is busy.  Introspection is hard. So Judaism gives us a set period of time for this ‘project’ – the days leading up to Yom Kippur.  Although it is profoundly personal, we don’t do it alone, but rather as a ‘team’ with Jews everywhere charged towards this effort. One of the main components of Yom Kippur is to recognize who we have wronged in the past year, to try our best to correct the harm we have done, to internalize the regret, and to apologize.  Tradition holds our proverbial feet to the fire with the instruction that we need to be specific about the person, and our infraction, in order to have our apology ‘count’.  (Sorry, posting a general apology on Facebook to a faceless population absolutely does … [Read more...]