What Will I Carry Forward?

I suspect almost everyone in this room walked into Yom Kippur carrying something no one else can see. A conversation we still replay. A person we still resent. An apology we never made. An apology we never received. A mistake we have never quite forgiven ourselves for. A relationship that changed. A loss we never would have chosen.

We carry these things quietly. Sometimes for months. Sometimes for years. Sometimes for so long that we almost forget that our hands are still wrapped around them. Time moves forward, but our hearts do not always move at the same speed. And perhaps that is one reason Yom Kippur is such an extraordinary day. Yom Kippur asks us to look backward, but not so that we can remain there. We remember. We confess. We take responsibility. But ultimately, Yom Kippur invites us to move forward.

And so I want to ask you a question: What are you carrying? And what do you want to carry forward into another year?

I've been thinking about that question because of an eight-year-old girl named Charlotte Herzberg.

On June 2, Charlotte was riding her bicycle near her home when she was struck by a car. Her father, Yudi, later described the moment he arrived. His wife, Chumi, had called him hysterically. Charlotte had been hit. As Yudi pulled up, he saw his study partner, one of his closest friends, a Hatzalah volunteer—the person he relied upon whenever there was a medical emergency. For one fleeting moment, Yudi felt relief. His friend was there. Maybe everything was going to be okay.

And then Yudi noticed that his friend wouldn't look at him. He was looking toward his car. And suddenly Yudi understood. His study partner was the driver.

His beautiful eight-year-old daughter, the child he described as someone who “never stopped moving,” was lying motionless in the street. Yudi later wrote that at first none of it made sense. How could the person he loved like a brother, someone whose life was devoted to helping others, have been driving the car that hit his daughter?

But even standing there, another thought entered Yudi's mind. He knew what could happen next. People would talk. Fingers would be pointed. A community could become divided. And he later wrote: “I couldn't let that happen.”

Before leaving for the hospital, Yudi went over to his friend. His friend was so devastated that he could barely look at him. And Yudi hugged him. Yudi later explained that he wanted his friend to know that this accident was not going to destroy the close bond they had built over the years.

There is something else about the way Yudi has spoken about him that stays with me. He does not speak about him primarily as “the driver.” He speaks about him as his friend, his study partner, someone he loved like a brother. One terrible moment did not erase the person he had known for years. And perhaps there is something profoundly human in that. A person is more than the worst moment associated with his life.

Then Yudi and Chumi rushed to the hospital. For forty minutes, Hatzalah and the hospital staff tried to revive Charlotte. But they could not save her.

And then came a detail that I find almost impossible to comprehend. As they left the hospital, Yudi turned to Chumi and said, “I have to stop by his house.”

They did not wait until after the funeral. They did not wait until shiva. They went directly from the hospital to the home of the man who had been driving the car. Their friend was devastated. And Yudi and Chumi went there not to accuse him, not to confront him, but to support him and to make unmistakably clear that this tragedy would not destroy their relationship.

The next day, at Charlotte's funeral, Yudi made that private decision public. He told the hundreds of people who had gathered that his best friend had not done this deliberately. It was a terrible accident, and they were not going to allow this tragedy to tear them or their community apart.

Then, during the shiva, a visitor entered the Herzberg home and witnessed what that decision looked like. In the kitchen, Yudi and the driver were embracing, crying, literally holding each other up. A few feet away, Chumi and the driver's wife were holding each other and weeping. Two families shattered by the same tragedy. And somehow, instead of allowing their pain to tear them apart, they were holding each other together.

What moves me so deeply about Yudi and Chumi is not that they somehow made sense of the unimaginable. There are losses we would never dare explain. They could not undo what had happened. They could not choose the reality that had entered their lives. But tragedy had already taken something unimaginably precious from them. They were determined not to allow it to take a friendship and a community with it.

They could not choose their pain. But they could still choose response. 

And all of us know, on some level, what it means to carry pain. Sometimes it comes from something another person did to us. Sometimes it comes from something we ourselves did. Sometimes it simply comes from life, a loss, a disappointment, a door that closed, something we never would have chosen. Those experiences are not the same. But eventually they confront us with a similar question: The past happened. What happens next?

When the pain was caused by another person, that brings us to one of the most difficult words in the human vocabulary: forgiveness. We need to be careful with that word. Forgiveness does not mean pretending nothing happened. It does not require restoring trust that has not been earned, abandoning necessary boundaries, or returning to a relationship that is unsafe. And sometimes forgiveness takes years.

Sometimes the most honest thing a person can say is, “I'm not ready to forgive yet. But I don't want to spend the rest of my life consumed by what happened.” Maybe that itself is a beginning. Forgiveness does not say, “It didn't matter.” It says: It mattered. It hurt. But I will not allow what happened to own the rest of my life.

Forgiveness and reconciliation are not identical. Reconciliation depends upon what happens between people, and it may not always be possible or appropriate. But even when a relationship cannot be restored, there may still come a moment when I decide that what someone did to me will not be given unlimited power over what happens inside me.

And then Yom Kippur turns the question around. What if I wasn't the person who was hurt? What if I was the person who did the hurting? What about the words I said, the person I disappointed, the moment when I knew better and still chose poorly? Forgiveness and teshuvah—the possibility of return and change—are not the same thing, but they meet at one profound question: Does what happened in the past have to control what happens next?

That is why Yom Kippur speaks to us in two voices. One voice says: Ashamnu. Bagadnu. We have been guilty. We have betrayed. Own yesterday. Don't run from it. Tell the truth. Take responsibility. And then another voice says: לִפְנֵי ה׳ תִּטְהָרוּ — Lifnei Hashem titharu — before God you can become pure. You can become new. One voice tells us not to run from the past. The other tells us not to become imprisoned by it.

We stand before God and say: I did this. I own it. I need to repair what I can. I need to learn from it. But please, God, don't reduce me to it. Don't freeze me in who I was. See not only what I have done, but who I can still become.

And perhaps that is how God looks at us on Yom Kippur. Perhaps we see the person we were, while God sees the person we can still become. We see the failure. God sees the possibility beyond the failure. We see yesterday. God sees tomorrow.

And perhaps now we can understand something else about that embrace at the side of the road. Yudi refused to reduce his friend to one terrible moment. And on Yom Kippur, we ask God not to reduce us to ours.

There is a beautiful way of understanding a verse from Psalm 30 that we recite every morning: אֲרוֹמִמְךָ ה׳ כִּי דִלִּיתָנִי — “I will exalt You, God, for You have lifted me up.” Rebbe Nachman understands the Hebrew word dilitani, “You lifted me,” through the image of drawing a bucket from a well. The bucket descends into darkness, but its descent is not the end of its story. The question is what it brings back up. We would never dare say that every tragedy happened so that we could learn something from it. We do not know why some experiences take us into such depths. But once we have been there, we do not have to come out empty-handed.

Rabbi Joseph Soloveitchik described teshuvah as an act of creative reconstruction. I cannot change what happened then, but the person I become now can change the place that yesterday occupies in tomorrow. There may be something in your past you cannot change, but its effect on your future is still undecided. And perhaps no one in the Torah embodies that possibility more powerfully than Yehudah.

Yehudah, Judah, has already lived Scene One. A younger brother. A beloved son. A devastated father. And Yehudah failed. He participated in the sale of his brother Yosef, Joseph. His brother disappeared. His father was shattered. There was nothing Yehudah could ever do to make that scene disappear.

But years later, God brings Yehudah back to a scene that looks hauntingly familiar. Another younger brother. Another beloved son. Another father terrified of losing him. The circumstances repeat. Yehudah doesn't. This time, when his younger brother Binyamin, Benjamin, is in danger, Yehudah says: אָנֹכִי אֶעֶרְבֶנּוּ — I will take responsibility for him. And ultimately: יֵשֶׁב נָא עַבְדְּךָ תַּחַת הַנַּעַר — Let me remain instead of the boy. The first time, Yehudah allowed a brother to be taken away. This time, he offers himself in his brother's place.

Yehudah cannot change Scene One. But Scene One has changed Yehudah. And when God gives him Scene Two, he lives it differently.

Maybe that is how we discover whether we have really changed. Not because we stood in synagogue on Yom Kippur and promised God that we would be different, but because eventually life brings us back to something that looks like Scene One—and this time we choose differently. The same provocation, but this time I don't answer in anger. The same person who needs me, but this time I notice. The same opportunity to hide from responsibility, but this time I say, like Yehudah, I will take responsibility.

Teshuvah is not proven in the synagogue. It is proven when Scene Two arrives.

And perhaps some of us are being given Scene Two right now. The next conversation. The next disagreement. The next opportunity to apologize instead of defend. The next opportunity to accept an apology. The next opportunity simply to pick up the phone. We may not get to rewrite Scene One, but as long as we are alive, there may still be another scene.

Which brings me to a story many of us know, but with a part of the story that I had forgotten. Mitch Albom had a beloved professor at Brandeis named Morrie Schwartz. At graduation, Morrie asked Mitch to stay in touch. Mitch promised he would. Then life happened. Sixteen years passed. One evening Mitch saw Morrie on Nightline. Morrie was dying of ALS. Mitch was given another chance. He began visiting Morrie every Tuesday, and those conversations became Tuesdays with Morrie. Mitch got another Tuesday.

But Morrie told Mitch about a close friend named Norman. Their friendship had broken after Morrie felt deeply hurt by him. Norman later tried to reconcile, but Morrie wasn't ready. Then Norman became ill and died before they reconciled. Suddenly there are two stories. Mitch got another Tuesday with Morrie. Morrie never got another Tuesday with Norman. One relationship received a Scene Two. The other didn't. And none of us knows how many Tuesdays we have left.

So on Yom Kippur, I do want to ask you a question. Who is your Norman?

Maybe a face immediately comes to mind. Maybe you owe that person an apology. Maybe you are ready to release some of what you carry toward that person. Maybe reconciliation isn't possible or appropriate, but the bitterness no longer needs the same place in your heart. Maybe the person you cannot forgive is yourself.

But perhaps the question is broader still. What is your Scene Two? Maybe it is a person. Maybe it is the next disagreement. The next temptation to respond in anger. The next opportunity to notice someone you overlooked the first time. The next chance to take responsibility instead of defending yourself. Scene Two is whatever moment life gives you to become different from the person you were in Scene One.

So here is the challenge: Before this day ends, identify one thing. After this day ends, do one thing. Make the call. Offer the apology. Begin the conversation. Put down one burden you no longer need to carry in the same way. You don't have to fix your whole life tomorrow. Just live Scene Two differently.

And that brings me back to Charlotte.

What happened after Charlotte's death became Shalom for Charlotte. People began asking themselves: If these two families could respond to unimaginable tragedy with such love, what grudge in my own life am I still holding onto? People began reaching out. Relationships began to heal. And Yudi asked people to do something in Charlotte's memory: “Do it for Charlotte. Do it for yourself. Do it for Klal Yisrael, for the Jewish people.”

But perhaps on Yom Kippur we can make his challenge even more personal: What could I put down? And what would that finally give me room to pick up?

Yudi and Chumi will carry Charlotte for the rest of their lives. Of course they will. They will carry her face, her smile, her spirit, her love, the eight beautiful years they were blessed to share with her. Letting go does not mean forgetting, and it certainly does not mean loving less. What they somehow found the strength not to add to what they were already carrying was blame and bitterness. They would not allow those things to become Charlotte's legacy. They would carry the love without adding hatred to the weight.

Sometimes the question is not simply what we need to stop carrying. Sometimes we put something down so that we can carry something more precious.

We began with a question: What are you carrying? Maybe Yom Kippur leaves us with an even better question: What is worth carrying forward?

We walked into Yom Kippur carrying a year. Some of us came with hurt. Some regret. Some anger. Some grief. Some words we wish we could take back. Some relationships we wish we could repair. God does not ask us to pretend that none of it happened. Ashamnu. Bagadnu. It happened. We own what is ours. We repair what we can. We learn what we must. But then God says: לִפְנֵי ה׳ תִּטְהָרוּ — before God you can become pure. You can become new.

Maybe the goal isn't to walk out of Yom Kippur empty-handed. Maybe it is to walk out carrying the right things. Carry the lesson, but don't let the shame define you. Carry the memory, without letting bitterness have the final word. Carry responsibility, but not despair. Carry the people you love. Carry the wisdom you brought back from the well. Carry the courage to live Scene Two differently.

Because when we finally put down what we were never meant to carry forever, something extraordinary happens: our hands are free. Free to reach for someone. Free to embrace. Free to repair. Free to hold the people we love a little closer. Free to receive whatever blessings God places into those hands in the year ahead.

We don't let go because the past didn't matter. We let go because the future matters too.

We don't know how many Tuesdays we have left. We don't know how many Scene Twos we will be given. But we have this one. We have this Yom Kippur.

And perhaps that is one of the deepest promises of this day. God does not give us a life without a past. He gives us something even more precious: a future that does not have to be imprisoned by it.

לִפְנֵי ה׳ תִּטְהָרוּ — before God you can become pure.

Your past is real. Your pain is real. Your mistakes are real. But they are not all that you are, and they do not have to determine all that you will become.

We see the person we were. God sees the person we can still become.

We came here carrying yesterday.

God is giving us tomorrow.

גמר חתימה טובה.