I'd Rather Be Barefoot

This Dvar Torah was written as part of a group that says Tehillim/Psalms together during the month of Elul (through Yom Kippur).

Unlike the common stereotype of women, I hate shoe shopping. Come to think of it, I don’t particularly care for shoes in general. Any one who knows me well, knows I prefer to be barefoot most of the time. Perhaps that is why, for the last several years, I have been fascinated by the prohibition of wearing shoes on Yom Kippur.

Although I grew up in Pennsylvania, my childhood memories of Yom Kippur are all Brooklyn based, and one of the strongest images in my mind is of men and women dressed to the nines wearing bright white sneakers. How odd everyone must have seemed to the non-Jews driving past - but then again, the Talmud records that the rabbis of the Roman era wore sandals made of bamboo, reeds and palm branches (Yoma 78 a-b)...sounds very comfortable.

So what does this whole deal with shoes mean?: I understand fasting as a means of connecting to the spiritual over the physical, but what do shoes have to do with it?

Through various citations, the Talmud comes to assert that one who is unshod is afflicted (see Yoma 77a-78b). Ok, so the real heart of my question...why don’t we go barefoot on Yom Kippur? I, for one, would be overjoyed.

This is a particularly intriguing question when one recalls the fact that when Moshe approached the burning bush, God instructed him to remove his shoes. Joshua was similarly commanded by the Host of the Lord just before entering the land.

Why then do we not try to emulate these great men?

In both cases, the Torah states that they had to remove their shoes because they were standing on sacred ground, they were in the Divine presence. Perhaps God required Moses to remove his shoes so that while he was in the Divine presence, the ultimate spiritual Source, he could stay connected to the physical. After all, our physical selves are that part of Adam which God made from the ground, the adamah. 

Alas, the truth is that as holy and pure as we try to make ourselves or our shuls (or our living rooms, where many of us women daven), it isn’t all quite up to merit a shoes-off approach. In fact, one is not supposed to daven without shoes on unless one lives in a society where being barefoot is considered respectful and one would go barefoot in the presence of a king.

For thousands of years, almost all shoes were made of leather (ok, some places had wood). Now leather is made from animals and perhaps that is the key to the reason that LEATHER shoes, not all shoes are prohibited.

Moses needed to be barefoot in order to stay connected. When I am davening, I am far from being at risk of connecting so strongly to the ultimate source that my neshama, my spiritual essence, may not wish to stay with my guf (body).  I should only be at 1/100th of that level! But on Yom Kippur I want to connect to the greatest spiritual part that is within me, and therefore I refrain from that connection coming from my animalistic side (as represented by the leather). The issue of shoes on Yom Kippur, the affliction we must make, is not about comfort. It is about the leather itself. On Yom Kippur we are meant to be striving to be like angels - pure spirituality. In seeking to enhance the spiritual, one does not want to be tied down by one’s more animalistic nature.