In the Yom Kippur liturgy, many of us recite a familiar phrase — ‘on Rosh Hashanah it is written and on Yom Kippur it is sealed’ — but how many of us believe the literal meaning? So much seems random and unknowable that we really have no idea whether anything we do or say can affect our future. Who are we to understand matters of who lives and who dies? We know that some will live and some will die, some will die at an old age, some young, some by fire, some by water, some by sword and so on, as the litany in our Yom Kippur prayer goes. We have no idea about the specifics, and we may even hope desperately that teshuvah and tefillah and tzedaka will …. do what? Avert disaster? Save us as individuals from harsh judgment?
We don’t know what or how God judges. All we have is a question mark, a “what?”
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