My Yom Kippur Lesson
When being in the Russian High School, we used to write the in class assignment called How I spent my summer on the first day of school. One was not allowed to write just anything. You were supposed to write about the remarkable deed like helping an elderly lady cross a busy street. The alternative was to write about some important lesson one received.
I am not in Russia anymore. Neither do I go to high school (thanks God!), but today I have something to tell you.
How I spent my Yom Kippur or a Yom Kippur Lesson.
Each Yom Kippur is different for me. One year I would be all inspired and ready to repent, another - not so much. This year the process was not going at all. Nothing helped. Even my favourite books about great Hasidic Rebbes had a temporary effect. I tried and tried. I was more annoyed with things around me than anything else. So, I said: ok, I give up!
When I woke up this Yom Kippur morning, I realized it was pouring rain. I said: very good. I'm going to no synagogue today. My only non-leather shoes are not water resistant (one is not allowed to wear leather shoes on Yom Kippur). I am going to sleep, then wake up, read Hasidic stories, maybe something else. That is it. They will manage there without me.
I went back to sleep. Then I saw a dream. My Rabbi came to my dream. I got really nervous. Not every day your Rabbi comes to your dreams. In fact, it was the first time he did so. He was just looking at me. I know this look very well. My friend Chaim looks at me the same way when I decline to even meet yet another great Jewish guy he found for me. Chaim always gives me this look and then says: Leyele, you've got all your priorities wrong!
So, the Rabbi was looking at me, not saying anything, and I was getting a bit concerned in my dream that he would start to speak, because I remember one of his sermons where he was telling the story of a Rebbe rebuking a student for smoking on Shabbat by holding the student's hand and saying: Shabbes, Shabbes (I have to you use Shabbes here - though I dislike the Ashkenazic pronounciation, but the word Shabbes was used in the original story). I definitely did not want my Rabbi to start telling me: Yom Kippur, Yom Kippur.
So, I woke up pretty distressed and thought: ok, the Rabbi is calling. I can't miss that call! I started to get ready to go to synagogue.
Twenty minutes after, walking in the pouring rain in my non water-resistant shoes and fighting the wind with my umbrella, I was thinking that if the Rabbi wanted to deliver a message in my dream, he most definitely succeeded.
No matter how well or how horrible my personal atonement goes, I still have the responsibility and obligation to be present during the important moments in the Jewish calendar to be together with my people. By this I ensure the continiuty of the Jewish tradition.