The Al Cheit (Al Hayt) is a prayer that enumerates sins individuals have committed during the year for which they ask forgiveness at Yom Kippur, the Jewish Day of Atonement. Stew & I wrote this prayer, revised it each year to respond to a changing world. Until Stew's death in 2006 we read it at Havurah Shalom in Portland.
In 2011 our prayer became part of Occupy Kol Nidre services -- at Wall Street, in Portland Oregon & in Canada. Perhaps other places. I was delighted. As Stew would have been.
Many thanks to Aharon Varady of the Open Siddur Project http://opensiddur.org. Feel free to adopt, adapt & re-distribute under the Creative Commons Attribution/ShareAlike license. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/
Creative Commons By Attribution ShareAlike (CC BY-SA)
We have sinned
By yielding to confusion and falling into passivity
By indulging in fear
By giving in to anger
By not standing up for ourselves
By thinking about Jewish values only on holy days
By tolerating global warming, global disease and global poverty
By being cynical about repairing the world
By not defending Israel
By not defending Palestine
For all our sins, may the force that makes forgiveness possible,
forgive us, pardon us and grant us atonement
By not standing up to fanaticism, terrorism, rape and torture – no matter who the perpetrators are
By not rocking the boat
By not being grateful for our blessings
By not loving enough
By being indifferent to the rich getting richer and the poor staying miserable
By allowing greed, in others and in ourselves, to go unchecked
By not opposing laws that promise false security and deprive us of our freedoms and civil liberties
By not opposing ballot measures that deprive us of basic rights
For all our sins, may the force that makes forgiveness possible,
forgive us, pardon us and grant us atonement
By building fences on our borders
By not actively opposing war and invasion of sovereign nations
By being paralyzed by paranoia and hatred
By living in the past and the future but not in the present
By forgetting that we are co-creators of the Universe
By not visiting the sick and the dying
By not making the most of the limited time we have
By speaking loshen hara[1]
By forgetting how to smile
For all our sins, may the force that makes forgiveness possible,
forgive us, pardon us and grant us atonement
By hiding from our wrongdoings
By putting a stumbling block before the blind
By not searching for the truth, wherever it lies
By not recognizing the divine spark that dwells at the center of our being
By not forgiving and asking God for forgiveness
For all our sins, may the force that makes forgiveness possible,
forgive us, pardon us and grant us atonement
Notes:
- Misrepresenting, harmful speech