My other Yom Kippur tradition, as I've written about before, is to delineate specific ways that I have missed the mark, using the format of the viddui, or confessional, from our traditional liturgy. This year, as in 2021 and 2020, we asked you, our readers, to share what you're repenting for. Here is a selection of what you sent:
For the sin I committed by....
...reacting rather than responding. (Yehudit Main)
...ranting too much about what isn't, instead of rejoicing more often about what is. (Sheri Allen)
…allowing our caregiver fatigue to overwhelm us, failing to remember that our weariness and despair are far less than the suffering of those we love, who are helpless without us. (Sharon Goldblatt)
...hating Republicans in Congress. Detesting our former president. Can't stop. (Susan Kaplan)
...not taking life and my time seriously when I was young. (Donald Scharf)
…lying on the couch streaming TV shows all day instead of going outside and admiring blue skies with soft white clouds and majestic tree boughs and the sweet songs of birds. (Sheri Weisz)
…holding family grudges too long. (Ruth W. Messinger)
…mistrusting non-Jews owing to my parents’ Holocaust experiences. (Daniel Chilowicz)
...giving advice when I wanted to be helpful instead of listening. (Deborah Zeigler)
…being impatient with children and the elderly. (Scott K)
…regretting past financial errors and currently worrying about them. (Susan Dechter)
…creating/imagining hurts from people I care about. (Marsha Dollinger)
…talking when I should have been listening… always thinking the worst... not letting go of something I cannot control. (Myrna Schultz)
Myrna Schultz, I'm with you. "Talking when I should have been listening" seems to stay at the top of my list year after year. It's part of what I did wrong at that synagogue gathering. I butted in, first of all, in the middle of a conversation without considering the full context. And I projected my own experience rather than leading with empathy — working to hear and understand what my friend was actually saying rather than how it made me feel.
I talk when I should be listening in work meetings and at dinner tables. Sometimes I even do it in interviews. Like Deborah Zeigler, I am too quick to jump into problem-solver mode, when sometimes people just need to get it out and be heard. I mess up by asking too many questions in the rare moments when my teenage son opens up about something he's worried about. I delve into a long personal anecdote that diverts a conversation.
Here are some more things I'll be repenting for this Yom Kippur:
...multitasking during Zoom meetings.
...multitasking during breakfast with my daughter. And while watching TV with my family. And pretty much all the time.
...exercising less and eating more.
...letting too much time pass between phone calls or emails with some of my favorite people in the world. And my parents.
...getting distracted too easily.
...working on a small problem today rather than tackling a bigger one that will matter more tomorrow.
...not putting things away right after I use them.
...editing rather than just reading things my kids write, especially after they turn them in.
…publishing articles that are longer than they need to be, including — especially — under my own byline.
…sending texts and emails and invitations with typos.
…getting takeout when I could have cooked, or just foraged in the fridge.
…not having enough of a poker face or, as the husband likes to say, “orange cones” in my head to stop me from saying exactly what I think as I’m thinking it. (See: talking when I should be listening.)
…buying things I don’t need, regardless of whether they are on sale.
…not meeting my kids where they are.
…being impatient about change.
That last one is really a doozy. We’re in a transformative moment here at the Forward, as we are in so many corners of our Jewish communities and the world at large — anxious to innovate to meet the challenges and opportunities of today without ever losing the essence of who we are and what we do.
