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Thursday September 20, 2007

Sweet memories — The Day of Atonement makes me happy

by dan pine
staff writer

Let the word go forth: Lox and bagels never taste as good as they do at the break-fast, 24 hours after that last lonely bite before Erev Yom Kippur. Noshing after Yom Kippur is a rush akin to swerving to avoid a bad car accident or recovering from strep throat or falling in love. The skies seem bluer, the air smells sweeter, and, to paraphrase poet Edgar Lee Masters, “not a cell knows aught save that it thrills with life.”

Those autumn sundown buffets after Neilah constitute some of my favorite Yom Kippur memories. But I wonder: Is it OK to even have a favorite Yom Kippur memory?

It’s not supposed to be a party.

Yet, even with its sobriety and intensity, I really do have treasured memories from various Days of Atonement over the years. And not just of the post-prayer kosher feed trough.

For one, I love the music. High Holy Day trope is much more beautiful than regular trope. I can’t explain musicologically what makes it different, but spiritually it’s teleporting. When the Torah readers chant those ancient melodies, I almost feel like I’m sitting in the billowing tents of Jacob (sans sand, of course).

I also love the time between morning and late-afternoon Yom Kippur services. Often I would wander to the synagogue library during that break. Though it probably would have been more fitting to pore over sacred texts, I usually flipped through biographies and histories, always feeling nourished reading about, say, Ben-Gurion or the Yiddish revival.

I love the mood throughout the day. Though ritualized to the extreme, the hard work of Yom Kippur matters deeply to Jews in the pews. You see it in the closed eyes brimming with tears; you taste it on your own dry tongue stumbling through the Al Chet.

What a prayer that is. As Rabbi Shraga Simmons has noted, the 44 sins listed in the Al Chet are not actual “mistakes” but, rather, the roots of mistakes, explored one at a time. What masters of psychology were the authors of the Al Chet. How did they know, so many hundreds of years ago, about the deeper significance of the hardened heart, the blurting lips, the harsh tongue?

I love Neilah, at the very end of the Holy Day when the Gates of Repentance close. The sanctuary is opened to all. Friends, family and total strangers wrap their weary arms about each other, swaying to “Od Tireh” or some other much-loved tune. You hope you made it into the Book of Life, you hope you scoured your inner self to a bright 12-month sheen, but you somehow feel you’ve done your best, and that God has forgiven you, even if you haven’t totally forgiven yourself.

But my very favorite Yom Kippur memory comes at the beginning, with Kol Nidre.

The first time I heard it performed by the cantor, choir and solo cello, I almost fainted from the beauty. It’s a melody so universally revered, even 19th-century German composer Max Bruch, a Protestant, wrote an arrangement of it.

And I remain blown away by the meaning of Kol Nidre. For that brief time, the sanctuary transforms itself into a court of law, the congregants become petitioners. In one of the great insights of Judaism, all vows made to God over the past year become null and void.

Through the centuries, our enemies pointed to that fact to prove the Jews could not be trusted. “See how they so easily dismissed their vows to the Almighty,” they would say.

These fools didn’t understand the human heart as well as did our forebears, who knew how hard it is to keep our promises and how God forgives any lapses. Wiping clean the slate year after year is an act of unparalleled self-love.

The sages also made it clear that slate-wiping rule does not apply to vows made between people. Violate those, and you must make amends face to face. There’s no “Get out of repentance free” card.

I can’t help it. Kol Nidre makes me happy. The overarching spirit of the day makes me happy. So I can only wish you, too, a happy Yom Kippur.

Dan Pine can be reached at dan@jweekly.com.

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