In Judaism the concept of repentance is one of returning to the purer version of yourself, one of inner reflection, one of concentrating on the things that you have done wrong to other people…..AND THEN FEELING FUCKING HORRIBLE ABOUT IT!!!! Hence…Jewish guilt, which in my understanding of its actual essence is just a bi-product of indigestion. What other religion would take its time to devote 10 full days to telling its people, “The gates of heaven are open! Tell your friends that you are sorry, do teshuva!” This is quite a taxing endeavor.
I remember in my childhood wondering what consequences would befall me for not asking forgiveness from people that I wronged. Would my grades suffer? Would my acne flare up? Would I experience a sudden bout of halitosis and flatulence on a first date with a hot girl? (Oh wait. this happens all the time anyway…. like every morning on the 4/5/6 train in Union Square; poor people) For many years, this kind of superstitious anxiety followed me everywhere I went and so I always took Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur very seriously when it came to apologizing to people that I had wronged. I would wager that my ancestors had similar anxieties yet they had to deal with real problems. Will the Russians burn my house down this year in another pogrom? Will my son be admitted to study at university with the goyim finally so that he doesn’t have to be a tailor? Will there be enough potatoes and vodka to get through the winter?
We love to say that that our traditions are applicable to every generation. Yet when I read the liturgy of Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, I can’t help but feel that it was written for an audience of people who were extremely traumatized by perpetual abuse. Its residual effect is this, “Life is bad, God must be punishing us collectively for doing something wrong. Let's feel guilty all day and hope that something becomes of it.” Thus, Yom Kippur is born!! And that is why it is tradition to feel guilty with superstitious consequences, even when our formative experiences have nothing to do with the holiday’s original intention. The word “Teshuva” is the Hebrew word for repentance; a bad translation. Repentance will always remind me of the knights, they were the penitents ones, even though they raped and pillaged my ancestors and traumatized them to the point of writing the tomes that we say today on Yom Kippur!!
At some point I might have finally realized that yes, I know that I have wronged a lot of people and I know that I have been an asshole, but who hasn’t? Like the time I broke up with that Israeli girl I was seeing in Haifa. She brought me a Chanukah present; Scrabble; the Hebrew version. I had been talking her ear off about my fascination of the revival of Hebrew during the Second Aliya to Palestine over too much wine the weekend beforehand, and about how I longed to be a kind of wordsmith like the late Eleazer Ben Yehuda, who compiled the first modern Hebrew dictionary at the turn of the century. The tactic worked too well and I wooed her heart to Haifa. In all honesty, it was a thoughtful present and I didn’t have to break up with her right there on the spot. I could have had more tact and let things fizzle out that night. She was supposed to go back to Tel Aviv anyway. It wasn’t even the cuddling that bothered me; I just couldn’t stand to listen to her talk anymore. I wanted to be alone; utterly alone. Who could marry a voice like that? Why did she have to come visit me? And the alcohol was wearing off as well. So when I told her that I wasn’t coming back to visit her because I simply didn’t want to, she said, “Atah charah, ata yodeah et ze” (You’re shit, you know that!) and then fell to the ground crying. She flung the board game at me, the scrabble pieces were chucked from the bag onto the cobble stone street, in the Wadi Nisnas section of downtown Haifa, just a block from my favorite Hummus spot. She then calmly collected herself and made an all out sprint for the train station. I didn’t follow. I went to get hummus instead.
Before you judge me too roughly, just remember that you the reader were probably once a destructive emotional tidal wave in someone’s life as well at some point; wrecking every ounce of someone’s dignity, making him or her question the very essence of a right to exist all together. It’s an awful trial that we all must go through on both ends; it’s part of growing up. But from that brokenness, from that shattered moment we hopefully reemerge stronger. I am reminded of a poignant moment in the liturgy of Kol Nidre – the prayer on Erev Yom Kippur – when the chazzan mentions the fleeting and finite characteristics that humans have. At one point he chants that we are nothing but cheres nishbar (broken shards). This telling metaphor implies that though we may find ourselves to be broken, we are not beyond repair and neither are our troubled and complicated relationships. I must say however that while this is a beautiful metaphor there are some shards that just need to be swept under the rug for all eternity. Bar tender!! Pour me another Jameson!!!
For me, this reflective time of year for Am Yisrael can be summed up by an experience I had coming home from Shul on the first day of Rosh Hashanah in late September of 2007. Back then I lived in an apartment on 95th street and West End. I was reading a rashi on the story of Joseph and his brothers; I was taking a class at the time and was preparing for the following week’s lecture. I remember having my living room windows open, and a cool cross draft shuttled through the apartment into my bedroom. It was amazingly delicious. The summer heat had been oppressive and I had spent most of it hiding in my bedroom with the air conditioner after taking multiple cold showers for three straight months. Now I could finally gaze out my living room window into the September courtyard without a dank sweat dripping down my buttery face. For the voyeuristic type, this courtyard was magnificent. We could all see each other across the way taking part in all sorts of shenanigans that no one would ever want to admit to; like that guy that would juggle chicken bones while listening to obscure French folk music, or the game of naked twister.
Particularly amazing was the fat woman that practiced Italian opera during the day, in a ribbed white tank top that revealed her sagging handles of love, let alone her other endowed attributes covered up by sausage linked curls of reubenesque hair locks. Her voice was particularly piercing; it was so high pitched that it probably could have opened a garage door of a north Jersey suburb. On the first day of Rosh Hashanah, as I was reading the Torah, dozing off on my couch, dreaming about Joseph being tossed into a pit, in Biblical Hebrew I suddenly hear, “;LA!!! LA LA LA LA LA…..LA..LA!!” I bounced out of the couch like an epileptic. She was practicing some famous tune that I only know from Bugs Bunny cartoons.
“That’s really annoying,” I muttered to myself, “She’s ruining my Yuntif nap. Fuck!”
I yawned, and suddenly realized that I had a bit of sweet tooth. I rose and walked over to the pantry in the kitchenette and ate a couple of Oreos. I brought my book with me and continued to read Rashi’s commentary, explaining how the oldest son, Reuben tried to stop the rest of his brothers from killing Joseph as I was munching on my mid-day junk food.
“Hmmm,” I thought to myself, “Maybe I will have some milk with my Oreos.” So I pulled out the carton of milk and poured myself a nice tall glass. As I tilted the glass, I enjoyed the satisfying and tantalizing feeling of drinking milk after eating chocolate; that kind of satisfaction that one can only get after Oreos, tastycakes, or twinkies, and in mid-gulp, a piercing bullet of sound shatters my ear drums as my lower back was thrown against the wall, like a dog wincing in pain from a high pitched whistle, :La!! La la la la la !!! La la la la !!!”
In an instant, I spewed milk vomit and coughed onto my sacred ancient text, in the same instant, the glass shattered against the floor sending shards flying everywhere. And in the same instant, Allen, my roommate entered the apartment returning from his day at shul as well. He was the one that had lent me his Rashi.
“What?” he said, “You don’t like Rashi’s commentary?”
“No,” I replied with milk dripping down my cheeks and coughing, “It was the fat lady singing Figaro.”
Such is the stuff of life following the Yamim Noraim (The days of awe). I’m afraid of the fat lady singing while I am trying to have my mid-afternoon snack. She shatters my glass of delight and satisfaction. She makes it cheres nishbar. And then I have to get the dust pan and clean it up!
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