Why do we wear white on the day we come with all our stains?
Yom Kippur contains an almost paradoxical image. We arrive with a long list of sins, confess again and again, and in many communities we wear white.
We might expect such a day to be dressed in black.
But Isaiah says: “Though your sins be like scarlet, they shall be white as snow” (Isaiah 1:18). Rabbi Akiva ends tractate Yoma with the declaration that Israel is fortunate because our Father in Heaven purifies us.
Yom Kippur is not a celebration of guilt. It is a celebration of the possibility of becoming clean.
Some people are afraid to look honestly at their failures because they fear that admitting them will destroy their entire self-image. But the possibility of teshuvah is what allows honesty.
If a stain can never be removed, we will spend our lives hiding it. If it can be cleaned, we can finally stop pretending it is not there.
White on Yom Kippur does not say: I never sinned. It says: my sin does not have to become the color in which I keep living.