In the Plural: Communal Confession and Ethical Clarity

Ashamnu

Gordon Tucker, Vice Chancellor for Religious Life and Engagement

At least since the time of King Josiah in the 7th century BCE, Pesah was the great national holiday, when you renewed your membership in the Jewish people by participating in the Paschal sacrifice. In fact, the Talmud (Pesahim 64b) teaches the following:

Our Masters taught: Once King Agrippa wished to estimate the size of the Jewish population, so he directed the High Priest to see how many Paschal offerings were brought, and there were twice the number of those who left Egypt [i.e., 1.2 million], and there wasn’t a single sacrifice that served fewer than 10 people [i.e., the population must have exceeded 12 million people].

The numbers are no doubt exaggerated, but what is clear is that if you wanted a sense of how many Jews there were, this was the moment that gave you the most accurate total.

And yet, history somehow conspired to make Pesah into the private home holiday and the Days of Awe when the largest numbers of Jews come together. Indeed, with respect to renewing membership, it is precisely the time of year—in anticipation of Rosh Hashanah—that synagogues send their yearly dues bills.

There is, on the Days of Awe, a palpable need to be with others. You can sense it as people gather and are reassured that all is well, even as they notice and mourn the absence of those who are no longer present. You see it in the ways people express their seating preferences for the holidays. Whom they are surrounded by is significantly important to them.

Now the communal complexion of the Days of Awe is augmented by the collective plural used in the liturgy and especially in the confession in which we say Ashamnu (“We have sinned,” not “I have sinned”) and Al Het Shehatanu (“For the sin we have committed”). This is often cited with great support. There are two reasons for this:

1. We generally applaud the idea that each individual is taking responsibility for and to the community. This reminder that our individual failings are hardly the whole picture forces us to consider the ways in which we are complicit in larger systemic injustices. As Heschel memorably wrote, “In a free society, few are guilty, but all are responsible.”
2. In his collection “On Repentance,” Rabbi Joseph Soloveitchik commented on the upbeat melody of Ashamnu, which seemed out of step with the penitential mood of the confession. He felt that the individual as an individual is not assured of forgiveness unless and until the heart is broken and true inner repentance is achieved. But for that same individual as a member of the Jewish people, the very act of communal confession—of being willing to identify with the Jewish people as a whole—assures one, at least on the communal level, of complete reconciliation with God. Identify with the eternal covenant with the Jewish people, and you are part of Israel’s solidarity with its God.

As inspiring as this is, however, it is not entirely unproblematic, and I now raise two issues to consider and take to heart.

For all its healthy prompting of communal responsibility, there is a danger lurking in the plural voice of the confession, “We have sinned.” Let me make the problem vivid: Did you know that together, Derek Jeter and I have 3,465 major league hits? That statement is unassailably true, but of course, the truth is that all the hits are his. Now, in the same way that hiding behind the plural can allow us to claim some credit for things we had no part in, it can also allow us to evade responsibility for those things we actually do have a part in. “We’ve sinned, we’re guilty” allows us to say, “Yes, we have, but it’s really the other guy’s doing.” We should be careful not to submerge our responsibilities in the plural.

And then there’s the second issue we should not avoid. Soloveitchik’s beautiful and inspiring idea is that we are part of an eternal covenant, because of which we can expect—and even demand—reconciliation and renewal with God. This is a form of what is known in Jewish thought as the “Davidic Covenant,” the essential, unconditional commitment God made to David that no matter what he or any of his descendants might do, there would be temporary consequences but never an abrogation of the pact. Contrast this with the covenant at Sinai, of which we are reminded in the Torah reading just before the Days of Awe that violating it egregiously and repeatedly would bring with it an end to the relationship with God.

I love the upbeat nature of Yom Kippur and the major key of the Ashamnu as much as anyone, but we should consider this: there is a covenant that sets explicit and honest conditions for its validity and continuation, and thus forces us to confront our failings and the expected consequences. And there is another that assures us—as Psalm 89 does—that if David and his descendants do not live by God’s rules, they will suffer some punishment, but God’s steadfast love for them will never be abandoned. Which of these is more civilizing? Which is more likely to produce ethical responsibility?

And now a final point and a real concern: Soloveitchik’s beautiful assurance that connection with the Jewish people gives us participation in an unconditional relationship with God—was both inspiring and even necessary during the centuries when communal Israel had no real power of action. In those days, justice or injustice was largely done to it and not by it. But we are now in a time in which there is a Jewish state with vast power over others. There is thus cause for concern that the anxious soul-searching, confession, and need for repentance that we apply to the individual may not automatically be applied to the people and the nation.

These are some thoughts to accompany our confessions in the plural key.