Having to say you're sorry

There's a Jewish tradition on Yom Kippur that you personally ask people for their forgiveness. For me, it's always been an awkward exercise because each year I can't decide which is more uncomfortable: fielding requests for forgiveness from family and friends, or debating whether to ask anyone myself.

If you're not familiar with Yom Kippur, the holiest day on the Jewish calendar and the reason we have no classes Thursday, it is a day of services, prayer, and fasting. Its name translates to "Day of Atonement," and although the holiday wraps up the celebration of the Jewish New Year, Yom Kippur is as somber as holidays can come.

I can always count on my dad and older brother, the two most religious people in my family, to call before Yom Kippur to ask for my forgiveness. Every time, because each of them is so genuine and sincere about it, it's unavoidably uncomfortable to listen to them ask me to forgive them. From the depths of their hearts, they mean what they say. I know my forgiveness is something that matters to them, and then here I am, a slightly religious college student who doesn't go to synagogue enough and can't think of anything either of them has really done wrong to me, and all I can inevitably muster is a weak, "Yeah, okay. Uh, back at ya."

Tradition says that on Rosh Hashanah, the New Year, the Book of Life is opened, and on Yom Kippur it is sealed. In between, it is up to each person to reflect on the past year and pray for a happy and healthy new one. Yom Kippur gives Jews a chance to directly ask for God's, or a person's, forgiveness and start the year off with a clear conscience and a clean slate, free of sin.

But facing repentance, it just feels so foreign. As a 21st century society, we have ourselves largely convinced that forgiving and forgetting should be easy things to do. In many ways, it's considered a positive characteristic to be able to recognize one's wrongs and say you're sorry. When I ran for editor in chief, I certainly pitched in my platform that I'm good at admitting when I'm wrong.

But do we know anymore what it really means to be sorry, to want forgiveness? Did we ever? We preach these ideals in kindergarten classes, at religious services, on Oprah - but it's so secondary in our values. In large part, I don't think we care. At all. Even if we say we do, which is why I really shouldn't be surprised when I feel weird having that conversation with my own brother before Yom Kippur. After all, how often do I stop my life to consider atonement, let alone confront the person I've done wrongs to? It's not a normal thing to do.

That is, if I even recognize I did something wrong, which is difficult for a lot of people to do. Perhaps it's hard because we're too self-centered. Maybe we shrug it off because we're ingrained with that "Hey, nobody's perfect" mentality; we can make big mistakes and move on without remorse. Or it could just be the same reason I feel strange being solicited for forgiveness: asking for repentance feels just as foreign as accepting it.

If we have become a less penitent society, the irony is that as we've become less apologetic, the more we've become engulfed in sin. I don't mean we're a society of sinners, but boy, we love our transgressions. Our hottest political debates, homosexual rights and abortion, are centered on it. Our entertainment, using sex and taboos to kick up the ratings, feeds off it. Our economy and consumerism are based on our indulgences: commercials tell you to give in and buy that SUV, eat that 400-calorie ice cream, flatten those sexy abs any way you can.

And ultimately, it is often our sins that define us, separate us, and keep us in the trenches of those debates over abortion and red versus blue. Between men, admitting sin means admitting fault. It labels one person right and one wrong. That's the hard part, being wrong, not necessarily saying you're sorry. When so many people base the essence of who they are as a Jew, a conservative, or whatever, on being right, then admitting being wrong means changing a little part of who you are as a person, and sometimes people aren't strong enough to do that, even just once a year.

For me, the reason I look forward to Yom Kippur isn't about the atonement. It's about being there, surrounded by a few hundred people from across the state and the country; none of us have ever met, yet we all know the same prayers, we all know the same melodies, and as cheesy as it sounds, I know almost 13 million other people are doing the exact same thing I am, in the same language, worldwide, and I feel like I'm part of something.

That's what I love about Yom Kippur. As far as I can tell, it's one of the few times when people's wrongs unite them rather than push them apart. And even if that day, I can't find the strength to change who I am, I know I'll be asked again next year.