Today, on Erev Yom Kippur, I find myself thinking about a line from Ha’Azinu, the Torah portion we just read yesterday.

Ha’Azinu is the song Moshe sings to the people at the very end of his life. These are among his final words to them—the things he most wants them to carry with them as they go on without him. And near the end, he says:

כִּי לֹֽא־דָבָ֨ר רֵ֥ק הוּא֙ מִכֶּ֔ם כִּי־ה֖וּא חַיֵּיכֶ֑ם וּבַדָּבָ֣ר הַזֶּ֗ה תַּֽאֲרִ֤יכוּ יָמִים֙

For it is not an empty thing for you, for it is your life; and through this thing, you will lengthen your days.

What does it mean to lengthen our days?

The Torah uses this language in a few other places. We are told that sending away the mother bird before taking her eggs or chicks will lengthen our days. We are told that honoring our parents will lengthen our days. And in the second paragraph of Shema, we pray:

לְמַעַן יִרְבּוּ יְמֵיכֶם וִימֵי בְנֵיכֶם

So that your days, and your children’s days, will be many…

And yet we know, from our experiences as human beings, that doing the right things doesn’t necessarily lengthen one’s life, at least not in a literal sense.

The Talmud grapples painfully with this reality. It tells the story of a boy whose father asks him to climb a tree to fetch some eggs from a nest. The boy climbs the tree for his father and makes sure to shoo away the mother bird—but then he falls and dies. He did both mitzvot for which the Torah promises long life—sending away the mother bird and honoring one’s parents—and in that very moment his life is cut short.

The sages offer one answer: “lengthening your days” refers not to this world, but to Olam HaBa, the world to come.

But I wonder if there is another way to think about what it means for our days to be long.

Not how many days we are given, but what we are able to see in them.

When Yaakov, after all the years of separation from his son Yosef, comes down to Egypt, Pharaoh asks him how old he is. Yaakov answers:

מְעַט וְרָעִים הָיוּ יְמֵי שְׁנֵי חַיַּי

Few and bad have been the days of the years of my life.

Yaakov had lived through so much—including losing his beloved Rachel and then, for so many years, his beloved Yosef. And perhaps because his days had been so difficult, they felt to him like they were too few.

How do we look back at the days we have been given?

Yom Kippur gives us a very particular way of looking back.

Again and again, we say וִדּוּי, Vidui,........

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