September 22, 2026|י"א תשרי ה' אלפים תשפ"ז Where Do We Stand? By Rabbi Jonathan Muskat

Yom Kippur's greatest strength may also be its greatest danger.

We have done this before.

We know the prayers.

We know the melodies.

We know where we are going.

We know what comes next.

There is something powerful about doing the same thing every Yom Kippur.

Something is comforting about hearing the same Kol Nidrei melody we have heard for years. The same Unetaneh Tokef melody. Sitting in the same seat, next to the same people, seeing the same faces year after year.

There is something deeply reassuring about that kind of continuity.

I remember several years ago when Sondra Gottesman lived in our community and came to shul during the Yamim Noraim. Sondra was a beautiful and deeply focused davener. A group of women made a point of sitting near her. They wanted to be together, in the same place, maintaining a connection that had become meaningful to them over the years.

That is the power of ritual.

We repeat these things because they connect us to something larger than ourselves: our families, our community, and generations that came before us.

But there is also a danger.

Sometimes what is familiar becomes invisible.

We hear the melody, but stop hearing the words.

We open the same machzor, say the same prayers, and follow the same rituals, but something deeply meaningful can slowly become routine.

And that raises a fundamental question for Yom Kippur:

Where do we stand in our relationship with Hashem?

Something unique about the Judaism most of us inherited.

We were born into it.

We inherited our Jewish identity, our Torah, our traditions, our melodies, our community.

That is an extraordinary gift.

But it comes with a paradox:

What we inherit can become what we take for granted.

The Torah itself describes our relationship with Torah as an inheritance:

Torah tzivah lanu Moshe morashah kehillat Yaakov.

“The Torah that Moshe commanded us is a morashah, an inheritance of the congregation of Yaakov.”

We did not have to discover Torah.

It was given to us.

But an inheritance can be yours without ever becoming truly your own.

And perhaps Yom Kippur gives us a fascinating way to think about that.

When the Torah describes who must observe the Yom Kippur ritual, it says:

ha'ezrach v'hager hagar b'tochechem.

“The native-born and the ger who dwells among you.”

Why specifically mention both?

The Ktav V'hakabbalah, in explaining the word ezrach, connects it to being rooted in one's native place.

The ezrach is rooted.

The ger arrives and establishes himself.

The distinction is not about who is more Jewish. It is about how one comes to belong.

The ezrach is rooted. The ger enters consciously.

We come to Yom Kippur as ezrachim.

We have roots.

We have been here before.

And that is beautiful.

But perhaps on Yom Kippur we also need something of the ger.

Not because the ger is somehow more committed than the ezrach, but because the ger represents something we can all recover:

the experience of entering consciously.

The ger says:

I want this.

I am choosing this.

And perhaps Yom Kippur asks the ezrach to recover that intentionality.

Not to abandon our roots, but to look again at what we have inherited and recognize its value.

There is a fascinating custom on Erev Yom Kippur that brings this idea into focus: the custom for men to immerse in the mikvah.

Why do we engage in this practice?

Is immersion in the mikvah an act of purification?

The Darkei Moshe explains that the immersion is not necessarily about purification from impurity. Rather:

mishum d'havi k'ger hamitga'yer d'tzrich tevilah.

It is like a ger who immerses when entering Judaism.

Of course, we are not becoming converts.

But perhaps the symbolism is worth thinking about.

The ger enters Judaism intentionally.

Perhaps the mikvah reminds us to enter Yom Kippur with that same intentionality:

I am here because I want to be here.

I am standing before Hashem.

I am renewing this relationship.

And that becomes even more meaningful when we remember that Yom Kippur is associated with the second Luchot.

After the sin of the Golden Calf, the Torah had already been given.

The covenant already existed.

But the relationship had been damaged.

And it had to be repaired.

Moshe spent many days and nights pleading with Hashem. He prayed for forgiveness and fought to restore the relationship. According to Chazal, he descended with the second Luchot on Yom Kippur.

The covenant had already been established.

But it needed to be renewed.

And perhaps that is what Yom Kippur asks of us.

We inherited the covenant. We inherited the Torah. We inherited the rituals. But the relationship cannot simply be inherited. It has to be lived.

The question is not simply whether we have Torah.

Not simply whether we are Jewish.

But whether we are still present in the relationship.

We can know the prayers without praying.

We can know the melodies without listening.

We can come to shul without really standing before Hashem.

And I was thinking about this recently because just yesterday, or perhaps the day before, Rom Braslavski, who was held hostage in Gaza after October 7, visited the Kotel and posted a deeply personal prayer to Hashem on Facebook.

He spoke about the moments in captivity when he broke down, when he cried, when he struggled.

But then he wrote something incredibly powerful:

Tamid yadati she'atah lo titen li lehash'er b'Azah. Hargash'ti otcha iti b'Azah yom yom, sha'ah sha'ah.

“I always knew that You would not let me remain in Gaza. I felt You with me in Gaza, day after day, hour after hour.”

Think about those words.

Day after day.

Hour after hour.

Rom was not simply performing a ritual at the Kotel.

He was standing in a relationship.

He was speaking to Someone.

He was thanking Someone.

He was telling Hashem what he had experienced.

And that helps us understand what it means to approach Yom Kippur differently.

We don't need a new ritual.

We don't need a new melody.

We don't even necessarily need new words.

We need to experience the familiar differently.

When we say:

Ashamnu, bagadnu

Are we simply reciting words that have been in our machzor for generations?

Or are we speaking to Someone?

When we say:

Selach lanu, mechal lanu, kaper lanu

Are we just moving through the pages?

Or are we actually asking Hashem to forgive us?

When we say:

Avinu Malkeinu

Do we experience those words?

Our Father. Our King.

Rom's words remind us what it means to experience that relationship as real.

He said that even in captivity, he knew that Hashem was with him.

Every day. Every hour.

And perhaps we don't need to experience captivity to rediscover that awareness.

We can rediscover it right here.

In this room.

On this Yom Kippur.

We can stand here and remember that we are standing before Hashem.

So tonight and tomorrow, don't just hear the niggunim of our chazzan as melodies you have heard every year.

Listen to the words.

When we say Ashamnu, bagadnu, don't let them remain words in a machzor.

Say them to Hashem.

When we say Selach lanu, don't just turn the page.

Ask Hashem to forgive you.

When we say Avinu Malkeinu, remember Who we are speaking to.

And perhaps ask yourself one question:

What have I stopped noticing?

What part of my Judaism has become so familiar that I no longer really experience it?

Maybe it is a prayer.

Maybe it is Torah.

Maybe it is a halacha.

Maybe it is my relationship with Hashem.

Whatever it is, look at it again.

We need the ezrach: the roots, the continuity, the inheritance that connect us to generations before us.

But we also need the ger: the intentionality to look at what we inherited and say,

I choose this.

Because we can inherit the covenant.

But the relationship has to be lived.

So where do we stand?

With the roots of the ezrach.

With the intentionality of the ger.

And before Hashem.

Not simply because this is what we have always done.

But because today, we choose to stand here.