My High Holy Days Reflection in OnlySky.
Seeking forgiveness, and granting it, makes us better people.
26 Sep 2025
One advantage that religious life has over non-religious life is a mechanism, a kind of technology, for confession, repentance, forgiveness and reconciliation. People, even religious people, forget how radical this idea can be.
In the Bible, Paul writes plainly that “we”—that is, everybody, including those who are baptized—are enemies of God. He has no higher opinion of himself than he has of everybody else: “I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do,” he writes (Romans 7:15).
We may well point out that religious people, by and large, don’t live up to the teachings of their religions. But, the religions generally expect and deal with that as well.
Technology of repentance
Every year at the season of the Jewish High Holy Days, beginning this year on September 22, I feel the absence of my ancestral Judaism. I don’t regret my decision to leave—I could not sit there and listen to mathematicians and scientists talk about Iron Age myths as if they were history, nor a liturgy that is infused with talk of a personal being as God—but I greatly miss that technology of repentance. I don’t have anything to replace it.
Yet I’m better off than my younger secular friends. At least I’ve had years of religious practice. The hole in my life has the shape of the High Holy Days. My friends don’t even know that they are enemies of everything high and holy. They don’t know that their hidden depravity is no secret. They probably suffer with their everyday betrayals and life-long weaknesses and think they are unique. Short of psychotherapy, which is frankly not as good as religion for basically healthy people, we don’t even have a way of talking about what bad people we are.
Every time I hear about the vices of people in public life whom I admire, I think about King David, who was an adulterer and murderer. It helps keep things in perspective.
For those who don’t know, the High Holy Days are comprised of the New Year celebration, Rosh Hashana—literally, the head of the year; Yom Kippur—the Day of Atonement; and the ten days in between, which are sometimes referred to as the Days of Awe. This entire period is supposed to be one of intense self-reflection, during which people are to consider the life choices we have made, the mess we have made of our lives and the loved ones we have disappointed. And the real key to all this is that we will be forgiven if we genuinely repent and seek to be better people.
When is the last time a non-religious person had an opportunity like that?
Weaponizing forgiveness
Having actually experienced this kind of cosmic forgiveness for a real wrong that I committed, I can attest personally to its power. That experience of forgiveness has lasted me a lifetime.
The Jewish liturgy is more complex and subtle than that simple picture suggests. The entire month previous to the High Holy Days, the month of Elul—Judaism, like Islam, follows a lunar calendar—is to be spent seeking reconciliation with my fellow human beings for harms I have done to them. Only when that process is completed am I ready to begin the effort of reconciliation with God.
But even that description is too simplistic. The ancient rabbis recognized that seeking forgiveness can be weaponized. There is a famous story in the Tractate Yoma in the Talmud—the great book of Jewish law and story—in which the Rav, a prominent rabbi, considered a butcher to have been disrespectful to him. At the season of the High Holy Days, he wants to reconcile and waits for the butcher to come to him, as is customary when a lesser person has wronged a greater person. When the butcher does not come, the Rav decides to go to him. Another rabbi, Huna, notices the Rav on his way and, sensing the potential for disaster, thinks to himself, “Abba is about to commit a murder.” There are different translations, but this is the one I remember.
The butcher is so enraged upon seeing the Rav that he cuts a bone with too much force. A splinter flies up and kills him.
The conventional telling of this story is that the Rav was appropriately humble and the butcher’s anger negated the attempt at reconciliation. But I don’t read the story that way at all. The butcher obviously thought that he had been wronged. The Rav did not even consider his own part in the quarrel. Huna knew that this attitude by the Rav was not a genuine desire for reconciliation—“I forgive you for wronging me” is pretty haughty, after all. That is why things went badly.
Vengeance and the death penalty
We can see both the power and limitations of religious reconciliation by considering the eulogy given by Erika Kirk upon the death of her husband and contrasting her remarks with those of President Donald Trump.
First, think about the power of forgiveness in Kirk’s words. Here was a case of a clear wrong, the murder of her husband. She takes the example of Christ on the cross and forgives the murderer.
Nor is this typically empty American rhetoric. She has said she personally does not want the death penalty for the accused. She is willing to leave that choice to the government. Can you imagine how much more satisfying it would have felt to say, “I hope they fry the bastard.” Her grace is what religious faith can do.
If you doubt it, look at Trump’s words, who spoke after her: “I hate my opponent, and I don’t want the best for them. Sorry Erika.” Trump does not have a religious bone in his body.
The truth is, neither do the rest of us. Most of us agree with Trump.
I am not lionizing Erika Kirk. If she has an acute spiritual advisor, she will hear how she fell short, as we all do. That is also the power of religion.
Charlie Kirk did not practice the unconditional love exemplified by Jesus. He used words he knew would wound people and he delighted in it. If he had survived the attack, and if he had been Jewish, a great rabbi would have told him to reflect during the High Holy Days on his own participation in the violence in which he was enveloped.
That is not a justification for his murder. It has nothing to do with human morality. It is a matter of salvation. But the audience at the memorial event should have been reminded that all of us participate in violence.
In addition, Erika Kirk got the death penalty wrong. I am a lifetime opponent of capital punishment. So, the reader will see in what follows that I am as willing to take advantage of a tragedy to score a political point as anyone else.
Nevertheless, Jesus did not leave it up to the government whether to seek the death penalty. He blocked a lawful execution of an adulterous woman by telling the crowd about to execute her, “Let he who is without sin throw the first stone.” The crowd dispersed. When he was left alone with her, he told the woman, “Go, and sin no more.”
A true follower of Jesus would tell the government not to seek the death penalty for the assailant. She would say, “I want him to have all the time God gives him to reflect on what he did and repent.” That would be love in action.
So, Erika Kirk is not a true follower of Jesus. Well, as Paul knew, no one else is either. She comes closer to the mark than most of us secularists. But, then, she has the advantage of hearing the words of Jesus all the time.
We secularists are going to have to figure out some other way to learn the lessons of confession, repentance, forgiveness and reconciliation that religion teaches.
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