On my way home from dropping my son off at day care, I stopped to pick up my dry cleaning. As I arrived, the woman who works at this particular dry cleaning (who always remembers who I am which always amazes me) told me that my "long white thing" came back with a stain still on it so she sent it back. It would be back this evening. What she was talking about was my kittel, the long white garment that I wear over the High Holidays. I said thank you and drove away, but couldn't help thinking about what an apt metaphor the stain on the kittel was.
Every High Holidays I appear exclusively in white symbolizing, among other things, my purity and spiritual cleanliness that holiday season. What a wonderful statement it would make if I were to show up in my white kittel, but with a large noticeable stain. As much as I would like to seem like I am entering the holidays pure and blameless, that stain is a reminder that none of us are coming before the Divine entirely pure. All of us have stains, all of us have mistakes and flaws. By coming before God with the stained kittel, I would be telling God that I am not blameless but instead asking God to accept me stains and all.
I will pick up my kittel tomorrow and I am hoping that the stain will not come out. I hope that I will be able to have the confidence and self-awareness to walk before my community and my God with a stained kittel, asking them both to accept me as I am, stains and all.
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