Reply To: Yom Kippur thoughts

Wondering…:

You know, in all honesty, to a certain degree you’re not alone in this one! Let me explain:

It used to be, in the olden days, a king was someone who would arouse fear when mentioned, let alone, if His Majesty, graced your town with his presence with a royal visit! Imagine the excitement of the town, the anticipation, the townfolk’s nervousness. They would work for weeks and weeks to clean up the town and make sure the decor and ambiance was inviting and fit for the King’s stay. Remember there were no electronical gadgets, no non-sense with which people would pass the time with. It was a different world. No Internet, no frivolousness, no chutzpa. A world of sincere respect for elders/authority (even by goyim), and the King’s visit was the topic of conversation for monthes! If you had a private audience with the king, you would be sooo nervous. You would rehearse over and over exactly what you would say, how you would say it, etc.

In short, we don’t have kings nowadays(in our country, at least).

Even the President today doesn’t evoke any fear whatsoevr, rather he is viewed as someone incompetent, mocked with cynical disdain and derision. So is there ANYONE nowadays who is of SOME AUTHORITY, WHOM WE FEAR, RESPECT, LOVE? How can we comprehend the seriousness, the fear, and the reverance of the RBS”O on Yom Kippur if we never felt these sentiments before? How can we truly feel regret for transgressing against the Master of the Univese if we have no mashal nowadays of even a mere mortal king, of flesh and blood, in our midst?

So you see, to a certain degree we all can relate to your feelings. However, we MUST arouse this feeling of regret and remorse, because the reality is that we DID AN ENORMOUS CRIME! AN ADACIOUS AND WICKED ACT, by going against Hashem! It behooves us to study the seforim of mussar, hebrew or english, listen to a shmooze, and train ourself with WHATEVER RESOURSES WE HAVE available to us nowadays, and to put in MAX. effort and energy to increase our degree of awareness and understanding of what it means to sin.