GOD, THE SPRINKLER

--By Rabbi David A. Schuck

In the evening service of Yom Kippur, we ask God to “Sprinkle pure water upon us and purify us.” One of the many images I have when I read this is being dunked in the Jordan River by God, perhaps with a Baptist choir humming Wade in the Water in the background: “Jordan's water is chilly and cold. God's gonna trouble the water. It chills the body, but not the soul. God's gonna trouble the water.” Harriet Tubman supposedly sang this to slaves fleeing their masters, instructing them to enter the water to throw off the dogs following their scent. The dogs and their slave-owning-masters would become the new Egyptians, drowning in hot pursuit of their fleeing slaves as God “troubled the water.” When I think of God sprinkling me with water I imagine all of my own pursuing Egyptians, whatever or whomever they may be, being tossed about the Jordan river while I escape to the dry land on the other side. This image of water as rescuing and purifying has resonated among many cultures and is almost universal in religion: mikveh, baptism, holy water, washing one’s feet before prayer, etc. We feel purified and spiritually cleansed through the transformative power of water. The Christian and Muslim uses of ritual water were born out of the Jewish concept that water has the power to enact a spiritual cleansing, and one of the very moments that this concept directs the rabbinic mind is Yom Kippur.

The above snippet from the Yom Kippur liturgy that asks god to sprinkle water on us is referencing a mishnah in Masechet Yoma (8:9). The mishnah states a teaching of Rabbi Akiva’s: “Praiseworthy are you, O Israel! Before Whom do you purify yourselves? Who purifies you? Your Father in Heaven! As it is said [in Ezekiel 36:25], ‘And I shall sprinkle pure water upon you and you shall be purified.’ And [the Bible] also says [in Jeremiah 17:13], ‘The hope (mikveh) of Israel is Adonai.’ Just as mikveh purifies the contaminated, so does the Holy One purify Israel.” Rabbi Akiva is teaching that there are two different ways to be purified from sin: sprinkling and immersion in a mikveh. So what is the main difference between the two? Immersion in a mikveh, a ritual pool of water, is done by an individual. It is an act that is private and depends wholly on the initiation of the one who desires to be cleansed. But sprinkling is dependent on a second person, as the Torah states in Numbers 19:19, “And the pure person shall sprinkle upon the contaminated person.” We need another person who has already gone through the experience of moving from impure to pure to enact the change. We can’t go through this process alone; by definition, it requires a second person.

Teshuvah, or repentance, mirrors Rabbi Akiva’s ideas about purification. There is one type of teshuvah that is effected all year round and is dependent solely on the initiative of the individual. To wit, all year round we are motivated to recognize our shortcomings, our hurtful actions, and our sins, and when we feel ready, we change them. In order to change our own personal behavior we do not require the participation of other people. This is usually an internal and deeply personal struggle. We need not wait for Yom Kippur to do this. In fact, we formulaically do this three times a day when we pray the Amidah.

In the book Before Hashem You Shall Be Purified: Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik On The Days of Awe, Arnold Lustiger beautifully describes a second type of teshuvah as understood by Rav Soloveitchik, one that requires God’s participation. He writes,

“God Himself cleanses man; He teaches him about the degradation of sin and the beauty of teshuvah. Fallen man finds an outstretched hand to help him. God plays an active role in this type of teshuvah and personally accompanies man to the gates of repentance. On Yom Kippur, with the power of the day itself effecting purification, God takes the sinner by the hand, as it were, and leads him to Him.”

Sometimes, we simply can’t do this alone. We can’t go through the process of teshuvah in the same way that we immerse ourselves in a mikveh, alone and entirely vulnerable in our nakedness. We need to know that there is some power that will help nudge us along the path. There are moments, even if sparse and fleeting, when this happens on Yom Kippur.

There is an unspeakable power in sitting among hundreds of other Jews, listening to the heartbreaking and hopeful prayers of the cantor, hearing the voices of the millions of Jews who have chanted these words before us, as well as the millions who would have given anything to do just that but were violently denied this privilege, sitting in meditative silence and contemplating the direction of your life, and focusing all of you energy on the goal of spiritual refinement. Sometimes you experience a moment during all of this in which you feel connected to something so great and overwhelming that you sense the smallness of your problems, you can admit the troubled aspects of your behavior, and you feel the inner strength to overcome them; this is often really just a moment, a few seconds out of a 24 hour period. But this moment can be strong enough to carry you for an entire year. Perhaps this is the moment in which God is stretching out His hand, helping you up from your fall, giving you the momentary push you need to propel yourself forward, toward a more meaningful existence. It is this moment in which God sprinkles you with water, drowning your problems, insecurities, and temptations, as He did for the generations of slaves who watched their pursuers sink away, forever, out of sight.

-David Schuck is the rabbi of the Pelham Jewish Center.

*This post is inspired by a comment in Machzor M'soret HaRav L'Yom Kippur, published by K'hal publishing.