How the Jews Changed the World
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Turning your flaws into gateways to growth.
Many people approach Yom Kippur as a day of guilt and making promises they know they won’t keep. But beneath the fasting and confessions lies the ultimate chance to return to our truest selves and highest purpose.1
We step away from food, drink, intimacy, and physical pleasure not as deprivation, but as elevation—so we can connect fully with our divine essence.
From this elevated state, we look honestly at the vision we set on Rosh Hashanah and measure it against the reality of the past year. We acknowledge our failures, feel their weight, admit our mistakes, and commit ourselves to change.
With such potential, Yom Kippur should leave us transformed. And yet for so many, old patterns quickly return and Yom Kippur is rendered little more than a New Year’s resolution. What crucial piece are we missing?
On Yom Kippur we atone for our sins, but do we understand what sin really is? According to the great commentator, Rashi, the definition of the Hebrew word for sin is "lack" (I Kings 1:21); a lack of inner completeness. Rabbi Yitzchak Berkovits, the Rosh Yeshiva of Aish whose classes inspired this essay, explains that this inner lack refers to a fundamental deficiency in what we'll call our character traits (in Hebrew, middot)—the aspects of our character that shape how we interact with the world.
What does this mean practically? Think about the last time you did something you regretted. Maybe you snapped at someone, procrastinated on something important, or gave in to an unhealthy habit. In that moment, you weren't missing information about what was right—you knew better. What you were missing was something inside yourself: the patience to stay calm, the discipline to follow through, or the self-control to make the better choice. That internal missing piece—that's the 'lack' Rashi is talking about that leads to transgression.
To illustrate further, let’s imagine you decide to perform an act of kindness. Here’s how that decision plays out based on your traits:
Part of being human is having some messed up traits – big time lacks. But you have nothing to feel guilty about. Whether your traits came from your nature or your nurture, you had no say in the matter. You had about as much control over them as your height or your first language.
Your character flaws give you the opportunity to improve and perfect yourself.
Furthermore, Judaism teaches that God gave you your bad traits as a gift. Gifts? Yes, because our character flaws give us the opportunity to improve and perfect ourselves. According to the Vilna Gaon, one of the greatest Torah minds of the past 500 years, "overcoming negative character traits is the essence and purpose of life."2
In other words, your Divine Mission is nothing more and nothing less than to fix your lacks. This means approaching your flaws as a scientist, explorer, or detective—seeing your imperfections as the pearly gates of Heaven instead of the black gates of Hell.
On Yom Kippur, we aim to course correct away from sin and towards righteousness. To pivot successfully, we must look beyond our sinful actions to the actual lacks that created them. Once we identify these lacks, we must commit ourselves to improving our actions by fixing these bad traits once and for all. That's the real work of Yom Kippur, and that’s how we make lasting change.
If the whole point of Yom Kippur is to fundamentally change our character, why do we spend so many prayers pounding our chests and listing off our individual sins?
The burning anger and pain you feel when confronting the havoc wrought by your bad traits motivates you to change.
Changing our bad traits requires maximal, continual effort, often for years, if not a lifetime. What gives us sufficient motivation to undergo such a difficult process? The burning anger and pain we feel when we confront the havoc wrought by our bad traits on our lives. And that's why we list our sins!
By listing our sins over and over again, we force ourselves to witness the wreckage our character flaws have left in their wake. Each confession becomes an electric shock jolting us awake to the nightmare of living enslaved to our worst impulses. The repetition builds until we can no longer bear seeing what we've done to ourselves and others. Finally, we explode: "Enough already! I refuse to live this way anymore!" In that moment of total desperation, we harness our anguish and transform it into the raw power needed to rip our bad traits out by the roots once and for all.
This helps us understand the most perplexing mitzvah of the Yom Kippur service at the times of the Temple. Towards the beginning of the day, the High Priest would draw lots between two goats - one would be offered as a sacrifice to God in the Holy Temple and the other would be sent off to the wilderness and tossed off a cliff as an offering to the forces of evil.
Why do we make an offering to the forces of evil on the holiest day of the year?
Because on Yom Kippur, the forces of evil that cause us to sin become the raw energy to fuel our growth. Like the goat sent out to the wilderness, we turn to our lower selves and say "Thank you for giving me the motivation I needed to perfect myself! Now go jump off a cliff!"
This practical exercise requires serious commitment—plan on spending at least an hour diving deep into your character. I encourage you to schedule this hour between now and Yom Kippur, then print your results to bring with you and guide your prayers on the big day.
To discover your most problematic traits, contemplate and answer these three questions:
Once you've gone through the process of identifying your primary bad traits, take time to appreciate the destruction they've caused in your life. On each of the bad traits you identified, answer the following questions:
For all three (Past, Present, Future), try to feel the pain viscerally.
Now that we've identified our problematic traits and generated the energy necessary to change, we must take the final step: creating a new vision for ourselves and begin reinforcing that vision with action. Ask yourself these four questions:
Transformation takes time. We will make many more mistakes and stumble repeatedly before we completely overcome our bad traits. Anyone who tries to fix themselves all at once will likely end up worse than they started. Therefore, we must admit to ourselves and to God that we will continue making mistakes. But from that place of honesty and humility, we can authentically commit to the process and take the first step towards greatness.
This character transformation is genuine teshuva—returning to God through the very flaws He gave us to perfect. That is the goal of Yom Kippur: to know where we are, where we're headed, and to start our journey back to our Creator with that first step.
Wishing you all a most meaningful Yom Kippur and a successful start to your process of becoming your best self.3
Shana Tova
Avraham
To categorize depression, a mental illness, as a modern sin minimizes the severity of a real illness.
This is excellent! Thnk you!
Incredible and truly informative. Many thanks!