Children ride bicycles on an empty street, on Yom Kippur, in Jerusalem, Israel, Sept. 28, 2020. Photo: Reuters / Ammar Awad.

We are now in the Jewish month of Elul, where we say goodbye to the “lazy days of summer,” and get back to business. The religious academies re-open. We blow the shofar every morning and say an extra psalm as we start preparing for the heavy atmosphere of the Yamim Noraim — the Days of Awe.

In some communities, we will say additional Selichot, penitential poems, every morning. And yet the pinnacle of serious atonement is Yom Kippur, which ironically is described in the Mishna as one of the happiest days in the year, where love and marriage figure most prominently. How can we reconcile these paradoxical moods?

Mystically speaking, the month of Elul is characterized by love. This is meant to emphasize the nature of our relationship with God, which is based on love. Instead of the remote theoretical God of theology, this is a very sensual, immediate, and interactive passion. When Rabbi Akiva said that The Song of Songs was the holiest book of the Bible, he meant that its passionate description of love between two parties best characterized the nature of the love between us and God and did this more accurately than any other part of the holy book.

If that is so, then why do many Jews view Yom Kippur as a time to be scared, frightened, and required to appease an angry Power through self-denial, penance, and discipline?

One reason is that the medieval, pious Jews of Western Europe, introduced a very heavy layer of negativity and self-denial into our practice. At the time of the Christian mood of martyrdom that inspired the Crusades, Judaism in Europe, too, adopted the sort of mindset that led to suicides, such as those in York and Mainz, and self-imposed destruction as a response to oppression.

The constant litany of oppression that followed the Jews eastward only added to the gloom and doom and joyless attitude of life and religion. This can be found in the Yom Kippur liturgy, too. Suffering seemed to be the language of religious worship, and one hears echoes in the mournful way that many Orthodox rabbis recite blessings under the chupa as though they were at a funeral.

Mysticism acted as an antidote. But it, too, was divided between those schools who focused on discipline, self-denial, and pain as the way to God, as opposed to those who stressed ecstasy, song, and delight. Hasidism initially stressed the simple pleasures of life and tried to bring light into the lives of the downtrodden and religiously depressed or disenfranchised, but in the various arguments that divided the movement in the 19th century, the dominant, if not the universal, mood took on a rejectionism that delighted in making life as different and as difficult as possible.

So, instead of preparing for the New Year by determining to enjoy God’s world even more than we have, we automatically assume that we will have to be even more restrictive. Consider that the Bible commands only one fast day in the year. How many do we have now?

What are the dominant Biblical festivals? Ones that command us to be joyful. Yet what does the average Jew associate with Judaism nowadays? Often pain, and rules that tell them what not to do.

We all need to feel part of a community — especially now, when our open society allows us so much freedom. But we must not neglect our spiritual souls, and we must be allowed to express ourselves spiritually in different ways. When we enter a house of prayer, we need to find one part of the service that we can respond to — one idea — and then lose ourselves in a spiritual world.

I am not one for thumping my breast. And I will also try to celebrate during the High Holidays this year.

The author is a writer and rabbi, currently based in New York.