Chapter 23: Yom Kippur Should Be a Dance Party

On “The Good Place” the group spends a last night listening to music and dancing and reflecting individually and in pairs, before leaving the neighborhood and resolving to make their way to the actual Good Place. On the podcast, Rebecca and Jon talk about teshuvah as looking back; consider Hillel’s teaching about self, others, and the importance of now; and wonder if Yom Kippur wouldn’t be better if it were less solemn and more of a dance party.

Here is an actual Yom Kippur dance party in a synagogue, at IKAR in Los Angeles:

Texts
(Go to Jewish Lexicon on this site for more on Jewish terminology, names of texts and other background. The links here in the citations take you to the specific quotes in their full contexts.)

Mishnah Pirkei Avot 1:14
[Hillel] used to say:
If I am not for myself, who will be for me?
If I am only for myself, what am I?
And if not now, when?

Here are two musical settings for this teaching, from Debbie Friedman — from her album “If Not Now, When” and her childrens’ album “The Alef-Bet” 

Rabbi Moses Maimonides (Rambam),
Mishneh Torah, Hilchot Teshuvah 2:1 (a text we’ve had before)

What is complete teshuvah?
It is when the thing that you did wrong comes to one’s hand, and it is in one’s power to do it and one separates and does not do it because of teshuvah. And not from fear and not from a failure of strength/power/capacity.

For instance? If a man had improper sexual relations with a woman and after a time found himself alone again with her, and still loves her, and has the same physical capacity and is in the same city where he wrong with her, and separates and did not do the wrong thing — this is a complete ba’al teshuvah/master of teshuvah.

… and if one only did teshuvah in one’s old age or at a time when it was not possible to do what one had done, even though this is not an elevated teshuvah it is still effective teshuvah and that person is a master of teshuvah. Even if one did wrong all of one’s days and did teshuvah on the day of death, and died in a state of teshuvah, all of one’s wrongs are forgiven [by the Divine]….

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