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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.
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Huh, I like that.
I found this post very interesting and familiar, being a Hindu agnostic. I find it pointless and disingenuous to say prayers I don't believe in, but sometimes I do fold my hands in front of an idol and ask for things, because what else are gods for? But I wonder whether they understand English, whether, if I am going to selectively pray JUST IN CASE, I ought to ask for things in Sanskrit.
I've participated in many poojas, presumably for my own benefit, and yet all I did was repeat some words in Sanskrit, put some water on leaves, move my hands when I was told. How could that possibly mean anything? What could it possibly do? Even if it were supposed to have the intended effect, why would the gods listen to me, who didn't believe in them?
Sometimes I like to believe in some sort of Intangible, just because it feels kind of right, just because there has to be some reason my life is a cosmic joke at times. Someone has to be appreciating our narratives.
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Also, for the record, I didn't think your post was tl;dr, and I'm glad it wasn't cut when I saw it, as it made me more likely to read the whole thing since I could see it wasn't all that long.
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Mazel tov!
>hugs!<
I went again to my new congregation, which is meeting in a local elementary school at this point (an improvement over the Catholic Church social hall we used last year, which has a serious mold problem). For Kol Nidrei (Sunday night) and Ne'ilah (the closing service yesterday evening), we had our choir and a three-piece combo (bass, drums, and flute) in addition to the cantor with his Spanish/folk guitar. When I told my sister about this, she said "You go to a hippie synagogue."
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I especially like:
I thought, “If that was a Jewish flier, it would say, “Are you seeking? We can give you more questions.””
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Thanks for this post.
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Several years back, I went with a friend to a service at her Reform synagogue, which was meant for people to bring their non-jewish friends (I'd call it interfaith except it was a straight jewish service, just with a Q&A period after.) During the Q&A, some boy who was clearly from a fairly fundamentalist Christian church essentially asked the rabbi if he believed in God, and the rabbi answered in nearly exactly the same terms you did -- God to him was not an outside force or a power, but the good in all of us and the world.
I think it broke the poor kid's brain to have a 'preacher' who didn't believe in God, in any Christian sense.
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:D I liked this! And the rest of the post.
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May the new year be a blessing.
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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.
That sounds pretty good to me. :)
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*hugs*
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I've posted on this in the past, but performing mitzvot automatically brings you closer to G-d even if you don't believe. (And truthfully, why does G-d need you to believe in Him? He's G-d!)
Perform tzadekah, and other acts of loving kindness, try not to hurt others and that's all.
I love the whole idea of Yom Kippur - that you need to ask forgiveness of those you've actually hurt.
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I think this means you're a Reconstructionist Jew. Or to put it more properly* I think this means that your beliefs match well with Reconstructionist Jewish theology. (If you want more information, Harold Kushner's book "To Life!" is meant to be about Judaism in general but because he himself is trained as a Reconstructionist rabbi it gives a pretty good idea of that path. I liked the book in general.)
* Because I'm not entirely comfortable with categorizing people in ways that include a whole bunch of opinions that may or may not go together.
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Thank you for posting about this.
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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.
Aww. //sniffles (I loved your account of how you chose that name in your memoir.)
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I love the tag.
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A few years ago, the rabbi at services said that because so many of us end our religious education sometime as children, we never get the chance to move beyond the notion of God as an anthropomorphic old man with a beard, essentially, when doing so is part of having a more adult conception of same. I think it's true -- that too often humans of all faiths talk about God as just an ultra-powerful human-like being.
When I began thinking of God more as a sort of power or presence in the universe -- and/or as a sort of internal voice (with thanks in part to Friends meeting for that), this whole religion business began to be something I could connect with a little bit more, for all that I'd be hard-pressed to tell anyone what, exactly, I do believe.
One thing I like about Judaism is it doesn't demand any certainty of belief, though. Took me a while to realize that, too.
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I'm glad you celebrated Yom Kippur this year, because this was probably the first year that I didn't. What a great post!