We Are Responsible For Each Other

One of the most important lessons on Yom Kippur is that we are responsible not only for our own actions but also for the actions of our community.

On Monday we will observe Yom Kippur, and throughout the day we will repeatedly say the Vidui, the confession.

We say Ashamnu—“we have sinned.” And in the Al Chet, again and again we say:

Al chet shechatanu lefanecha—“For the sin that we have committed before You.”

And sometimes you look through that long list of sins and think: Wait a minute. I didn’t do all of these things. Some of them I certainly don’t remember doing. So why am I confessing to them?

And perhaps even more importantly: Why do we say we? Why don’t we say, “For the sin that I committed”?

Because on Yom Kippur we don’t approach Hashem only as individuals. We also approach Him as a community.

There is a fundamental Jewish idea: Kol Yisrael arevim zeh bazeh—all Israel is responsible for one another.

We are responsible for our own behavior, certainly. But Judaism teaches us that we also have a responsibility for the kind of community we create.

There is a fascinating example of this in the Torah. If someone accidentally kills another person, he may flee to a city of refuge, where he remains until the death of the Kohen Gadol, the High Priest.

The obvious question is: What does the High Priest have to do with an accidental death committed by somebody else?

The Talmud explains that the Kohen Gadol should have prayed for his generation that such tragedies not occur. In other words, even the spiritual leader of the Jewish people bears some responsibility for what happens within his generation.

That is an extraordinary concept.

It doesn’t mean that the Kohen Gadol committed the act. It means that leadership—and ultimately membership in a community—carries responsibility beyond ourselves.

That helps us understand the plural language of Yom Kippur.

When we say Al chet shechatanu—“for the sin we committed”—we are not pointing across the synagogue and saying, “I know who that one is talking about!”

We say we.

Perhaps I didn’t commit that particular sin. But did I contribute to an atmosphere in which it became easier for someone else to commit it? Did I remain silent when I should have spoken? Did I laugh at something I should not have laughed at? Did I look the other way? Did my own behavior send a message that something wrong really wasn’t so terrible?

That is a much more difficult form of teshuvah, because now I cannot simply make a checklist of my personal sins. I have to ask what effect I have had on the people around me.

There is a story attributed to the Rambam that illustrates this idea beautifully. A community complained that standards of behavior were deteriorating: children were disrespectful, people were treating one another badly, and the moral atmosphere of the community seemed to be declining.

The response was: Check the butcher.

Why the butcher?

Because kosher slaughter requires extraordinary care and precision. If the standards of an entire community begin to slip, someone who can profit from lowered standards may be among the first places where that deterioration becomes visible.

Whether or not we take every detail of that story historically, the lesson is powerful: moral decline rarely happens in isolation. When a community becomes accustomed to overlooking small things, eventually people begin overlooking bigger things.

And that brings us back to Yom Kippur.

We stand before Hashem and say Ashamnu—we have sinned.

Not “he sinned.”

Not “she sinned.”

Not “those people sinned.”

We sinned.

Of course I have to examine myself. What did I do wrong? Whom did I hurt? Where did I fail?

But I also have to ask a harder question:

What have I done—or failed to do—that has affected the people around me?

What kind of example have I set? What have I tolerated? What have I normalized? Have my actions made my family, my synagogue, my community, and the Jewish people a little better—or have they made it easier for others to go in the wrong direction?

That may be one reason the confession of Yom Kippur is written in the plural.

We come before Hashem as individuals, but we do not stand there alone.

Kol Yisrael arevim zeh bazeh.

We are responsible for one another.

And perhaps real teshuvah begins when, instead of asking only, “What did I do wrong?” we are also willing to ask:

“What can I do to make the people and the community around me better?”

Something to think about.