An excerpt from Rabbi Stephen Cohen’s sermon Yom Kippur 2014:

“Like all ritual, the Yom Kippur performance with the goat was sacred theater. A symbolic drama. The liberation from sin came from the confession. It’s still true. Telling the truth about something we have done wrong may be excruciating.   But it sets us free. In my own life, I have learned that real apology and forgiveness require telling the story of what happened…as specifically as possible. Forgiveness requires remembering, and telling, and then we can make a new start.

“I do not know if we as a people are ready to hear the story of the nakba, but I feel certain that there will never be peace between us and the Palestinians until we do. So I pray that one day we will learn to listen to that story, and then to tell it, as Ari Shavit has done, with empathy and with honesty and with eloquence.

“Then, perhaps every year, on Yom Kippur, we will sit and converse with our Palestinian friends and neighbors, and remember together all the terrible things we once did as well as the awe-inspiring miracles that we performed in the land of our ancestors. And we will both beg each other for forgiveness, and we both will give each other that gift.”

For full sermon, View the PDF