Today is the second day of Sukkot, a week-long Jewish holiday dedicated to celebrating the harvest and the end of the high holiday season that began with Rosh HaShanah. While the focus of Sukkot is on joy and delight, it closely follows Yom Kippur, the Jewish day of atonement and reconciliation. Below, please find an adaptation of the remarks that I delivered for the beginning of Yom Kippur at the Williams College Jewish Association’s services last week.
This past June, my daughter Mia attended sleepaway camp for the first time at Eden Village Camp, an idyllic Jewish camp in the Hudson Valley of New York. To get ready for camp, she received a list of things she needed to bring with her on the first day. Among the many things one might expect would be needed for an overnight camp, we also learned that she would need a set of all-white clothes to wear each week during Shabbat.
When I spent time living in Jerusalem, one of my favorite things was seeing people walk down the streets on Friday evenings, clad in white. It’s been a custom in some Jewish communities to wear white on Shabbat since the 16th century, when the color was associated with lightness, joy, and celebration.
There is also a custom to wear white throughout the holiday of Yom Kippur, which is referred to in the Hebrew Bible as “the Sabbath of Sabbaths” (Leviticus 16:31). But the reasons for wearing white on Yom Kippur are slightly different. On Yom Kippur, white is associated with holiness, purity, and renewal. In ancient times, when the Temple stood in Jerusalem, the priests working in it wore white. In wearing the same color on this holiday, Jews echo priestly dress. A source from the Talmud of the Land of Israel describes the many people who wore white on Yom Kippur as a sign of security and happiness, despite Rosh HaShanah and Yom Kippur being seen as the time of judgment. A later, medieval source suggests that the custom of wearing white is intended to make people look like angels, so as to confuse Satan, the Adversary, who comes to accuse us.
We know that the clothing we wear has an impact on our moods and on our frame of mind. When we roll out of bed and throw on a T-shirt, rumpled pants, and flip-flops because we have to hurry to class, we may feel harried and disorganized. When we dress up for a formal event or party, and wear a nice outfit, like a dress or a jacket, we feel more light and celebratory. When we don darker, more somber clothing, like for a funeral or memorial service, the color and weight of our clothing subdues our mood. And likewise, those wearing white on Yom Kippur can connect to feelings of security, renewal, and happiness.
Jewish tradition teaches that God has no physical appearance and therefore cannot possibly wear any clothing as we would understand it. And yet, myths and images of God’s clothing abound, especially in the biblical, rabbinic, and mystical traditions.
In one of his more famous prophecies in the Hebrew Bible, the prophet Isaiah describes seeing God “seated on a high and lofty throne; as the skirts of God’s robes fill the temple” (Isaiah 6:1). A rabbinic midrash from antiquity imagines God wrapping Godself in a “tallit,” or prayer shawl (Babylonian Talmud, Rosh HaShanah 17b). And in the Tikkunei Zohar, which speaks about the interactions between masculine and feminine aspects of God, we learn that as the masculine aspect of God sits on high, His clothing changes each and every day (Tikkunei Zohar no. 22, page 65a): “The garments of one day are not the garments of another day. And on each and every day, throughout the months and the years, God changes God’s clothes.” Just like a human ruler, or a human being, God puts on new clothes each day. Likewise, the feminine aspect of God also wears garments, but they are different. According to the Tikkunei Zohar, innumerable universes are created in and through these garments. The garments of the feminine divine are the angels, the stars and the galaxies, the heavens and the earth, and all creatures that abide within them. Everything that arises in the universe is a garment of the feminine aspect of God. It is clothing for the divine.
More specifically, we are clothing for the divine. All of us reading the Record, all beings, the whole world, and everything that we do — it is all woven into the divine garments. For the Tikkunei Zohar, God is dressed in us and in all that we do in this world. In our lives, as we walk and eat, talk and sleep, create and destroy, we move through divine garments that are made up of us and of the world around us.
Being God’s clothing comes with a heavy responsibility because our actions, the way we live our lives, and the choices that we make all determine what God’s garments look like. The Tikkunei Zohar says that we can make God’s garments shine, or we can darken them. The garments change color — between light and dark — depending on our deeds. When we act with compassion and care, with our minds focused on justice and the intention to do good for others, God’s garments light up. But when we act in destructive ways that are harmful and damaging to other living beings, to our environment, and to our world, God’s garments turn dark.
As my teacher, Rabbi Ebn Leader, explained to me, we live as a string of lights within the dress of God. If we live in such a way that we shine, we light up the cosmos. When we engage in actions that are designed to light up parts of God’s garb, we can make it shine and allow for the flow of love and care. But when we act in negative ways, it is as if we have turned off the lights. Nothing is visible, and there’s no way for compassion to flow. We turn divine garments dark. Further, we embolden the forces of harsh judgment in the world. So, the more that we engage in damaging behaviors, the darker the divine garments become, and the more the world is controlled by harsh, dark powers.
When we are at our best, we are shining light through the cosmic garment of beauty, helping compassion to shine. But when we shroud those garments in darkness, we give power to dark forces, letting judgment flow through the world, rather than compassion.
In this image, if we want to see and understand what our actions in the world have wrought, we simply need to look at God’s garments. We need only look with clear eyes at the world in which we live, for God’s clothing itself shows us the impact of our actions. It shows us when our actions lead to healing and when they lead to destruction. We may believe that we are doing something positive, but God’s garments show us if that is true, or if we are fooling ourselves. Because the world in which we live is God’s clothing.
Days of reflection, like Yom Kippur, offer us the opportunity to look at the garments we create through our actions. We ask ourselves, “Where have we missed the mark? Where have we sought to do good but failed? Where have our self-interest and our pain misled us to cause harm? How have we, as individuals and as communities, perpetuated, enabled, and ignored suffering? How have we blinded ourselves to it, thereby increasing the suffering?” We ask ourselves what we have done wrong, and we resolve to do better in the year ahead.
I think this image of God’s clothing and our place within them offers another way to understand why we wear white clothes on Yom Kippur. When we look down at our white clothing, we are invited to imagine what God’s clothes look like at this moment. Do we see the strings of light that represent the kindness, thoughtfulness, and acts of care that we as individuals and as a people have created this year?
When we examine how we have shown up as members of our families, as friends, as members of the College community, and as beings on this planet, can we see the darker places, where our selfishness, ignorance, and fear have darkened God’s clothing? We can see our white clothing as a canvas, so that we can ask ourselves how we have created garments for God, and for the world, and what we can do to heal the brokenness that we have been part of. When we set aside our holiday clothing — our white clothing — for this year and return to our everyday clothes, we carry the memory of our reflection with us.
In these times of ongoing polarization and violence, these are critical questions for us to ask ourselves. May each of us examine our actions with honesty, while not forgetting that the ultimate aim of our reflections is to bring more wholeness, more life, and more light into our world.
Rabbi Seth Wax is the College’s Jewish Chaplain.
