The Rav's telling of divine forgiveness cast within nature.
“I remember how once, on the Day of Atonement, I went outside into the synagogue courtyard with my father [R. Moses Soloveitchik], just before the Ne’ilah service. It had been a fresh, clear day, one of the fine, almost delicate days of summer’s end, filled with sunshine and light. Evening was fast approaching, and an exquisite autumn sun was sinking in the west, beyond the trees of the cemetery, into a sea of purple and gold. R. Moses, a halakhic man par excellence, turned to me and said: “This sunset differs from ordinary sunsets for with it forgiveness is bestowed upon us for our sins” (the end of the days atones). The Day of Atonement and the forgiveness of sins merged and blended here with the splendor and beauty of the world and with the hidden lawfulness of the order of creation and the whole was transformed into one living, holy, cosmic phenomenon”.
Joseph B. Soloveitchik’s Halakhic Man, pg. 38
Submitted by Debbie Stone