MINḤA – AFTERNOON SERVICE Unusually, Ashrei and Uva LeTziyon are not said here but at Ne’ila, the concluding service. The reason is so as not to delay the afternoon service after its proper time, since there are congregations where Musaf is continued well into the afternoon. Ashrei normally serves the purpose of marking a break between one prayer and the next (see Berakhot 30b). Here, however, the Reading of the Torah does so instead. Tosafot (Berakhot 31a) also hold that prayer should be preceded by words of Torah. Normally this is done through Ashrei, but here, through the Torah and Haftara readings. The combined effect, though, of the absence of the prayers that normally form the end of Musaf and those that mark the beginning of Minḥa, is startling. Despite the fact that the prayers of Yom Kippur are longer than those of any other day, there is a sense of urgency about them. There is no leisurely closure to Musaf, no preamble to Minḥa, no relaxation of mood, nothing that might de-intensify the awe of the day.

TORAH READING Both the Torah and Haftara readings for the afternoon of Yom Kippur are specified in the Talmud (Megilla 31a). The choice of Leviticus 18, a passage dealing with forbidden sexual relations, is on the face of it a strange one. Why read it on a day when sexual relations of any kind are forbidden? Why specifically these prohibitions on a day when we atone for sins of all kinds? Rashi (on Megilla ad loc.) says that sexual sins are common and the desire to commit them is part of the human condition. Maimonides states that sexual desire is, for most people and in all eras, the strongest of all inclinations to sin (Laws of Forbidden Relationships 22:18–19). Freudian psychoanalysis argues likewise, and evolutionary psychology has tended to confirm it. Maimonides himself says that the reading is to inspire thoughts of penitence (Laws of Prayer 13:11). The passage itself raises obvious questions. Why does it begin with the statement “I am the Lord your God”? Why the contrast with the behavior of the Egyptians and the Canaanites? Why are sexual sins so serious as to warrant the exile of Israel from its land? The best way of understanding the passage is to ask a more fundamental, and seemingly unrelated, question. What is distinctive about the patriarchs and matriarchs in the book of Genesis? We believe that Abraham and Sarah introduced (or reintroduced) a unique form of religious life, “Abrahamic monotheism,” as contrasted with the idolatry of the pagan world. But this is not a dominant theme of the narratives of Genesis. Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob engage in no critique of idolatry. In this they are quite unlike the later prophets from Moses to Malachi for whom it was central. A famous rabbinic tradition states that Abraham was an iconoclast who broke his father’s idols, yet this is not mentioned explicitly in Genesis. Abraham’s family live among idolators, sometimes make treaties with them, even pray for them, yet they do not overtly criticize their religion, or call on them to relinquish it. Wherein lies the difference between the life of the Abrahamic covenant and that of the peoples among whom they dwell? One theme emerges repeatedly and consistently: sexual ethics. Twice Abraham, and once Isaac, forced to leave home because of famine, fear that their lives will be in danger because they are married to beautiful women. They believe they are at risk of being killed so that Sarah or Rebecca can be taken into the local ruler’s harem. When two angels visit Lot in Sodom, the inhabitants of the town surround Lot’s house, demanding that he hand over the visitors so that they can be sexually assaulted. When Dina, Jacob’s daughter, goes out to visit the women of Shekhem, she is abducted, raped, and held hostage by a local prince who has formed a passionate attachment to her. Joseph, a slave in Egypt, catches the eye of his master Potiphar’s wife who attempts to seduce him and when he refuses, accuses him of rape. The appearance of these six stories cannot be merely incidental in so highly structured a text. The implication is bold and surprising. The fundamental difference between the life of the Abrahamic covenant and that of pagan societies is the presence in one, and the absence in the other, of a sexual ethic: an ethic of the sanctity of marriage and of sexual fidelity. Nor is it accidental that the sign of the Abrahamic covenant, Brit Mila, is circumcision. The sign of holiness is intimately connected with sexuality. Why so? Sexuality is a fundamental theme of ancient myth. There were male gods of power and potency and female goddesses of fertility and allure, and the relations between them were amoral. They fought, conquered, schemed, sired. Often they killed one another; at times they killed their own children. It was a world of conflict and betrayal, of sexual lawlessness and anomie. Judaism was and is opposed to this world, whether in its ancient forms of myth, or its more modern pseudo-scientific or philosophical counterparts, the neo-Darwinian myth (the “selfish gene”) that the fundamental driver of behavior is the desire to hand on one’s genes to the next generation, or the Nietzschean “will to power.” Against this, Judaism sets forth an ethic of love and loyalty, concretized in the idea of covenant, whereby two (or more) parties, each respecting the integrity of the other, come together in a bond of mutual commitment and fidelity. The human counterpart of the covenant between God and humanity is marriage as a covenant between husband and wife. A sexual ethic is therefore not just one among many features of Judaism. It is of its essence, for there is the closest possible connection between the way we relate to God and the way we relate to those to whom we are closest: our husband or wife, and our children. That is why Genesis, the story of our beginnings, deals only cursorily with the creation of the universe, and briefly with politics (a key theme of Exodus and Deuteronomy). Instead, it is a series of narratives about families, marriage partners, parents, children, and siblings. One of the signs of a polytheistic or atheistic culture – where people believe that there are many gods or none – is the absence, subjectivity or relativity of sexual ethics. Marriage is seen as one lifestyle among many. Adultery, infidelity, promiscuity, and sexual and child abuse are commonplace. Sexuality becomes the pursuit of desire. That is the world which Genesis contrasts with the life of the covenant. History supports this contention. Sexuality is often the primary force behind violence, and sexual decadence the first sign of civilizational decline. So this passage, despite its seeming remoteness from the themes of the day, is telling us a fundamental truth about Judaism as a whole. Holiness is expressed in our most intimate relationships within the family: in the love that is loyal and generous, self-sacrificing and kind, in the sensitivity of marriage partners to one another and their needs, and in our ability to recognize the integrity-of-otherness that lies at the heart of love.