I have been speaking with young friends about the differences between their concept of sin, repentance and expiation and the Jewish way.  From Rosh Hashanah to Yom Kippur are ten days. These separate celebration of “In the Beginning” or the tale of the creation of the world in six days, to the dread of having to give up harboring sinful thoughts and acts of the previous year.  The recognition that we do this each year must say something to us about how terribly redundant we are.  We say we are sorry but then, again, repeat the thoughts and behavior that make us uncomfortable.  This is crystallized into the Christian simplification of each of us with an angel and a devil sitting on one or the other shoulder. Conventional wisdom is that the Devil is on the left side. Jews do not spend much time dealing with Devils.

It is at this time we have the opportunity to search our memories of past days and recall the terrible things we have done to others and ourselves so we can try to make things right.  Most of all if we unintentionally harmed someone we can apologize by words or deeds. No one should be surprised if the one harmed was unaware of our unacceptable behavior.

All over the world in Churches there are these little rooms with a screen separating out the sinner and the person with power to grant absolution and demand penance be done as punishment.  I envisioned this process as little bits of what all Jews are required to do at the end of a period of thinking about last years’ disasters.  Then I began to think about the houses of Jewish worship whether small synagogues or huge temples or personalized services held among chavarim - groups of people of like minds who are uncomfortable in any of the four main streams of Judaism: Orthodox, Conservative, Reform and Reconstruction.  Collectively, theirs is a tremendous, heavy load that is unburdened at one portentous time.

Then I got to thinking about what each of these religions (I know little of the ways of Islam in these matters) involves.  In the Christian way, particularly Catholic, there are the little bits and pieces of sin being examined and done away with all through the year.  The Jewish way is different in that in all the houses of worship at the beginning of each year at the same time there is an unloading of a tremendous amount of sin at the same moment.  This is a hard job for each of us to handle individually and together but it is so ordained that this is the way it is done.

And, then it finally occurred to me that there was a tremendous population of unbelievers who had no way of looking inward, considering expiation and reparations for the bad things they did.  This load of sin must be even greater than that of those of us who take care of it either in small closets in Churches or in large buildings holding Jews on Yom Kippur. These ten days are truly Days of Awe.