On Yom Kippur and Consequence Culture

On the eve of Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement, the congregation forms a Jewish beth din (court) and, among other things, declares that it is permitted to pray with sinners. This point never struck me as significant, try as Hebrew-school teachers might, until recently.

That’s because I’ve been thinking a lot* about what is the right way to treat someone who has done something wrong, especially if that wrong thing is harmful to others. It’s a topic that gets brought up a lot these days, whether discussing social-media “cancelling,” debating giving platforms to people with noxious views, or re-thinking the prison-industrial complex. Overall, I agree with many across all these issues that our chief concern should be to minimize harm.

That’s easy to say, of course; the harder part is figuring out the details. Harm to whom? How do we assess it? How do we balance competing harms?

The liturgy of Yom Kippur offers one answer: none of us is without sin, so none of us should obstruct the path for sinners to return to righteousness. Someone who does wrong is still part of the community, even if we might wish they weren’t. Their prayer is just as holy as someone else’s.

I’d be remiss if I didn’t note that similar approaches, historically put in place by people in power, can cause a lot of harm themselves. In their most thoughtless form, they force survivors who lack power to be courteous to abusers who possess it. The worst version of this approach can put the work of community harmony onto people who have been hurt without forcing the ones who hurt them to change their behaviour.

Likewise, most of us agree that the obligation to accept a sinner ends with the obligation to prevent them from causing further harm to others or to ourselves.

But what I think we often obscure in discussions about these topics is that different people might have different responsibilities toward those who have transgressed, depending on their own vocation and status. In the congregation, for example, the rabbi and other clergy have a stronger responsibility not to abandon even those who have committed the worst sins. They have the authority and standing to protect former or potential victims from ongoing hurt, but they also have the obligation to tend to the spiritual needs of all members of the community–and, one might argue, its worst members need them most.

Similarly, as an educator, although my first responsibility is to make sure that the vulnerable in my classroom feel secure, I also have an obligation to students who, for example, say something racist or ableist. My job gives me the responsibility to teach them to be better and offer an environment where they can grow into that better person.

In other words, my obligations as an instructor, or a rabbi’s obligations as a religious leader, or a politician’s obligations as a representative of government power, are about how the public as a whole treats someone who’s done harm, rather than the ethical obligations of a private individual. The public interest lies in strengthening the community and making sure there is a robust path to grow better than the worst things we’ve said and done, because such a process benefits the community as a whole. We’re better off integrating the repentant and reformed, both because, as human beings, they’re valuable in and of themselves and because the alternative isn’t that these people quietly disappear–it’s that they find the only path open to them is to repeat or worsen the transgression.

However, the other side of that obligation is that acting on behalf of the public tacitly (or sometimes explicitly) sets the tone for how the issue should be framed. More difficult, the public isn’t a coherent whole. Among them are people who have been harmed and need to protect themselves and people who’ve done harm and need to find a way to reintegrate with the community. They might, when considering different parts of their lives, be the same people!

Ideally, we’d be able to support everyone while setting boundaries: you are still part of the congregation, but you will increasingly lose access if you keep doing these things that harm others. You are still part of our community, but these privileges are off-limits to you while you consider what your role may be going forward.

In reality, this process is messy. We can’t give everyone what they want or deserve on the basis of being a human being. So where does that leave us?

First, of course, by taking each situation individually rather than trying to apply a blanket rule for every scenario. But, second, by distinguishing between our public and private ethical commitments.

On Yom Kippur, our public commitment is to permit a sinner to be part of the community seeking forgiveness from God and from each other. That doesn’t mean we have to be happy that they’re present or allow them to sit next to–or even within sight of–someone they’ve hurt. But it does mean we can’t deny their humanity.

For me, the distinction between public-private divide also works the other way: we can privately love someone who’s done wrong or harm (including ourselves!) provided we live up to our public obligation to justice and community safety. Feeling sad that our loved one must face the consequences of their actions isn’t wrong; supporting them in ways that don’t negate those consequences, such as helping them advocate for their rights within whatever justice system there is or expressing unconditional affection for them also isn’t wrong. Acting to prevent them from experiencing just consequences and starting the journey to repentance is. (One might even argue that acting that way does harm to the wrongdoer themselves, depriving them of the ability to re-integrate themselves into a moral public life.) Figuring out where to draw that line is easier to talk about theoretically than to apply in real life.

But because God is infallible, the Yom Kippur practice is telling us, it’s not our human privilege to make that decision for Them. Instead, we must trust that omnipotent and omniscient Divine Judgement will be fair and loving to all involved.

I wish that were enough for me, but as an agnostic and atheist, I believe that all we have is us fallible humans, who are always going to make mistakes. Still, the liturgical and ceremonial reminder that none of us has the moral standing to exclude others from communal repentance–and that doing so is not the universally ethical option–helps me to navigate the murky dilemmas of life.

* As in, I started writing this blog entry three Yom Kippurs ago and only have this level of semi-coherence now.