Drasha Yom Kippur Yizkor - 5773 Bend Down Low

One of my favorite places to visit in Israel is the holy city of Tzfat. Perched atop a mountain overlooking the lush Hula valley and the steep ravines that descend towards the Kineret the Sea of Galilee, Tzvat is mystical center of Israel.

They say that each of the 4 holy cities in Israel represent one of the elements:

Hebron- Earth

Tiberious- Water

Jerusalem- Fire

Tzfat- Air, and I can tell you that the air is perfect on that mountain.

The town is filled with small, beautiful synagogues that are each different in layout and artistic flavor. My favorite is the Ari Synagogue.

I can’t describe the feeling I get when I walk through the door of this ancient shul. It is a holy place.

The Ari Synagogue was built in the sixteenth century. The founders were Kabbalists, mostly followers of Rabbi Moshe Cordovero and they were joined in 1570 by Rabbi Isaac Luria. Known as the great AriZal, he was the founding father of modern kabbala.

His custom was to pray in the synagogue on the Eve of Sabbath, proceeding from there with his disciples to a nearby field to welcome the Sabbath. It is said that it was during these sessions that popular Shabbat melody, Lecha Dodi, was created.

During the 1948 War of Independence, there was fierce fighting around Tzfat.

The local Arabs turned on their Jewish neighbors and they were joined by strong forces from the British trained Jordanian Legion. The Jews were in big trouble. One day I’ll have to tell you the miraculous story of the Davidka and how the Jews of Tzfat were saved, but many miracles happened around Tzfat during that war. One took place in the Ari synagogue:

One day during the war, the synagogue was packed with worshippers seeking shelter from the battles raging around the city. Little did they know, but as they were saying aleinu, a mortar shell was about to fall and explode just outside the shul.

Va’anachnu Korim! Everyone bowed down. The mortar shell hit and the shrapnel tore through the synagogue, flying right over the heads of the bent worshippers and embedding itself into the base of the bema.

You can still see the hole in the bema where the shrapnel hit. Many people put notes in the hole as they do at the Western wall. Miraculously, no one was hurt. They were saved by bowing.

Saved by bowing…

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Drasha Yom Kippur Yizkor - 5773 Bend Down Low

2.

Bowing is one of the fascinating and often overlooked ritual aspects of our religion. Did you know that there are many types of Jewish bowing!

The most simple is a bend at the waist- that is why an archery bow is called a bow, it looks like a person who is bowing. Like in Modim.

A little more complicated is the bend of the knees and then the bend of the waist. This we encounter during Aleinu and the silent meditation.

Those are the bows we are most familiar with, but it barely scrapes the surface when it comes to the tradition of Jewish bowing.

There is one bow, mentioned in the Talmud, called a kidah. They said that only Moshe was able to do it properly. Only the head, two fingers, and two toes could touch the ground. It’s like Jewish Yoga. Downward facing OY!

In the days of old, when the temple still stood in Jerusalem, our ancestors would bow before God in more intense ways than we bow today. First, they would fall to their knees. Then they would bend their heads to the ground. Eventually they would fully prostrate themselves before God, lying flat on the ground.

One of the famous miracles that occurred in the Temple had to do with this bowing. You may think we have a lot of people in shul today. Does everyone here have enough leg room?

On Yom Kippur the Temple was packed. Hundreds of thousands of Jews together- it was standing room only as the temple courtyard was completely full. L’Havdil, think Times Square on New Year’s Eve except with a lot more kvetching and with the High Priest instead of Lady Gaga. L’havdil…terrible comparison, Al Chet…

During the service, the Kohain Gadol- the high priest would call out the name of God as he blessed the people. As God’s holy name left the mouth of the Kohain Gadol, every Jew who was standing and listening hit the deck. First they dropped to their knees and then stretched into a full prostration. Miraculously, the temple courtyard that was packed when everyone was standing, somehow stretched out so that everyone had enough room to bow. Let’s just say everyone was very friendly with their neighbors.

This part of the Yom Kippur experience was so vivid and important to the rabbi’s who composed the Yom Kippur prayers, that after the Temple was destroyed in 70AD, they attempted to reenact the experience every year during the Yom Kippur davening. We play the part of our ancestors, gathered together in the courtyard. The chazzon chanting the story plays the role of the High Priest. The rabbi…well, I don’t know what the rabbi is for. Who said that?!!!

Soon we will be taking part in this yearly reenactment. In the coming Musaf service, we will read the entire story of the Temple Service on Yom Kippur. The climax of the reenactment is when we retell how everyone bowed to the ground when God’s holy name was called out.

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Drasha Yom Kippur Yizkor - 5773 Bend Down Low

In traditional synagogues around the world, when the Chazzon says the words, “Va’anachnu Korim- and the people bowed”, everyone recreates the Temple scene and falls to the floor. It is the prevailing and correct custom.

I can tell you that bowing to the ground is a powerful prayer experience. For that moment, your prayer ceases to be intellectually or even emotionally driven. For the moment you bow, it is your entire self that is praying to God. It can stir up the soul of even the most jaded and uninterested High Holiday veteran. For those who have a difficult time “feeling” the spirituality of the High Holiday service, bowing is a great place to start.

3.

So why don’t we bow here at MMAE?

How did the custom for much of American Jewry become that just the rabbi and the chazzon bow to the ground and prostrate?

I’ll be honest, I don’t know. Perhaps it didn’t fit with the sense of decorum that was the desire of 19th century synagogue leadership. There was a desire to make our prayers and our synagogues less eastern looking and more like our Protestant neighbors. Thus pews were introduced- something you never saw in synagogues prior to the 1800’s. In the shteible, the synagogues of Eastern Europe, you had a chair and a shtender. You owned the chair and the shtender. If you didn’t like the rabbi or the shul anymore, you didn’t just move yourself, you would physically take your chair with you.

Perhaps in the desire for conformity, bowing was frowned upon as something foreign, strange, and backward.

Maybe there were other reasons as well that the traditional bowing of Yom Kippur became passé. I can think of practical reasons. If everyone here tried bowing to the ground, life alert would have a system overload.

When the rabbi drops to the ground, two men are designated to help him back up to his feet. All the fasting and praying could make it too difficult for the poor rabbi to get up on his own.

That’s what happens when a rabbi hasn’t eaten a square meal in 30 minutes!!

For everyone here who is physically able and spiritually adventurous, I would encourage you to try the full bow this year. It happens a few times and I will let you know when. You may want to go into the aisle if you need more room.

What’s the worst that can happen? You get to stretch a little bit? You get stuck on the ground and create a scene? Either way, no big deal.

If you are not physically able to bow to the ground, try to picture yourself in your mind bowing to the ground. I’ve tried it and it has almost the same effect.

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Drasha Yom Kippur Yizkor - 5773 Bend Down Low

If all we get out of this speech is that more of our congregation bows properly on Yom Kippur, I would say “Dayenu”. But that’s not it… We haven’t even begun to touch on why bowing is important. What is its purpose?

4.

Added onto the question of: Why do we bow? Is the question of: why has the more serious form of bowing survived only for the High Holidays? Why don’t we drop to the ground every time we say aleinu?

The simple answer is that bowing is intrinsically tied to the High Holidays.

Bowing is the primary form of asking for forgiveness from God.

There are many examples of this but the most important comes from our greatest teacher and prophet: Moses.

The Israelites had just received the Revelation and Ten Commandments at Mount Sinai. Moses is coming down the mountain and what does he see? The people have rebelled against God and made an idol- a Golden Calf.

God wants to destroy the people, Moses pleads, they are spared. But are they forgiven?

God tells Moshe to proceed to the land, he will send an angel. Are they forgiven?

Moshe was tough…he told God no way, Like I say to Lila, I’m going to count to 5… Moses begs Hashem, please; reveal your essence to me. I want to experience the glory of God. Finally there comes the moment of forgiveness.

It is these few lines of the Torah (Exodus 34:5-10) that are the bedrock, the foundation of the holiday we call Yom Kippur. I’ll read:

“And the Lord descended in the cloud and stood with him there, and God called out with the name of the Lord. And the Lord passed before him and proclaimed: Lord, Lord, benevolent God, Who is compassionate and gracious, slow to anger and abundant in loving kindness and truth, preserving loving kindness for thousands, forgiving iniquity and rebellion and sin. And Moses hastened, bowed his head to the ground and prostrated himself.”

God calls out the name of God to Moshe, and what does Moshe do? He bows to the ground.

When our ancestors bowed in the Temple, it wasn’t simply a reaction to hearing God’s name. They weren’t crazies who dropped to the floor anytime someone said “God”. When everyone in the Temple bowed, it was a choreographed part of the service. Perhaps, I venture to say that it was the most important part of the service. More important even, than the calling out of the name of God, was the moment when every Jew bowed to the ground in pure devotion to Hashem. It was their own reenactment- the reenactment of Moses hearing God’s name and falling to the ground in that great moment of forgiveness. The entire people bowing to the ground in the Temple was the exact moment of kaparah- of being forgiven and renewed each Yom Kippur.

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Drasha Yom Kippur Yizkor - 5773 Bend Down Low

So let me ask you a simple question.

What day do you think it was when Moses encountered Hashem?

Come on, which day did Moses win full forgiveness for our people from God and return to us with the second set of tablets. What day could it be other than the very first Yom Kippur in the history of our people?

As Moses bows he proclaims:

O Lord, let the Lord go now in our midst [even] if they are a stiff necked people, and You shall forgive our iniquity and our sin and thus secure us as Your possession."

And God responds:

"Behold! I hereby make a covenant. Before of all your people, I will create such miracles that have never appeared upon all the earth and among all the nations. And all of the people with you shall witness the awe-inspiring deeds of God that I shall preform.”

Are they forgiven now??

5.

So now we know why we bow. It is the most ancient, most traditional path to complete the cycle of repentance- The last step of which is being forgiven and having complete atonement.

The big question is: How does bowing bring forgiveness? What does bowing represent? What does it do to us?

To answer that I want to begin by quoting to you a few lines of a song I like that’s sung by Bob Marley. It’s a song about how to improve, to fix a broken relationship; about how to find forgiveness and start over. It has a very appropriate title for this dvar Torah. It’s called “Bend Down Low”:

All you've got to do Bend down low Let me tell you what I know

You keep on knockin', but you can't come in I get to understand you been livin' in sin But if you love me, woman, walk right in

Just Bend down low

Sometimes, we might think that we’ve been so distant or so sinful, whatever that may mean, and we feel that there’s no way for us to find a path back to God.

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Drasha Yom Kippur Yizkor - 5773 Bend Down Low

But the truth is, just like the song, God is not keeping us out, God wants us to walk right in. It’s us keeping ourselves out of the house of God. Hashem is waiting. To come back to God, all you got to do is “Bend Down Low”. We have to make room for God by getting rid of some of our ego.

It reminds me of a great story told about the Kutzker Rebbe. He asked his young students, kinderlach, where is God? The smart students answered back, of course Rebbe, God is everywhere. But the Kotzker Rebbe replied, “No…God is only where you let him in.”

God’s not keeping us out. We are keeping God out. With our big egos, there is no room in our spiritual house to share with God. How can we make more room? Just as Bob Marley said, “Bend down low”.

This is the first purpose of bowing. I guarantee you that it is impossible to feel like you are Gods the gift to the world, the center of all existence when you are lying flat on the floor.

When you are bowing, your body is telling your mind, “wow, there are a lot more important things in the world than my own narcissistic bubble.”

This is why Rashi, the great medieval commentator writes that the greater someone’s ego, the more they must bow and humble themselves before God. If you feel you are someone who is exceedingly humble and perfect with no need to bow, you probably should be bowing more than anyone.

6.

You might be thinking to yourself something like this: “Great, the rabbi wants me to completely give up who I am. If I lose some of my ego, I’ll be selfless. That sounds horrible. I don’t want to be selfless! I like myself, even with my flaws”

Here’s the thing, bowing is not a nullification of the ego. It is a sublimation of the ego. You are not losing yourself, you are changing yourself- you are channeling your ego into something more pure. The truth is, sublimating your ego is the most selfish thing you can do- Selfish in the good sense of the word- as in doing something for the self.

For we are not our desire’s, our material desires represent the lowest form of our being. It is the lowest voice that tells us what we think we need but upon further introspection realize it’s not what we need at all. I need that brownie now. I need that expensive car. I need everyone to agree with me. I need attention. I need to sleep in.

I want to tell you a secret. I struggle with all of these too; All of these and more. And I’ve learned something, and I think this is important: You can’t fight these urges. You’ll never win or change. You can’t fight your ego with your ego. In the end your wave of egotistical desires will wash away any fight you present.

So then, what to do? Give up? Wait till Yom Kippur every year to repent and then continue on the same old path?

I’ll tell you about the other way. But first I want you to close your eyes.

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Drasha Yom Kippur Yizkor - 5773 Bend Down Low

Ok, good.

Picture yourself at the beach. It’s a warm summer day in Rehoboth and you’re out in the ocean jumping the waves. As they roll in, you gently bob over the top. You see another wave coming a little bigger and you jump up and let the wave lift you gently and put you back down. You feel wonderful as the waves come and go, but suddenly you see a big wave coming.

As it comes in towering 5 feet about your head, it looks like it might break apart at any moment.

What do you do? Of course, you tuck your head and go right under it, all of its power and fury rushing above your head as you float silently and peaceful below.

This is bowing…this is what it means to bend down low.

We are not saying, “I am strong and worthy, God! I can hold my own in the game of life”. We are letting go and saying, not just saying but realizing, in fact symbolizing with the very posture of our bodies, “God, I am completely in your hands”. It is a moment of clarity when we just let go.

The Talmud Yerushalmi gives a source text for the ritual of bowing.

It quotes King David in Psalm 35. “Kol Atzmosai Ta’amorna- Adonai mi Kamocha- All my bones exclaim- Oh God, who is like you”.

It is exactly the moment I’m talking about. The moment when we realize that our deepest self is not about ourselves at all but about the Godliness within. It’s my whole body, yea, even my dancing bones that call out in full surrender- My God! There is nothing but you. It is this realization that makes us bow to the ground.

Bowing is the source of forgiveness because the great wave of judgement passes right over our heads. Judgement can only apply to the egotistical. When we bow and proclaim God’s oneness, all of our being is in complete service of God. There is no longer an ego to judge.

This is the meaning of the prayer we say each morning: Boruch atta Hashem, Zokef Kefufim- Blessed are you oh Lord who straightens the bent. We must be bent in order to be straightened.

This is the meaning of Psalm 147 that calls God: HaRofeh L’Shvurai Lev- the healer of the broken hearted. We must be broken in order to be healed.

If we want God to save us, to redeem us, to atone for us, and to forgive us this holy day, we must bend down low.

May we have the blessing this year to realize that God is not distant, but rather, God is with us all the time…indeed, God is exactly where we let him in.

Good Yuntif!!

Rabbi Yerachmiel Shapiro

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