YK5786

YK 5786 would be a great name for a rock band. Joke. But for me, there’s nothing funny about Yom Kippur. Not because the holiday is framed as our last chance in the calendar year to get right with our fellows and with the Divine, but rather, because: you know. What a shlepp. Fasting? Not my favorite. Standing for hours on end praying in Hebrew? It doesn’t grab me.

And yes, of course I know that Judaism is designed as a communal exercise rather than an opportunity for individual enlightenment à la EST training or instant-Kabbala per  the pop icon Madonna and others of her very pop-star ilk. Even so, every year, as I sit and stand, sit and stand, earnestly trying to absorb the transformative meaning of the day, I’m left with the same old same old, in my case, a combination of hunger, frustration, and a deep sense that there’s something I’m just not getting.

I suspect that I’m far from alone. After all, Judaism doesn’t require faith, let alone belief in God. My father still davens at the same Orthodox shul he’s attended since the Eisenhower administration, and though he’s deeply informed by pretty much everything Judaism has to offer, he’s agnostic to the bone. As is my deeply Jewish husband. Countless others as well.

But I believe in God, and always have, and that’s because, in the words of my Orthodox grandfather, a world without God just doesn’t make sense. (A world with God doesn’t make much sense either, but there you have it.) Also, from the time I toddled I sensed some something that was both in my heart and outside of me, and by the time I was 6 or so, I was talking regularly to God. I still chat regularly with the Holy One Blessed Be He, but I still address him as plain old God. As in “Hi, God, it’s me again. I know You have bigger problems on your mind but might you send me guidance on…” Or I pray for healing for those I love. Or clarity. World peace? Sure, I sometimes throw world peace in too, along with the cessation of suffering for those who are victims of war and famine and race and national hatred and flood and disease and earthquake and violence and rape, but who am I kidding? Mainly I ask God to help me out in my own quotidian life.

Along the way, I’ve learned to rely on God not only to keep my secrets, but to nudge me in the right direction, whether that be picking up the phone to make an apology, keeping my mouth shut on matters that I desperately want to weigh in on, or stopping doom scrolling already.

But Yom Kippur? The grand confession, the grand gesture of submission to God’s laws? I’d never skip it, but look forward to it as an opportunity to clean my soul? So far, so never happened.

Which brings me to This is Real and You Are Completely Unprepared, by Rabbi Alan Lew, in my view the best book ever on the subject of Yom Kippur. Among other wonders of the book, Rabbi Lew argues that one of the themes of YK is that is a rehearsal for our deaths, and therefore a call to come out of our collective unconscious slumber, our ho-hum everyday consciousness, and be as children who are still entranced by and in love with the wonders of the every day. I love this book so much I don’t have words to describe how much I love this book. But when the actual day comes and I’m sitting in synagogue wearing tennis shoes and listening to the chanting and singing around me? I keep saying the same thing, but I’ll say it again. For me it is an endurance test that I’d never miss, if only to be surrounded by the sweetness of being with friends and family, and as an occasion to honor my Orthodox ancestors.

Like most Jews, I have no answers. Just a deep yearning inside me.