White: the color of Yom Kippur. White skies, white clothing, white pages in the siddur. And then, there are all those black
marks, the letters, that stain the pages so that they are really not so white. Like me...
I am not a perfect Jew, far from it. I do sin here and there, I speak slanderously about others. I've messed up time and time again...how is this Yom Kippur going to be different than the Yom
Kippurim in the past? How can I approach God face to face on Rosh Hashana and Yom Kippur pouring out my heart with repentance for my past when I know I will probably just repeat the same mistakes all
over again? The Lubavticher Rebbe beautifully expounds on the deeper meaning of Yom Kippur that serves to allay this anxiety.
The pivotal effort of Yom Kippur in the days of the Temple was the special service of the Kohein Gadol, the high priest. The service of the Kohein Gadol on Yom Kippur consisted of
two parts. While fulfilling the first, the Kohein Gadol wore "garments of gold." During the other part of the services he wore bigdei lavan--simple white linen garments to be worn
only once for that moment when he enters the Holy of Holies to burn incense on the altar.
Rabbi Yosef Yitzchak Schneerson, the sixth Lubavitcher Rebbe, once stated, "Only our physical bodies were cast into physical exile
and subjected to external authorities, but our souls were not driven into exile nor given over to foreign dominion." Like the Kohein Gadol, each Jew carries the task of performing all the
rituals himself without relying upon a friend. This ritual performed on Yom Kippur is that of teshuva, often translated as repentence, which comes from within the heart. In the individual's resolve
to change for the better, s/he is serving God wholeheartedly and creating a spiritual temple within oneself. Paradoxically, the spirituality that lives within each Jew is also subject to the
dimension of time and temporality--to the effects of the day of Yom Kippur. Thus, when Yom Kippur arrives, every Jew, the "Kohein Gadol in his own individual temple" performs the tasks assigned to
them.
Such labor consists of two parts that involve a change of his entire ritual garb: Wearing magnificent golden priestly garments that
radiates like the sun, for the rituals performed throughout the Temple. In contrast, when the High Priest approaches the Holy of Holies to perform the service there alone--a place that he
alone may enter--he wears only white linen garments. When Yom Kippur arrives and a Jew must enter the Holy of Holies s/he may worry: "How can I possibly enter into the innermost precincts when I am
devoid of the outer adornments of Torah and good deeds?"
Entrance into the Holy of Holies requires no garments of gold, no ornamentation or bright colors; all that is needed is pure white
clothing, a pure cleansed heart, and a pure mind. Every single Jew possesses this quality on the day before Yom Kippur when s/he chooses to cleanse oneself of all the sins and blemishes one
accumulated. One now starts a clean slate--white once more.
The lesson here is that we do not need to come in bright colors and gold, confident in our good deeds and in our knowledge of Torah. We do not need to be free of all sin. We are entering the Holy of
Holies and all we need is to approach God with a pure heart and a whole mind, with goals and with high hope for the year that lies ahead.
When the Temple was destroyed, only the physical elements of the monument, the stone and the gold and silver, were lost. However,
the spiritual Temple, within the soul of of each Jew, continues to exist and shall eternally remain in a state of indestructible wholeness. Jew and non-Jew alike are incapable of destroying this
inner spiritual edifice; all the more so, the Romans did not succeed in destroying the 'spiritual temple' two millennia ago. One wall stands and that wall is you.
Gmar chatima tova--may you be sealed in the Book of Life for a sweet and wonderful new year!
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