Igor's not here today

Here, from Huntingdon, New York, comes a preview of a preparatory program for the High Holy Days that reads as follows:

Cheshbon HaNefesh: Accounting of the Soul for the High Holidays

The High Holiday season invites us to look at our lives, in the words of Pirkei Avot: “Where do we come from and where are we going?” But what is the specific process we might take to do this? Join us at the beginning of the month of preparation, to receive a specific program, and let's begin together.

“Where do we come from and where are we going?” Pirkei Avot does indeed quote something like these words, but there is something -- or rather someone -- who is missing. In full, the mishnah in question (Avot 3:1, taught by Akavya ben Mahalalel) goes like this:

Reflect upon three things and you will not come to the grip of sin Know from where you came, where you are going, and before whom you are destined to give a judgement and accounting. From where you came—from a putrid drop; where you are going—to a place of dust, maggots and worms; and before whom you are destined to give a judgement and accounting—before the supreme King of Kings, the Holy One, blessed be He.

In other words, the punchline of this mishnah is all about God and the point of doing one's chesbhon hanefesh ("an account of one's soul") -- but God sitting in judgement does not get a plug in the program mentioned above.

This rather reminds me of an old Russian Communist-era joke about two men who are toiling all day long at their work. One assiduously digs holes in the ground and the other equally assiduously fills them in again. A foreign tourist, watching this pointless work with incredulity, asks them what on earth they are doing. The hole-digger leans on his shovel and explains:

We usually work as a team of three. I dig the holes, Igor plants the trees and Anatoly then replaces the soil. But Igor's not here today ...

In like vein, the exercise of asking ourselves where we have come from and where we are going is a bit empty if there is no-one before whom we have to justify our journey and what we do along the way.