Upon observing Yom Kippur for the first time
Yesterday I observed Yom Kippur for the first time, with a (slightly fudged via a little black coffee) fast and six hours in the temple.
Both my parents were born Jewish, but neither of their families was observant. Then I was raised in… given that it was just Yom Kippur I will refrain from my usual sarcastic phrasing and describe it as its adherents do, as a non-Jewish spiritual path which believes that their spiritual master, Meher Baba, was God.
As you all know, I had a miserable time being raised on the ashram, secretly disbelieved in the divinity of Baba, and disagreed and still disagree with many of his teachings. (I can’t say I disagree with all of them as some were stuff like “do unto others.”) In particular, I had to recite prayers to Baba on a regular basis, composed by Baba to praise Baba or to repent to Baba to my sins. I could still recite every one of those damn prayers from memory.
It’s a toss-up which I loathed more, the prayer of praise to a God I disbelieved in or the prayer of repentance for sins which I mostly either hadn’t committed or didn’t believe were wrong. I don’t believe that thoughts can be morally wrong, so I hated having to repent for them. I wasn’t yet old enough to commit lustful actions, but I was old enough to believe that lust, by itself, was not a sin. There was also a lot of pressure to forgive everyone everything regardless of whether you felt genuinely forgiving, of what the wrong was, or of whether the person who did it had repented.
I could go on (and on! And on!), but suffice it to say that it took me till the age of nearly thirty-six (one more month!) to convince myself that I could get behind any conception of repentance, sin, forgiveness, and atonement. Actually, what mostly convinced me was that I had attended Rosh Hashanah services at the same temple last year right before the evil gay marriage ban was passed, and the rabbi gave an impassioned talk on “Is gay marriage kosher?” His conclusion was that, at least as far as his interpretation was concerned, it was both lawful and holy. I figured that any service he ran would be unlikely to morally repulse me.
I should explain that I do realize that the Jewish take on just about everything is completely different from the Baba take. However, 1) I don’t believe in God in the sense of a self-willed supernatural intelligence, 2) I swore after I left the ashram that I would never voluntarily make any prayer that I did not absolutely believe in.
I decided that whenever the liturgy said any name of God, I would take “God” to mean “all that exists and is good, including all that is good in humanity and all that is good in myself.” When I thought of it that way, I found that I actually did believe in virtually the entire service.
As for the extremely long list of sins to be repented of, the rabbi explained that they are to be repented collectively rather than individually regardless of what you actually committed, so that if there is even one person present who is the only person who committed a particular sin, no one will ever have to know who that is, and they won’t be held up to shame. That, I can get behind.
At a lull in the service, an acquaintance sitting beside me leaned over and said, “Rachel, could you speak to my son about why you come to temple on High Holy Days?”
Her son is 11. Thinking she thought maybe I seemed young and cool (hi, faulty self-image! I am closer to 40 than 30!) I whispered back, “I would, but I’m not sure I’m the best person to do it. You see, I guess you’re not aware, but-“
“Oh, Rachel, I’m completely aware,” she replied. “N- is an atheist too. That’s why I want you to talk to him!”
I didn’t actually get a chance to talk to him that day, but since I thought I was going to, I spent some time thinking about why I did come. Like many non-practicing and atheist Jews, I question my own authenticity as a Jew.
The night before, I had accidentally gone to the wrong location (the usual location of the synagogue, actually, but I’ll get to that) and stared in confusion at an entirely white-clad group separated by gender. One of them came and explained that I was welcome to join them, but I was probably looking for the other group that shared the space.
“I think they’re actually in a church tonight,” I said.
“A CHUUUUURCH?” the Orthodox guy exclaimed, rather like Lady Bracknell’s “A haaaaaandbag?!”
“Er, yes,” I said, recalling my own boggled reaction the first time I encountered that. “It’s just because it’s a much bigger space, and a lot of people show up on High Holy Days.”
The guy said, “Well, there’s a couple churches nearby they might be in, but I don’t know how you’ll figure out which one it is.”
“I imagine it’ll be easily recognizable by the large number of Jews outside,” I said.
The guy looked at me like I was the opposite of funny. I slunk away, feeling like I had just personally disgraced the entire concept of Reform Judaism.
So it was serendipitous when the rabbi in the… well… church building spoke on Reform Judaism, specifically on the feeling some Reform Jews have that they’re not “real Jews,” especially compared to Orthodox Jews. Unsurprisingly, he disagreed.
It was even more apt because I had been thinking about what it means to me to be a Jew. Yes, it’s about a community and an ethnic and cultural heritage. I’ve always known that. But I’m also interested in ways of being a moral and ethical person, and of how life should be lived, and of how to live up to one’s ideals. I think that Judaism has a lot to say about those matters that’s relevant to anyone regardless of belief in God, but specifically, relevant to me.
The church, incidentally, had a flier for the actual Christian congregation that read in part, “Are you seeking? We can give you answers.” I thought, “If that was a Jewish flier, it would say, “Are you seeking? We can give you more questions.””
As for Yom Kippur, I hadn’t actually intended to spend the day in the temple. I attended the morning service, dashed home to make a repair appointment, went ballistic over the phone with a “customer service” person after the “repairman” made it worse, then decided that I had just invalidated all my repentance for yelling at hapless cogs in the machine, and went back to repent some more, in the hope of making it stick this time.
I wore a coat that had belonged to a relative who had died, and spoke his name and others during the service.
When it was time to say the names of those suffering from illness or injury, I said some of your names.
My own name, Rachel, is part of the liturgy. My parents didn’t give me that name, which I chose partly to have a Jewish name and partly for the X-Men character. But yesterday, that choice seemed particularly right.
Both my parents were born Jewish, but neither of their families was observant. Then I was raised in… given that it was just Yom Kippur I will refrain from my usual sarcastic phrasing and describe it as its adherents do, as a non-Jewish spiritual path which believes that their spiritual master, Meher Baba, was God.
As you all know, I had a miserable time being raised on the ashram, secretly disbelieved in the divinity of Baba, and disagreed and still disagree with many of his teachings. (I can’t say I disagree with all of them as some were stuff like “do unto others.”) In particular, I had to recite prayers to Baba on a regular basis, composed by Baba to praise Baba or to repent to Baba to my sins. I could still recite every one of those damn prayers from memory.
It’s a toss-up which I loathed more, the prayer of praise to a God I disbelieved in or the prayer of repentance for sins which I mostly either hadn’t committed or didn’t believe were wrong. I don’t believe that thoughts can be morally wrong, so I hated having to repent for them. I wasn’t yet old enough to commit lustful actions, but I was old enough to believe that lust, by itself, was not a sin. There was also a lot of pressure to forgive everyone everything regardless of whether you felt genuinely forgiving, of what the wrong was, or of whether the person who did it had repented.
I could go on (and on! And on!), but suffice it to say that it took me till the age of nearly thirty-six (one more month!) to convince myself that I could get behind any conception of repentance, sin, forgiveness, and atonement. Actually, what mostly convinced me was that I had attended Rosh Hashanah services at the same temple last year right before the evil gay marriage ban was passed, and the rabbi gave an impassioned talk on “Is gay marriage kosher?” His conclusion was that, at least as far as his interpretation was concerned, it was both lawful and holy. I figured that any service he ran would be unlikely to morally repulse me.
I should explain that I do realize that the Jewish take on just about everything is completely different from the Baba take. However, 1) I don’t believe in God in the sense of a self-willed supernatural intelligence, 2) I swore after I left the ashram that I would never voluntarily make any prayer that I did not absolutely believe in.
I decided that whenever the liturgy said any name of God, I would take “God” to mean “all that exists and is good, including all that is good in humanity and all that is good in myself.” When I thought of it that way, I found that I actually did believe in virtually the entire service.
As for the extremely long list of sins to be repented of, the rabbi explained that they are to be repented collectively rather than individually regardless of what you actually committed, so that if there is even one person present who is the only person who committed a particular sin, no one will ever have to know who that is, and they won’t be held up to shame. That, I can get behind.
At a lull in the service, an acquaintance sitting beside me leaned over and said, “Rachel, could you speak to my son about why you come to temple on High Holy Days?”
Her son is 11. Thinking she thought maybe I seemed young and cool (hi, faulty self-image! I am closer to 40 than 30!) I whispered back, “I would, but I’m not sure I’m the best person to do it. You see, I guess you’re not aware, but-“
“Oh, Rachel, I’m completely aware,” she replied. “N- is an atheist too. That’s why I want you to talk to him!”
I didn’t actually get a chance to talk to him that day, but since I thought I was going to, I spent some time thinking about why I did come. Like many non-practicing and atheist Jews, I question my own authenticity as a Jew.
The night before, I had accidentally gone to the wrong location (the usual location of the synagogue, actually, but I’ll get to that) and stared in confusion at an entirely white-clad group separated by gender. One of them came and explained that I was welcome to join them, but I was probably looking for the other group that shared the space.
“I think they’re actually in a church tonight,” I said.
“A CHUUUUURCH?” the Orthodox guy exclaimed, rather like Lady Bracknell’s “A haaaaaandbag?!”
“Er, yes,” I said, recalling my own boggled reaction the first time I encountered that. “It’s just because it’s a much bigger space, and a lot of people show up on High Holy Days.”
The guy said, “Well, there’s a couple churches nearby they might be in, but I don’t know how you’ll figure out which one it is.”
“I imagine it’ll be easily recognizable by the large number of Jews outside,” I said.
The guy looked at me like I was the opposite of funny. I slunk away, feeling like I had just personally disgraced the entire concept of Reform Judaism.
So it was serendipitous when the rabbi in the… well… church building spoke on Reform Judaism, specifically on the feeling some Reform Jews have that they’re not “real Jews,” especially compared to Orthodox Jews. Unsurprisingly, he disagreed.
It was even more apt because I had been thinking about what it means to me to be a Jew. Yes, it’s about a community and an ethnic and cultural heritage. I’ve always known that. But I’m also interested in ways of being a moral and ethical person, and of how life should be lived, and of how to live up to one’s ideals. I think that Judaism has a lot to say about those matters that’s relevant to anyone regardless of belief in God, but specifically, relevant to me.
The church, incidentally, had a flier for the actual Christian congregation that read in part, “Are you seeking? We can give you answers.” I thought, “If that was a Jewish flier, it would say, “Are you seeking? We can give you more questions.””
As for Yom Kippur, I hadn’t actually intended to spend the day in the temple. I attended the morning service, dashed home to make a repair appointment, went ballistic over the phone with a “customer service” person after the “repairman” made it worse, then decided that I had just invalidated all my repentance for yelling at hapless cogs in the machine, and went back to repent some more, in the hope of making it stick this time.
I wore a coat that had belonged to a relative who had died, and spoke his name and others during the service.
When it was time to say the names of those suffering from illness or injury, I said some of your names.
My own name, Rachel, is part of the liturgy. My parents didn’t give me that name, which I chose partly to have a Jewish name and partly for the X-Men character. But yesterday, that choice seemed particularly right.