Good morning. I want to say something against purity and against all-or-nothing purity politics.
It is perhaps ironic to say that today, on Yom Kippur, the day of our purification. We are here for a spiritual cleansing, personally and collectively. But we are also here as leftists (generally) or activists (some of us) or people who want the world to be a better place (all of us, hopefully).
As Sebastian the crab in The Little Mermaid tells us, “The human world, it's a mess”. Whether or not it’s better under the sea I cannot tell you, but I bet it’s just as complicated.
“We are in and of the world, contaminated and affected” says Alexis Shotwell in her book Against Purity. She continues: “Since it is not possible to avoid complicity, we do better to start from an assumption that everyone is implicated in situations we (at least in some way) repudiate. We are compromised and have made compromises, and this will continue to be the way we craft the worlds to come, whatever they might turn out to be.”
Her worlds to come here, I think, were not quite our World to Come. But maybe not so different either–a plethora of potentialities, leading to (a) better world(s). We sometimes concentrate so much on a forthcoming perfect world, in fact, that we forget to ground ourselves in olam hazeh, this world, the messy imperfect world that is.
In ada morse’s words, “Rebbe Nachman once taught that while everyone believes in olam haba, belief in olam hazeh is much harder: ‘It’s possible that there is such a thing as olam hazeh in some universe, but in this universe, [olam hazeh] appears to be gehinnom (hell)’” It is hard, in our messed up world, to see the glory–to see the beauty–to see hashem. But it’s what we have, now.
Though yom kippur is the cleansing mikveh of the people Israel, we do not have all our sins automatically wiped today. Per Mishna Yoma 9:8, we are purified of sins between us and hashem but not automatically those ben adam lechavero, between a person and their fellow, unless we appease the other person.
Daniel Boyarin in the Halachic Left publication Strengthen Us This Day touches on this topic: “In doing teshuva, we must ask ourselves [...] how do we repair harm that is not directly between us and another individual, but connected to broader oppressive systems that we function within and benefit from. Bein adam lehavero concerns all humans.”
We do our best in this messy world. Not in that each of us does the most ideal best option all the time, that just brings us back to the all or nothing purity thinking, but we do act as we can in the circumstances we’re in. “There is no ethical consumption under capitalism” and yet, we can consume thoughtfully when we can, you know?
Daniel Boyarin also explains that our leftist actions through the year are linked to our devotion this, and each, yom kippur; going so far as to say, “It is the constant effort throughout the year that makes it possible to search for atonement on Yom Kippur.”
We give constant effort and receive small rewards; sometimes focusing on olam haba in exclusion of muddy, impure olam hazeh. Ada Morse says: “The more caught up we are in thoughts of olam haba, the more we do things for the sake of olam haba, the more olam hazeh starts to look like gehinnom, the more we see this world through the muddy window of despair.”
Purity politics teaches us: we are disposable if we say the wrong word, that there is no way back. But teshuva, tefila, and tzedakah will lessen the harsh decree of hashem, and olam hazeh–this world we live in–has its own teshuva pathways–if we work at it and within it as things stand.
It’s hard for me to imagine a perfect messianic era. But I can believe in a better world in the future that we work for, that we build together. Not a transformation to a perfect one. But a better one.
Allow me to end with another quote from Alexis Shotwell in Against Purity: “The slate has never been clean, and we can’t wipe off the surface to start fresh—there’s no fresh to start. […] all there is, while things perpetually fall apart, is the possibility of acting from where we are.”