By Maya Menashe, Managing Editor
Yom Kippur, meaning “Day of Atonement,” is the holiest day of the Jewish year. For over 25 hours, we separate from the physical world and fully devote ourselves to God through fasting, prayer, sincere repentance and introspection, all in pursuit of spiritual purification. It is a day meant for reflecting on our own wrongful actions.
But this year, I did not sit with my own actions. Instead, I thought about my late grandparents, aunt, and uncle. I thought about their actions and how they impacted this world instead of mine. I thought about their legacies, each still spoken about and lived out by the people they impacted: their descendants, friends, patients and colleagues.
I realized that by connecting with the legacies my late family left behind, I could use their impacts, rooted in Torah values, to build my own. So this year, in an effort to mimic a legacy even half as meaningful as theirs, I committed to something I wanted to improve on in the upcoming Jewish year: more limud Torah lishma (studying Torah for its own sake), even if it means just one more line of commentary or one extra chapter of tehillim (Psalms) each week.
I chose this specific deed because it was the foundation of each of their legacies. Whether it was honesty in business, raising children who held firmly to their home values or literally helping bring new life into the world, I wanted to take on the same ethics that each of my late family members held at the forefront of every decision they made.
To get a head start, I began my commitment on Yom Kippur itself. It felt fitting to turn to Pirkei Avot (Ethics of the Fathers, a collection of Jewish ethical teachings) for guidance. So, I picked up the first copy I saw, squished between the many other books of Tanach (Hebrew Bible) and rabbinic literature on the shelf, and read a couple of chapters.
When I closed the book, I coincidentally noticed that the front cover read that it had been donated by my late aunt in memory of her father (my late grandfather).
Of all the books I could have pulled from my shelf, I had picked the one my own family had left behind. This full-circle moment reminded me that what stays in this world after someone passes is the learning they did, the good they lived out and the way that good touched the people around them, all of which reflect their closeness to God.
A legacy lives on when someone else chooses to continue it. It was no coincidence that I had been thinking about my family, picked up that specific book and read it on Yom Kippur. I had been thinking about their good deeds and how I wanted to carry them forward, and those deeds lined up exactly with the teachings inside Pirkei Avot. That is exactly what Yom Kippur asks of us: to pray to be sealed in a Book of Life defined by learning and good deeds.
The point of being written in the Book of Life is to use the physical things we are given (our bodies, our money, our time) in accordance with God’s will so that our legacy after 120 years becomes an extension of God’s own legacy. The whole point is to give ourselves role models we can learn from throughout our lives. God is our ultimate role model, but we are also meant to look at the people who came before us and learn how to act from their stories.
Although none of my late family members lived to 120 years, each of them still lived out Arichut Yamim (length of days), not measured in years but rather in a life full of good deeds. Both Yom Kippur and my late family showed me that 25 hours, or even a lifetime, is too short a time to waste.
We ask God to be sealed in the Book of Life every year, but the most important thing to ask ourselves is: How are we going to spend our one chance at life?