The Jaws of Life
The Jaws of Life seems like a contradiction in terms. The Jaws of Life is a device that saves lives after a vehicle crashes by opening wide enough to allow first responders to pry a person out of danger. The physics makes sense, it's the name that presents the challenge. Jaws is a threat, if not a very deadly shark than something else with nasty teeth waiting to sink into someone’s flesh. Why use the name here? It turns out that the device was named purposefully to evoke the phrase “jaws of death” coined by William Shakespeare (as many are) as a poetic way to refer to an imminent demise. So the Jaws of Life are a means of countering the Jaws of Death poised to swallow its prey.
So it is on Yom Kippur where we turn to the trapping of mortality, of decay - the white shroud that covers a body that neither eats nor drinks nor experiences any of the vitality of being alive. And from this facing the trappings of death, we are snatched from the jaws of complacency and surrender, pried out of what keeps us trapped and restored to new life.