By Rabbi Daniela Szuster
B´nei Israel Congregation, Costa Rica
The Strength of the Collective Viddui
The Viddui, confession of our sins, is one of the main concepts of Yom Kippur. Sages consider the Viddui as a Mitzvah, and its source is found in the Torah: “When a man or woman commits any wrong toward a fellow man […] he shall confess the wrong that he has done…” (Num. 5:6-7). At the same time, the Vidduiconstitutes one of the steps of Teshuvah, repentance; the fact of acknowledging oursins and mistakes, admitting them and expressing them, so as not to repeat them.
It is often difficult to express our mistakes in words; thus, our tradition has developed two specific prayers with the purpose of guiding us and helping us to confess our mistakes.
One of those tefillot is “Ashamnu”, in which we say "We have incurred guilt, we have betrayed, we have stolen, we have spoken falsely…”, and which we recite thumping our fist over our hearts, to express that our repentance is sincere and comes from our heart. In this prayer, each transgression starts with a different letter, finally making up the entire alphabet. One of the explanations for this acrostic way of writing the prayer is that, since all the letters of the alphabet appear, all possible misdemeanors of human beings are included within this small text. Therefore, each person should acknowledge the sins and mistakes he/she has committed.