In the Jewish calendar, Autumn is the ‘busy season.’ Between Rosh haShanah (New Year) and Yom Kippur (Day of Reflection) ten days later, out two most important holidays fall within the course of a fortnight. The two of them collectively are referred to as Yamim Nora’im (Days of Awe) and the focus for this time of year is on reflection, contemplation, and redemption. Jews the world around will spend the next few weeks evaluating their own behaviour over the past year. In the lead-up to Yom Kippur, we are required to make apologies for people we have harmed and seek forgiveness (and give it). Once this process of interpersonal atonement is done, then we can approach God on Yom Kippur to ask forgiveness for those things which are only between us and God– secret, private things.
This distinction goes all the way back to the Torah reading that we recite just as the year ends, in Deuteronomy 29:28: “The secret things belong to the Lord, our God, but the overt things belong to us and our children forever, to be done– all the words of this instruction.” Our tradition encourages us to see this dichotomy of secret/overt as psychological– that is, describing the distinction between our conscious actions and our subconscious thoughts. We must believe that the conscious actions we undertake are our responsibility, for without that we wouldn't be accountable to anyone or anything– just hedonists putting our own self-interest above all else. But we also must believe that the secret, unconscious things which we do accidentally, are not going to incur liability on our part. It is this balance, however artificial, that allows us to make amends, to do teshuvah (repentance). In distinguishing between unconscious and conscious, secret and revealed, we allow ourselves to be forgiven for our mistakes even while we seek forgiveness for our transgressions.
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