Yom Kippur Eve: Anxiety, Kol Nidrei, and the Office Assassins

Anxiety is not usually my Yom Kippur accessory. I arrive most years with anticipation, like I’m queuing up for a soul-audit: I know I’m guilty, I know the charges, I’m just hoping for a lenient judge and maybe community service instead of prison. But this year? Anxiety. Sharp, constant, insistent.

Some of it is the office. Always the office. I tell myself my work speaks louder than any gossip, but sabotage has a way of slithering in through the cracks. My enemies — real or imagined, what’s the difference? — have the stamina of marathoners and the subtlety of circus clowns. So yes, I am nervous. Even on erev Yom Kippur, while still at my desk, knowing I should be home clearing a sacred space in the clutter to light candles — or at least finding a flat surface where the candles won’t burn the house down.

And then comes Kol Nidrei. The haunting, wrenching declaration that never fails to pin me to the pew. A reminder that I want better midot:

• Be less judgy (a laughable goal for someone who catalogues human flaws like bird species).

• Speak less of others (a challenge when gossip is basically a team sport).

• Save money (try telling that to the bank fees).

• Be thinner, warmer, kinder — all the impossible demands that sound holy in synagogue and unravel at the first sight of cake.

This year, though, forgiveness feels different. Harder. Not just about my coworkers with sharpened pencils or myself with my sharpened tongue. It’s about the government too.

Normally, governments earn our ridicule — and mine in spades. But this year? This is wartime Israel. And maybe, just maybe, they are bravely doing what no other government would have the gall, the grit, the sheer audacity to do. They’re governing in extremis. It’s not pretty. It’s not polished. But perhaps this brutal, unyielding mode of leadership is what Israel needs right now, in this place, in this time. In peace, we’d demand something else: vision, kindness, sanity. In war, maybe what we need is raw nerve. The ability to make impossible decisions no one will thank them for. Maybe this is the kind of governing that can only exist in war — and thank G-d for that, because peace-time requires something entirely different.

And still, even as I wrestle with that uneasy forgiveness, my mind snaps back to the hostages. All of them. Not the symbolic few, not the politically expedient ones. Every single one. How do we stand before G-d on Yom Kippur, fasting and pleading for our lives, while members of our own people sit captive in Gaza? This isn’t theology; it’s amputation. We are missing parts of ourselves, and no prayer feels whole until they are home.

And then there is family. Scattered across continents and time zones, so even as I enter the silence of Yom Kippur here in Ra’anana, they’re hours behind or ahead, busy with their own preparations. The separation stings sharper now. Forgiveness feels like shouting across oceans, hoping the words reach them intact. We are together in covenant but apart in time — a cruel joke when the whole point of this day is unity.

So yes, I am anxious. About my job. About my clutter. About forgiveness for my enemies, my colleagues, my leaders, myself. About the hostages who must be returned. About family voices muffled by geography.

But maybe that is the whole of Yom Kippur: standing before G-d stripped bare of excuses, admitting that we are fragile, furious, imperfect creatures who are doing the best we can in impossible times. And somehow, through His mercy, we are forgiven.