COLUMN: Day of atonement begs the question Why?

From Andrew Exum's, "Perilous Orthodoxy," Fall '99 From Andrew Exum's, "Perilous Orthodoxy," Fall '99If you're like me, you never considered a subject like forgiveness ripe for scientific analysis. But recently, a Radnor foundation has been funding research on forgiveness to the tune of $10 million. The goal? To get to the bottom of what promises to be a complicated problem: why we as humans have an innate need to seek forgiveness when we do wrong. Last week, I observed Yom Kippur, the Jewish Day of Atonement. Sunday afternoon, I had my last meal before the traditional fast and embarked upon almost 10 hours of services in the next 24 hours, much of it in a language that I don't understand in the least. My observation of the holiday would not have been remarkable if it weren't for the fact that I am not Jewish, but Christian. I made the decision to go observe the holiday out of curiosity and in the hopes that I might learn something. Make no mistake; other religions go through some sort of confession as well. In most Christian churches, acknowledgment of sin is a continuous process. Confession comes weekly at every service and is meant be carried over into personal daily prayers as well. The Yom Kippur holiday is special, however, because it a day entirely focused on seeking absolution. Everything else is put on hold to concentrate on personal transgressions committed over the course of the year. Work, food, drink, music, pretty much anything that could come between you and communion with God is swept aside for 24 hours. The services are a pious, solemn collection of prayers meant to bring atonement and ask God for forgiveness for breaking the covenant. Most of the services I went to were packed, with everyone in attendance reciting the same words acknowledging their sins and asking for forgiveness. Contrast that with the way our society normally thinks about personal failures and shortcomings. Maybe there was a time when such an honest reflection on shortcomings and sins was commonplace, but such an era is hard to find in the history books. By our nature, we are and have always been quick to wash our hands of guilt and slow to admit wrong. When we do admit guilt, it's usually only after a series of denials both to ourselves and to others. We usually know we've done wrong, and yet we're so scared of what others might think of our failure that we try and hide any evidence of wrongdoing. The recent unpleasantness surrounding our president and a White House intern serves as a prime example of this tendency to cover things up before we confront them. So it is odd that on one day out of the year, in the midst of a society that isn't particularly eager to talk about our shortcomings, the entire Jewish faith takes a day off from all else to concentrate solely on the admission of wrong while Christians gather weekly to do the same. There must be something about absolution that makes us both desire and need it. For what other reason would we return to the same rites our grandfathers and ancestors sang decades, centuries and even millennia ago? Rabbi David Israel, assistant director of communal services at Yeshiva University, argued in The Philadelphia Inquirer last week that the search for forgiveness has as much to do with finding inner peace as it does with seeking divine salvation. "If you say, 'What does forgiveness mean to you?' I would say: 'Tying the loose ends. Being at peace with yourself and others. Being able to move on with life's challenges,'" he said. "God's greatest gift is peace." I think that the psychologists and researchers hard at work on the subject of absolution will arrive at a similar answer to the question of why we seek forgiveness. It all boils down to attaining an affirmation of self that we can't find alone. What they will also discover, however, is that in the end, the whys of absolution are actually simpler than the hows. So far, no one has begun to answer why we seek absolution in the way that we do -- services, rites and prayers we observe week after week and year after year. When science tackles that problem, then they'll really have a job on their hands.