Religion for Atheists: A Non-Believer's Guide to the Uses of Religion Read Online Free PDF Page A

contributions to mainstream politics, but their relevance to the problems of community are arguably never greater than when they depart from the modern political script and remind us that there is also value to be had in standing in a hall with a hundred acquaintances and singing a hymn together or in ceremoniously washing a stranger’s feet or in sitting at a table with neighbours and partaking of lamb stew and conversation, the kinds of rituals which, as much as the deliberations inside parliaments and law courts, are what help to hold our fractious and fragile societies together.
    Dressed in traditional white, Israeli Jews walk down a traffic-free road in Jerusalem on their way to attend synagogue on the Day of Atonement. ( illustration credit 2.13 )
    ii. Apologies
    1.
The effort of religions to inspire a sense of community does not stop at introducing us to one other. Religions have also been clever at solving some of what goes wrong inside groups once they are formed.
    It has been the particular insight of Judaism to focus onanger: how easy it is to feel it, how hard it is to express it and how frightening and awkward it is to appease it in others. We can see this especially clearly in the Jewish Day of Atonement, one of the most psychologically effective mechanisms ever devised for the resolution of social conflict.
    Falling on the tenth day of Tishrei, shortly after the beginning of the Jewish new year, the Day of Atonement (or Yom Kippur) is a solemn and critical event in the Hebrew calendar. Leviticus instructs that on this date, Jews must set aside their usual domestic and commercial activities and mentally review their actions over the preceding year, identifying all those whom they have hurt or behaved unjustly towards. Together in synagogue, they must repeat in prayer:
    Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â â€˜We have sinned, we have acted treacherously,
    Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â we have robbed, we have spoken slander.
    Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â We have acted perversely, we have acted wickedly,
    Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â we have acted presumptuously, we have been violent,
    Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â we have framed lies.’
    They must then seek out those whom they have frustrated, angered, discarded casually or otherwise betrayed and offer them their fullest contrition. This is God’s will, and a rare opportunity for blanket forgiveness. ‘All the people are in fault,’ says the evening prayer, and so ‘may all the people of Israel be forgiven, including all the strangers who live in their midst’.
    It was no one’s idea in particular to say sorry: Yom Kippur service, Budapest synagogue. ( illustration credit 2.14 )
    On this holy day, Jews are advised to contact their colleagues, sit down with their parents and children and send letters to acquaintances, lovers and ex-friends overseas, and to catalogue their relevant moments of sin. In turn, those to whom they apologize are urged to recognize the sincerity and effort which the offender has invested in asking for theirforgiveness. Rather than let annoyance and bitterness towards their petitioner well up in them once more, they must be ready to draw a line under past incidents, aware that their own lives have surely also not been free of fault.
    God enjoys a privileged role in this cycle of apology: he is the only perfect being and therefore the only one to whom the need to apologize is alien. As for everyone else, imperfection is embedded in human nature and therefore so too must be the will to contrition. Asking others for forgiveness with courage and honesty signals an understanding of, and respect for, the difference between the human and the divine.
    The Day of Atonement has the immense advantage of making the idea of saying sorry look like it came from somewhere else, the