In the early 1940s the Previous Lubavitcher Rebbe sent a rabbi to meet with a philanthropist in Chicago who hailed from a well known Russian Chassidic hamlet. American life had caused him to abandon traditional practice, and the rabbi was instructed to speak with him only about Judaism and not to solicit nor accept any donations.
Towards the end of their conversations the philanthropist pulled out his checkbook and asked, “Who should I write the check to?”
“No one,” replied the rabbi to the man’s surprise. “I did not come here for your money.”
“Then why did you come?” he asked incredulously.
The rabbi responded with the following analogy. The holiest object in Judaism today is a Torah scroll. Every letter must be written precisely as dictated by our 3,000-year-old tradition and even one missing or faded letter renders a scroll illegitimate. In Eastern Europe religious scribes traveled from town to town offering their services to check the community Torahs to ensure all the letters were still intact.
The Jewish nation is compared to a Torah scroll and every Jew is another letter. Even one “faded” Jew impacts the entire nation. “I am like a traveling scribe,” concluded the rabbi. “My goal today is to ensure your “letter” is intact through strengthening your connection to Torah study and Mitzvah observance.”
Upon hearing this analogy the Previous Rebbe made one correction. Letters in the Torah scroll are ink on parchment and when a letter goes missing it ceases to exist. Jews are better compared to letters engraved in the Two Tablets. Engraved letters can fade due to accumulated dust that hides them from view, but they are never truly lost. You just need to clear away the dust and the letter will be revealed in all its beauty.
In this week’s parsha we learn about the mitzvah of writing a Torah scroll. On the last day of Moshe’s earthly life, he wrote a scroll and gifted it to the Jewish nation as an eternal heritage and symbol of our unity. Here is how this all connects to the Shabbat between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur.
While Rosh Hashanah is called the Day of Judgement, forgiveness and atonement are absent from the Rosh Hashanah liturgy. There is almost no mention of misbehavior, sins and remorse. The Yom Kippur liturgy, on the other hand, is all about confession, repentance and seeking forgiveness and yet the day is considered even holier than Rosh Hashanah!
Both holidays emphasize Jewish unity, but on Rosh Hashanah we access a level of our Jewishness that transcends the details of our behavior. We appreciate that we ultimately stem from the same source and our actions can never change who we are.
On Yom Kippur we reach a level of unity that emphasizes how even while dealing with the muck of ignorance, apathy and assimilation, every single Jew remains essential. Our nation is incomplete if even one letter is “faded.” And the incomparable holiness of Yom Kippur gives us the power to clean away all the “accumulated dust” and ensure that every Jew is connected in a revealed way.