Candle lighting for the last of the fall High Holy Days, Shemini Atzeret and Simchat Torah, is less than three hours away. Once those candles are lit the holiday will officially begin and I will shut off my computer and phone in order to better immerse myself in my Jewish life and the rituals surrounding the holiday. I will eat large meals with good friends, sing and dance in my synagogue with the Torah in my arms, and nap. A lot. I have spent a lot of days like this in the last four weeks. Starting with Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year, in early September, each week has had one or two such holy days where work stops. How joyous! But the anticipation to these holidays, as many religious Jews will tell you, is filled with stress and a whole lot of running around, trying to get everything ready and clean and set and cooked and prepared and AAAHHHHH! before the sun begins its descent. So as I count down the minutes until candle lighting, trying very hard to remember to breathe and take a moment for myself, I am also saying a little slightly counter-intuitive prayer: "Thank you, G-d, that the holiday season is nearly over!" For each of the last six years, Rosh Hashanah and subsequent month of holidays has brought me both joy and conflict as I try to negotiate the happiness of having a beautiful community with which to celebrate alongside the disappointment when J is unable to join me for much of it. This year, I approached the season with added trepidation, having spent the last five months struggling with my personal religious practice and identity. It manifested itself in doubt, frustration, anger, and the complete inability to sit through a single Shabbat service. I was antsy and felt entirely detached from the text in my prayer book or, for that matter, the people sitting next to me, and I had no idea to whom, or what, I was praying. G-d had never felt like an entity I could depend on, so I rarely felt comfort in prayer, at least insofar as I thought it might make a tangible difference in my circumstances. I had never felt like I could ask something of G-d and expect it to become reality, or that the things in my life were G-d's responsibility. It always seemed too haphazard a theology that did nothing to explain the greatest injustices and tragedies of our world, and the challenges I faced this year only weakened any hints of faith I might have had. So as the new year loomed, with its hours-long services and lofty Hebrew liturgy, with its limitations and practices that disrupt quotidian life, with Yom Kippur's difficult 25-hour fast (no food or water), I had no idea how I would make it through. Then a few weeks before Rosh Hashanah a friend told me about an alternative Yom Kippur service he was planning with his wife. The intention was to create an intimate gathering of young Jews in the neighborhood who wanted the traditional liturgy but in a nontraditional setting. I was immediately intrigued, because for as much as I love my own established synagogue I felt desperately that I needed something different to shake me out of my complacency. As it turned out, that's exactly what I got. The alternate service was held in a rag-tag event space that was just oh-so-Brooklyn. Exposed brick to one side, white painted brick with an abstract mural on the other, blue concrete floors covered in tattered rugs, and exposed beams above. Beyond heavy velvet curtains and strings of keys on fishing line, artificial ivy and strings of festive patio lights criss-crossed the ceiling where three disco balls - one in the shape of a shark - hung. A kitchenette in one corner featured shelves, one devoted to dishes, the other to a display of traditional instruments from around the world. Mandolin, djembe, kalimba, pan flute, and so on. We stood facing a small stage flanked with sofas. The mantle displayed a pink tricycle to the left, an electric guitar on the right, and a small shofar in the center. To the side was a theremin, the first I'd ever seen in real life. And hanging above the mantle was a massive red heart studded with red lights glowing on its perimeter, five of which were burnt out or absent. It was toward this heart that we prayed. Every year throughout Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur we pray to be signed and sealed in the Book of Life for the coming year. I always imagined a massive leather-bound book set upon a pedestal, filled with names written with a feather quill. We are not destined for the Book of Life without making a case for ourselves and promising to be better in the next year than we were in the last. As the shofar sounds in the final moment of Yom Kippur, the Book closes, resounding like thunder, and our fate for the year is sealed. Whether we live or die is no longer up to us. I suppose I believed it to a point, having nothing else in its stead. But did I really believe my life hung in the balance? That I might die if I didn't pray hard enough or apologize to the right people? No, I'm not sure I did. This year, as I swayed beneath faux ivy and Disco Shark, my hunger so much less noticeable than in years past, I conjured an alternative interpretation to the Book of Life quandary, an alternative befitting my surroundings. What if instead of a literal reading it could be taken more metaphorically and spiritually? Instead of the Book of Life, could it be the Book of Life Worth Living? The first ten days of the Jewish year are intended for reflection, self-examination, and the reparation of relationships with people and G-d. It is a time of forgiveness and letting go of the burdensome guilt that has built up over the course of the year or of many. Ideally by the time we break our fast at Yom Kippur's end we are starting with a clean slate, a pure soul. But what of those grudges we hold even then, or the personal sins for which we have not forgiven ourselves? They weigh on us, sometimes imperceptibly, and cloud the happiness that lies ahead. With pain in our hearts, can we truly live a meaningful, joyous life? To be inscribed and sealed in the Book of Life, then, is not literally about life and death but about the fulness with which we are capable of living when we relieve ourselves of unnecessary burdens. When we start our year knowing we have been forgiven by those we've hurt and having forgiven those who harmed us (ourselves and G-d included), we can live with greater joy and intention. Where is G-d's judgement in all of this? I'm not entirely sure. Maybe I'll figure that out next year, in whatever new home J and I happen to be.
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AuthorNashira is a music teacher and proud Small-Town Jew who, after surthriving six years in Brooklyn for her husband's surgical residency, is finally back in Wisconsin where she belongs! At least until the end of the two-year surgical fellowship, that is. It's a wild ride, and she's ready to tell you all about it! Archives
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