An old proverb has it: position is everything in life. Muslim prostration reflects the belief of Islam that God is everything and humans are nothing. Christian kneeling reflects the belief of Christianity that humans need help in being reconciled with God, that God has to get down to our level in order to forgive human flaws. And Jewish standing during prayer reflects the assertion that even sinful, flawed humans possess a basic dignity that we don’t need to discard in order to become one with God.
When the great early-20th century philosopher Hermann Cohen rediscovered his Jewish heritage, one of the things that most impressed him was this point: that Jews stand during Yom Kippur. That God doesn’t want us to come to him without dignity, facing the earth. Rather, God forgives us while we’re standing erect, with our faces looking ahead towards the future, and with our eyes directed towards heaven.
I hope that during Neilah you will appreciate this truth. Confessing what we’ve done wrong and asking for forgiveness doesn’t mean throwing away our self-respect. It means affirming our self-respect. That is why we stand, assuming the physical position that affirms our dignity as human beings. They used to tell how the old Modznitzer Rebbe would sing the confessional of the Al Het to a waltz tune. When people asked him why he used a happy melody rather than a sad one, he replied: “If the king asked you to clean up his throne room, wouldn’t you be happy for the honor to do it?”
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