This summer's reading featured a fascinating book by Harvard Business School Professor Terry Burnham called Mean Genes that seeks to explain why we have such a hard time taming our primal instincts - why we struggle so with the way we diet, spend money, and overindulge in pleasure. The book's thesis is grounded in evolutionary biology - our struggles for self-control are in fact battles against our own genes - genes that helped our distant ancestors survive and flourish, but are now outdated and rather unhelpful in our contemporary world.
For example, our appetites were built in a world where the notion of plenty was inconceivable. Amassing weight was essential to preventing starvation. Our genetic hunger hasn't changed, but our environment sure has. Instead of expending all our calories hunting, gathering, and preparing our meals, we use remote controls, cars, electric can openers, and take-out to do the job. The notion of 'multiple partners' made sense in a world of very high maternal mortality, but today most spouses, including mine, prefer to point out that this is no justification for polygamy. We face similar challenges when it comes to our primal instincts for pleasure, as well as the way we handle money and friendships.
Mean Genes' strategy for fairing better in our struggle to eat well, save prudently, and remain faithful to our spouse, is to pick the right time - when you're feeling strong - to rearrange the terrain for when you'll be weak. It's no big deal to exercise restraint during the dinner hour, the key is heading off late night binges when our guard is down. The book suggests that we might temper our food passions by eating something healthy before going out to a party, by making our money harder to get when we feel the urge to gamble it away, or consuming some Antabuse which will make drinking alcohol unpleasant. It's a good strategy, proven effective in many cases.
And behavioral change is a specialty, not only of evolutionary biology self-help books, but also of Judaism, especially at this time of the year. If Mean Genes tries to outsmart our genes, Judaism opts for sanctifying biological hungers. Rather than recommending that we yield to instinctual urges or try to suppress them, Judaism provides rules of forbidden and permitted, and then encourages us to go out and enjoy the urges within those limits.
Since Yom Kippur's exercise in one of self-denial, inui nefesh, demanding that we deny our biological hungers for a day, we might conclude that holiness turns its back on primal passions, that it views genetic appetites for food and pleasure as base and defiling. But this turns out not to be the case. Rather than holiness being in conflict with primal instincts, lessons from Yom Kippur's central rituals actually complement impulses for which we are genetically programmed.
How can this be? First it is possible because Judaism rejects the dichotomy between body and soul so prevalent in other religious traditions. Our tradition categorically disagrees with those who view a pure soul as being trapped in a corrupt body that gets distracted by food and sex. For Judaism, the body is no less worthy, no less holy than the spirit.
Even more, Judaism doesn't see intense self-interest - a central feature governing how our genes operate - as a negative impulse. We might have thought that Yom Kippur's way of total denial would cast a long shadow over self-indulgence. Clearly being totally self-absorbed is looked upon pejoratively. But the way of the holy agrees that genetic self-interest can bring some extremely important things into our world.
Being totally selfless is not how we are meant to live. Mean Genes tells of the Australian social spider - who after giving birth to a hundred hungry spiderlings - mom's body literally liquefies into a pile of mushy flesh. The babies then munch on the flesh so they can start their lives with full bellies. Evolution has produced this dissolving mom - and you thought it was a sacrifice to drive the kids to soccer practice - to increase genetic market share for the next generation. 100 viable babies with the mom's genetic material is a big improvement on a single mother spider. Yet Judaism's notion of holiness recoils from and rejects such total sacrifice. Indeed, holiness regards genetic self-interest as a vital character trait.
A Talmudic legend has it that one day people captured the spirit of selfishness and locket it in a closet. They rejoiced in their achievement saying "From now on life on earth will be paradise. There will be no selfishness, no cheating, no stealing, no competing to see who is better. We will have brought about heaven on earth." The next morning, no shopkeepers opened their stores. No young men went courting. No marriages were arranged. People didn't bother to show up for work. By noon, the people realized what they had done. Reluctantly, they let the spirit of selfishness out of the closet, and began to learn to live in a world where selfishness is sometimes the motivation for making good things happen.
Finally, our genes apparently like adding additional layers of meaning to base actions. This is precisely what Judaism specializes in - taking the ordinary and imbuing it with extraordinary significance. Filling our genetic passions with holy content - Judaism encourages us to allow the way we eat, sleep, and spend money to become opportunities for keeping kosher, sanctified intimacy, and tzedakah.
Specifically how does our observance of Yom Kippur, complement our primal instincts, tethering them to grandeur? Judaism localizes holiness in relationships and experiences rather than in physical objects and things. This turns out to help us visualize how Yom Kippur's two central historic events - sending forth the scapegoat into the desert and the High Priest's encounter in the Temple's Holy of Holies - capitalize on our genetic proclivities for relating to people and to moments.
The earliest Yom Kippur ritual described in the Torah involves the sending away a goat symbolically carrying the sins of the people into the desert, enacting release and forgiveness. Imbedded in the ritual itself is both the act of 'letting go' in sending forth the scapegoat, and strong self-interest in the 'cleansing' and 'personal renewal' that followed on the heels of it.
Letting go is hardest in the arena of personal relationships. Grudges and grievances linger, we perform cpr on them all the time. A couple of friends are chatting. One says to the other "Whenever my wife and I have a fight, she's becomes so historical. Don't you mean histerical? Not I mean historical - she remembers and recounts everything bad I've ever done to her."
Mean Genes points out that we are biologically programmed to monitor a balance of favors being done from one partner to the other in relationships. Our brains are built to keep track of gift flows. A certain business professor is fond of advising students on how to approach a car salesman upon entering a showroom. As the salesman approaches, offer him a stick of gum. Why? Because he's about to offer you a cup of coffee and once he's made that gift, you feel more indebted to him, thus more inclined to buy whatever he's selling. Gifting something to him at the outset, levels the gift-exchange playing field.
Gifts can also be a juicy piece of gossip we share about a common enemy. They can even be more subtle. Studies show that if you're trying to merge into traffic, making eye contact with someone you're trying to merge in front of makes it virtually certain you'll be let in. Why? Our brains register the fleeting instant of eye contact as the beginning of a contract, pregnant with a potential future all its own with the person who let you move in front. In all cultures it appears that gifts are given with an eye to repayment. Even though we may profess that gifts are voluntary and selfless, Mean Genes asserts that all research says that they are in fact selfish and obligatory. When things slip too far out of balance of gift exchange - friendships go sour.
On Yom Kippur, our brains still keep track of gift flow, but something remarkable happens - forgiveness enters as a way of re-leveling the playing field. Some years ago I spoke about the importance of letting go of grievances and grudges as something we do for ourselves. Discarding hard feelings for another wasn't framed as a favor we do for them. Why would we do a favor for someone who hurt us? Rather, releasing the burden of hating them for their cruel and heartless act, was framed as letting go of bad debt for our own good. Precisely because what they did to us was so terrible and unforgivable, this is the reason why they don't deserve the right to continue defining us as wounded victims - albeit with the moral high ground. Such cruel people no longer have the right to loom so large in our minds. It was the self-interest dimension of letting go, that made such a message so appealing.
I recall telling you of how the week following that Yom Kippur sermon, a woman needed to see me urgently in my study. "For fifteen years I've had too work two jobs just to pay the bills. For fifteen years I've had to tell the kids that we didn't have the money for them to go to the movies with their friends, and I've had to paper-over the cruelty and immorality of their father's having run off with some younger woman. You expect me to forgive that sob for all he's put us through?!" I took a deep breath and said "Yes, I want you to let go. Not forgive him. He could never deserve such a thing for the horrible things he did to you and your kids. But I want you to let go because just as he no longer deserves the right to live in your home, he has no right to continue living in your head." And I told you that the following year she told me that she did finally stop seething with rage and she was over the hurt. What I may not have told you is that I told her that by letting go, she was doing a tremendously holy act. Not just emotionally helpful, not just genetically sound, but religiously authentic. The self-interest of psychology, biology, and theology is surprisingly similar when it comes to release from the unfair and debilitating dimension of un-resolvable relationship problems.
If sending away the scapegoat was the central Torah Yom Kippur ritual, then the central Jerusalem Temple Yom Kippur ritual featured access to the Holy of Holies, uttering aloud God's ineffable Name. Not only did this ritual wipe our slate clean for a New Year, but it also contained the seeds for a year of fulfillment in our struggles to change, to grow, to live the way we want to live. Our close brush with the holy carries with it the potential to mightily shape our choices and influence our actions.
And there is good reason to suggest that adding a holy layer of meaning complements our genetic impulses. This is because investing ordinary activity with broader meaning can be thought of as investing in something with future ramifications - which is something our genes like. We are biologically made to find satisfaction in getting much more out of seemingly finite deeds.
Let me ask you, which experience, an act of pleasure or an act of kindness, is likely to make us happier and feel more fully alive? Most of us might assume that pleasure and happiness go hand in hand. Yet researched have found conclusive data from every culture around the globe - no matter how primitive or advanced - that acts of kindness produce a more potent and residual happiness than acts of pleasure.
Economics provides a useful analogy that helps us understand why this is the case. When I engage in pleasurable acts, I am perhaps just consuming. The smell of perfume, the taste of raspberries, and the sensuality of a scalp rub all offer momentary delights. But they do not build anything for the future. They invest nothing to be accumulated. When we engage in acts of kindness or generosity, on the other hand, we may be building psychological capital for our future. Our self-esteem along with meaningful, likely enduring positive impact on another, produces a happiness level that universally trumps pleasurable experiences. If our genes like investing added value in efforts at kindness, they might smile as well about adding value in layers of religious meaning, since investing experiences bring more residual happiness than consuming ones.
Embracing the holy, our proficiency at sanctifying the everyday, does something else for us - it makes self-restraint more possible - by helping us temper our genetic proclivities. We aren't simply trying to say no with an iron will. By taking hold of the holy, we are able to say no in the name of a higher yes. Such a skill may save your life someday. Consider this. In the future, your happiness may depend on your ability to say no to something tempting: a shady business deal, a compromise on your principles, an illicit sexual adventure. What are the odds that you're going to be able to say no if you've never really said no before? What are the chances that you'll be able to exercise restraint, if you're not in the habit of having done it before? But if all your life you have practiced the control of instinct, saying no to food, and to other temptations, then, when your future happiness is most at stake, how much better will your chances be?
Yet it's not just a question of preparing ourselves for such a pivotal crossroad. Restraining our instincts holds cosmic significance for actually repairing our world. Professor Jacob Neusner has a wonderful insight in a recent book that drives this point home. The tradition known as Orla requires that the first three years that a fruit-bearing tree produces fruit - its produce may not be eaten. Instead it is dedicated to the Temple leadership and to the needy. This three-year exercise in restraint, according to Neusner is God's way of enabling Israel to atone for the sin of Adam and Eve having impulsively fed their hunger with the forbidden fruit. He suggests that this practice of collective restraint is actually a form of Tikkun Olam - inviting the Jewish People, through the holiness of the law of Orla, to repair the fissure caused by the first couple's primal passion.
The very same primal passions - intense self-interest and expanding the scope of our deeds - are at the heart of what makes Yom Kippur's two central rituals - the scapegoat and a visit to the Holy of Holies - work so well. Our genes can actually help along our efforts to change.
Such help operates individually and collectively thanks to Yom Kippur's present day ritual par excellence is the Ashamnu confessional prayer. Confessing our sins on Yom Kippur is meant to make us as vulnerably personal as we can become. Absolute candor is required. Self-deception is on the side of our mean genes, blunt unvarnished honesty is on the side of empowering change. We and we alone, own our deeds.
Some years ago, ten-year-old Lacy Parker was killed in New Hampshire by a drunken driver with a long record of drunk driving accidents. At his trial, the driver pleaded that he was a good man from a good family, but a series of traumatic events in his life had driven him to alcoholism, and he could not be held totally responsible for that. The judge rejected that line of reasoning, saying that whatever terrible things may have happened to him, he continually made the choice to drink and drive - a choice for which he was completely responsible.
In the same way God on His throne of Justice says to us this Yom Kippur, "I didn't make you do it. Freud's subconscious forces, Marx's economic forces, and Darwin's genetic forces didn't make you do it, society didn't make you do it, racism and anti-Semitism and seductive advertising didn't make you do it, the devil didn't make you do it. You chose to do it.
Yom Kippur promotes a rigorous cleaving the primacy of the deed. When former President Jimmy Carter confessed that he'd lusted in his heart. In his Christian tradition, he was confessing a sin committed in his heart. But in Judaism we don't need to ask forgiveness for having sinned in our hearts or minds. As long as we keep our hands to ourselves, while lusting in one's heart isn't exactly a mitzvah, it's no sin either.
But before you sit back smugly and say "Boy am I glad I'm Jewish, I can have all the illicit, nasty, or vengeful thoughts I want, God won't hold it against me. Let me point out that there's another side to this coin. Just as wanting to sin or even yearning to do something against the Torah but not actually going out and doing it is not considered a sin, in the same way, intending to come to the daily minyan once a week, promising to spend more time with your kids on weekends, while never actually getting around to doing those things, is to do nothing. To me moved by a prayer, but to not act differently as a result is to do nothing. Just as we don't get blamed for thinking badly, for wanting to sin, so too we don't get credit for thinking generously, for wanting to bring the magic of Judaism into our lives, but never translating those commitments into action.
'You are what you do.' Not what you promise to do, not what you would like to do, not what you commit to do, not what your parents were, but what you actually do. If it sounds like a harsh message, it is not without purpose that Yom Kippur brings it to us. Because by creating a gap between us at our core and influencial forces - be they genetic, psychological, economic or social - we become empowered to step around them, to circumvent them, to rise above them. This is why Yom Kippur strips our sins to their core - this is why its message is so harsh. Not to add insult to injury - but to embolden, equip, and empower.
Also, we are not in the battle against our mean genes all by ourselves. The power of the collective is common to most prayers. Attention to the way the sages evolved the Yom Kippur rite from Temple times until today offers a study in transitioning from the power of one to the power of many. While the High Priest's confession in the Holy of Holies began with himself, our Ashamnu confessional begins with the collective.
Even as it offers us our most focused, intensely personal moment of intimate confession, it words are in the plural. The focus of the same prayer is narrow and broad; snug and loose-fitting. And both of these contrasting forces help change move forward as well.
One of the biggest problems with Mel Gibson's The Passion of the Christ was the disproportionately large role and power accorded to the High Priest. Yet there was an aspect of his larger than life influence that was faithful to the biblical text. Indeed Jesus' role as the one who atones for the sins of all is modeled after the role of the High Priest in the Leviticus text. Back then, no matter how sincere the people's contrition was, atonement for all depended on a single man in the High Priest. What did the rabbinic sages do about this? Essentially they left it behind - allowing it to Christianity. While transitioning from the solitary High Priest, to the power of community - a more democratic system where everybody atones on his or her own. Thus holiness also provides for the positive pull of group-think. It's not just us flying solo against your genes. Saying no in the name of a higher yes is not something you must do alone.
Yom Kippur's visceral encounter with the Goat, the Holy of Holies, letting go of the bitter, holding on to our glimpse of a bright flash of the holy, along with Ashamnu confessional offerings and its shunning of self-deception and positive communal inertia - strengthen our resolve to transcend obstacles to change this year.
Conrad Hilton point: change is all the more possible this year once we realize that holy instincts are biologically primal. When coupled with an intensely honest confrontation with our deeds and the pull of the collective, propelling change becomes all the more probable.
Sustaining it is hard. Yom Kippur's resources promise a capacity to feel more satisfied in body and soul. Even though tonight's message has focused primarily on our bodies, Judaism's rejection of the dichotomy between body and soul suggests that our souls too have genetic proclivities - generosity, cheerfulness, and compassion nourish our souls, while vengeance, anger, and jealousy poison them.
Yom Kippur's overall call for self-restraint - inui nefesh - actually focuses on the soul (nefesh means soul). KI's own Dr. Jerome Groopman has taught that with the soul, unlike with the body, we can always be in the best shape of our lives. No matter our age, no matter our ailments, no matter what the year we have begun has in store for us, let us act decisively this year to fill our days and our souls with more than ever before.