206. Entitled

(Continued. I also must acknowledge that I'm suffering from holiday burnout... four weeks of two of these per week, followed by Shabbat, has taken its toll. Now, don't get me wrong--I loved it, every minute of every endless meal and Amidah. But the Tuesday/Wednesday business was a bit much, and I agree wholeheartedly with this blogger. For the next week or so I'll probably not post extensively, since I need to spend a bunch of time resting/catching up on work/remembering what my brain does when it's not praying/otherwise pursuing real life.)

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By the following Simchat Torah I understood more about why we danced in celebration of those 80,000 fixed yet fluid words, words that changed to reflect how different we were each time we read them. I remember listening to Lech Lecha that first Saturday morning at my synagogue and thinking, what a great story! I can't wait to hear the rest. (I studied it in Hebrew School, and elsewhere in life, but only vaguely.) When we came around to reading Lech Lecha the following year I was sad, at first; I figured it would never seem as exciting as during my initial introduction. But I was wrong; the story took on new shapes and sounds, its mirror tilting in a completely different direction, because I knew more than I did a year before, had lived and seen more. As I held hands and flew in circles with my friends on Simchat Torah, I understood that we were dancing through the open door of the coming year. The people embracing the scrolls were just average, like myself, all of us not the best Jews in the word but similar in one respect: we wanted to read those words again. I was no longer afraid to hold the scroll, because I knew that my desire to learn gave me the right.

205. Not entitled

(Continued.)

The first time I ever wore a tallit, and the first time I held--or even touched--a sefer Torah was on Simchat Torah, four or five years ago. I had danced, awkwardly and self-consciously, a little bit during the previous Simchat Torah. But I never went near the scroll, the holiest of objects, because I didn't think I had the right. I hadn't been a very good Jew, hadn't really cared about any of this stuff for years, and had only the vaguest idea about what was going on. Standing close to a Torah, let alone waving it in the air for all to see, didn't seem like an honor worthy of someone so ignorant.

204. Surprise

(I have more to say about Simchat Torah, but interrupting myself.)

Yesterday evening I emailed the cantor about reading Torah in November. He emailed back with some verses, and at the very bottom:

"By the way, can you lead services tomorrow?"

Well, let's see, let me check my calendar... I responded, needless to say, in the affirmative. I hadn't been asked to lead on a Friday night since late April, which didn't really mean anything; I spent May recovering from surgery, and over the summer there was just one service with more than enough rabbis to go around. I had nevertheless convinced myself I wouldn't be asked again. Never mind that I just led for the High Holy Days. A corner of my brain resembling chipped china held together by peeling beads of Super Glue, the irrational, insecure part, swears very loudly on some days that I have no right to be up there. My voice isn't good enough, or I'm singing too aggressively. No, I should be less aggressive. I could go on and on. People tell me I sound beautiful, that my praying moves them, and I don't believe a word they say while also wanting to hear it a million times more, because I know they're right. It's very confusing.

That praying and singing in front of my congregation is one of the best ways I've found to feel close to God, I have no doubt. But I never know when or if this gift will appear, and when it does I'm afraid I'll screw up and ruin my chances for the future. Shabbat is a taste of eternity, but it arrives without fail every week whether or not we fell short of the mark. Helping lead services is my occasional, random, and extraordinary lucky ascent to a place so much higher than real life, so much fun, that even as I'm there I become sad for when it must end and wonder if I will again be invited. I'm annoyed at myself for dwelling on potential loss rather than current abundance. I want to become better at living life now, the moment it's happening.

Tonight was the first time I helped lead in the "new" arrangement, sitting in a circle with a bunch of musicians (cello, guitar, flutes, percussion) rather than standing at a bima. I could actually see them, rather than hear disembodied notes coming from somewhere behind, and could also hear the congregation in the packed sanctuary singing back. I led with the same rabbi I was with all day on Yom Kippur, with whose high, strong voice it's so easy to blend and harmonize. I got lost in the sounds we were creating. It was a blast.

203. Dancing

I should really be asleep right now, but my body and brain can't stop moving.

Every year I doubt that the fun of the past Simchat Torah can be surpassed, and every year I'm wrong. Imagine the happiest wedding you've ever attended, and multiply by a thousand. The sanctuary was filled tonight, hundreds and hundreds of bodies linking into swirling eddies that moved like friendly tornadoes from one end of the room to the other. In the center of each circle was a sefer Torah, or two or three, held aloft or clutched to someone's heart as they jumped up and down and tried to raise it as high above the crowd as they could. I moved between rings of spinning dancers to chains of people with their hands on each other's shoulders who snaked past each deliriously rotating circle. Sometimes I felt like I was carried on a big human wave, and if I closed my eyes would keep gaining momentum until I took flight above the crowd. From the balcony we looked like an earthquake, unconstrained bodies bubbling to the rhythm of the keyboard and drums.

The rabbis were the most ecstatic of all, arms around each others' shoulders as they jumped, in love and joy, the highest of anyone.

I was going to leave after the fifth hakafa, but kept remembering that this was it, after tomorrow--time goes back to normal. I didn't want it to end just yet. To leave all those people and Torot when I could still stand in their midst and feel them dance around me seemed almost horrifying. So I stood off to the side, gathered my energy, and stayed thorough the Torah reading and last hakafa, the one for teenagers who were much more awake at that hour than the rest of us. Everyone kept dancing even after the service ended, the cantor in his funny shirt with the musical notes all over it singing niggunim as loudly as ever. I finally tore myself away, because I wanted to make sure I had enough energy to do it all over again tomorrow.

202. Hoshanah Rabbah

(Interrupting the story.)

Yesterday was Hoshanah Rabbah, the "great Hoshanah." After a final waving of the lulav and etrog, we circle the sanctuary seven times and chant, over and over again, "Hoshanah!" ("Please save us!"). Then, as a symbol of the separation of our sins from ourselves, among many other things, we beat the willow branches of our lulavim into the ground until their leaves fly off. We dance and sing with joy and relief as bits of green rain over our feet and pool onto the red floor of the sanctuary. The gates are finally, truly, closed. This custom seemed weird and pagan when I first learned about it a few years ago (my Hebrew School skipped over the whole plant-destroying thing). But with each season, and every time I listen for the crack of those branches as I strike them with all my power against the floor, I feel more and more emancipated from myself. Last year explodes into the air like dark confetti, and this new one becomes as eagerly anticipated as the hours of dancing soon to come. The ancient and psychologically astute rabbis who devised these holidays knew we needed to first live through the depths of Yom Kippur in order to fully understand the elation of Simchat Torah. The optimism of Sukkot and catharsis of Hoshanah Rabbah are rungs of a ladder that help us climb back up to our happiest and most hopeful ways of being.

Shemini Atzeret services are this morning, the eighth day of Sukkot and the holiday when we plead for rain to nourish and sustain us. (A confusing prayer, this year; water hasn't been very good to humankind these past months. And it's still pouring in New York.) Simchat Torah begins in the evening, with the verses that make me mute, followed by seven hakafot, circuits of dancing, until 10 or 11pm. (Some Orthodox shuls go all night long. Until 9/11, a mile of Upper West Side streets were closed off for the equivalent of a massive religious rave ten thousand strong. Tonight some congregations will venture outside for the first time in four years, but my synagogue will still opt for carpeting and warmth.) We go home for too little sleep before repeating the whole thing on Wednesday, and conclude after many, many hours with a Torah reading that connects Moshe's death at the end of Deuteronomy to the creation of the universe and first words of Genesis. The month of spiritual marathon ends, and our story begins anew.

Moadim l'simcha ("seasons of happiness"), and may your feet remain strong!

201. ...and the morning [part 2]...

"Did you hear what happened?" said my teacher to the rabbi, as we were all trying to figure out where to hang our wet coats. And then she turned to me. "Are you going to be gabbai sheni?"

Apparently the cantor and I were not the only ones in less than optimum health. One of the two Torah readers, a man who had been doing it every year on Yom Kippur for the past dozen, wrenched his back the night before and was unable to stand, let along hunch over a scroll. My teacher, who had learned High Holy Day trop when she was about twelve, was called into emergency service. So of course she could no longer fulfill her other role as second gabbai, following along with the reader to catch mistakes, since she now was the reader.

The rabbi hadn't planned to ask me, and was going to draft one of the student rabbis into service instead. "Do you want to do it?" she asked.

"Well, sure," I said. "I did it last year." True, last year I had more than a few minutes of warning, and was able to prepare for the occasion. But since then I had been gabbai sheni at the sunrise service of Shavuot, after staying up all night long in study. I was, in some strange, tentative way, starting to feel like an old hand at it.

"Terrific," said the rabbi. "So today we're all women here," she added. My synagogue is so egalitarian that no one ever seems to think about being egalitarian. This took some getting used to on my part, but once I did I couldn't imagine participating in any other way. (Most of the Torah readers are women, in fact, reflecting the many younger members motivated to learn what their grandmothers were not allowed to.) If the rabbi hadn't pointed out that everyone involved in the service was female, I might not have consciously registered it. But once she did, I began to kvell for my entire gender. I wondered what my father would have thought. I knew he would have been very proud.

200. ...and the morning [part 1]...

Why, asked the rabbi yesterday morning at services, does a holiday characterized by our joy and connection to nature follow so soon after one in which we are commanded to be ascetic and solemn? Because, she suggested, teshuvah, and our completeness as human beings, requires both our souls and our bodies. To ignore one of these aspects--to remain in the mode of Yom Kippur, and forswear the earthbound happiness of Sukkot--would be to cut ourselves off from the possibility of healing all of ourselves, those parts most strongly connected to our physicality as well as those beyond it.

On the morning of Yom Kippur day, I awoke and thought: Now I have to stand in front of a lot of people and be serious. Time to start feeling serious. Then I took a deep breath, shut my eyes, and tried to sing a few notes. And, hallelujah, I still had a voice--it hadn't disappeared overnight like it did a week ago. I immediately wanted to jump out of bed and dance with maniacal glee, and access the physical, joyful part of myself that was scheduled to be exercised in about a week. But instead I just lay there for awhile and smiled, happy but feeling the need for decorum on a day of such gravitas, even though no one was watching.

The rain was still going strong. I put on my white clothing and an old pair of running shoes, and began the windswept walk to services. I was early, and sat in the little room for many minutes by myself listening the musicians warm up. Away from the sounds of the storm and the traffic of the business day that was just beginning, I felt like I had climbed into a safe, quiet cocoon.

The rabbi arrived and placed her waterlogged sneakers on the floor next to mine, as did the shaliah tzibur for Musaf, my Torah chanting teacher, a few minutes later. The Secret Rabbi Room began to look like a gym.

199. And the evening...

Unlike other services, in which the most important stuff is preceded by an hour of warm-up for spiritual muscles--short prayers, lots of psalms--Kol Nidre just starts. There's no preamble; you've already had a month to get ready. "Please rise as the Ark is opened." The hum of conversation quiets as the musicians begin to play, two verses alone at first, with cello or recorder standing in for the human voice to follow. All the scrolls are removed from the Ark, a crowd of honored congregants at the bima embracing each one for the rest of us to see.

The first verse of Kol Nidre starts in a whisper, the cantor nearly speechless on our behalf, and then builds until we cower in awe at the end. There are many stories of the Kol Nidre melody changing lives, its echoes beckoning to people on the street who hadn't been in a synagogue for years. It is indeed sad and beautiful and immensely moving, but I find other prayers equally so. What touches me like fire is its delivery rather than its tune, and how the singer of Kol Nidre lays bare to the rest of us the soft yearning of his contrition, the heated power of her pleading. My synagogue has three simultaneous Kol Nidre services, and this year I was fortunate to be at the location of the cantor himself. He hadn't fully recovered from laryngitis; he sounded a little hoarse, a bit tentative. But, for me, this made his song even stronger. Raw and partly stripped of its elegance, I could hear his pain and longing more clearly than ever.

After the evening service and teaching that followed, I walked home in the loud, insistent rain. I sat on my sofa for awhile and wondered about life. Then I sang, reviewing Shaharit and Ne'ila one final time, and--in a non-traditional but, to me, fitting form observance--read some Jewish-themed blogs written by people coming to terms with pain and loss. I gave thanks for continuing to go from strength to strength, especially after a year when it seemed, for a few moments, that I might not be able to do so.

198. Kol Nidre afternoon

No one could remember the last time it rained on Yom Kippur, which presaged Parashat Noach--a day of chilly, unrelenting downpour. This seemed to me like a good sign, since the state of the world has gotten worse and worse despite years of beautiful weather on the Yamim Nora'im. Maybe bad weather means that people, along with nature, are ready to behave in an opposite way, as well.

On Wednesday afternoon (just a week and a day ago--it seems like much longer), I stopped work early and shut down my computer and all its humming, glowing ancillary devices. My office got very quiet; the time began to feel different and special. I changed into an all-white outfit (except for a big black winter coat and umbrella, the elements taking precedence over style and symbolism), and went to meet my friend A. for our traditional overstuffed deli meal before beginning the fast. It felt strange to get on the subway with rush-hour crowds. I wanted everyone to stop moving and acknowledge the arrival of Kol Nidre; I wished that the whole world would calm down and listen along.

We ate sandwiches on rye fat enough for twelve, and I downed one final glass of Airborne. I don't know if the stuff really works, but my cold was almost gone and I was too superstitious to miss that last chance to OD on vitamin C. After running back home in the rain to get my entrance card, which I'd carefully placed on a table by the door and forgotten to take, I arrived at the synagogue. Every seat was filled, the air flush with expectation. We wrapped ourselves in our tallitot, the only time of the year when we wear it at an evening service, and waited for the music to begin.

197. Waving

We wave the lulav today as a blessing, said the rabbi this morning at services, and we beat it against the floor on Hoshana Rabbah as a symbol of our sins. Good and bad are within us all, and the lulav represents both--so we wave as high and as low as possible to try and touch our opposite poles. These were comforting thoughts, especially so soon after Yom Kippur. I'd like to think that my soul, after so much prayer and pain and tears, is now cleansed, but I know I missed a few spots, and swept others under the rug. I'll try again on Hoshana Rabbah to banish more negative stuff, but some will surely remain.

Meanwhile, I ate lots of good food with great friends in beautiful sukkot, and will do it all over again tomorrow. Then a day and a half of reality--until Shabbat, once more. It's becoming difficult to imagine November and life with only one holiday per week.

196. Sukkot

Of the many Jewish holidays I observed blindly and with boredom as a kid, Sukkot aroused the least of my interest. One day not long after it became too chilly outside to wear shorts, a sukkah with green plastic walls would sprout in the parking lot behind the Kissena Jewish Center. My father and other old men in dark suits would crowd inside and sip shot glasses of wine while I swiped a sugar cookie or two and went out front to play with my friends. Sometimes I'd wander back in and examine, as if it were a breakable alien artifact, the lulav and etrog left behind on a folding table. We never had a set of our own at home; I never thought to ask why. And, despite six years of Hebrew School, I had no idea what you actually did with them except draw their portraits in crayon to hang on the green plastic walls. Like waiting five hours to have ice cream after eating a hot dog, and other odd rules, I figured that the strange plant and fruit combination was obtained and contemplated on Sukkot just because.

I did my best to ignore Sukkot until I joined my synagogue and learned that it was, in fact, a pretty cool holiday. I still don't really understand why we shake the lulav and etrog; last year was the first time I was able to approach the act with reverence and curiosity as an ancient Jewish ritual rather than reluctantly as a strange pagan one. Sukkot, a few thousand years ago, was the most important day of the year, and Rosh Hashonah just a preamble to signify the beginning of the month that hosted the harvest festival on its full moon. Sukkot post-demotion still wears the crown of "z'man simhatenu," "the season of our joy," and it always does make me happy. Maybe it's just relief from those previous forty days of soul-searching; now all I have to do is sit, eat and drink to be a good Jew. Maybe it's about that last chance to have a picnic before the weather gets cold.

I hope, one day, to celebrate this holiday away from the city. I don't think I'll ever understand the fragility of sitting under stars and within straw walls if my only sukkah experiences continue to take place on sidewalks behind tall buildings. Still, I've gotten pretty good at convincing myself that the apartment windows glimmering through a roof of woven pine branches are really lights much higher in the heavens, and delighting in the view.

195. More to come

It's going to take me some time to write about this Yom Kippur. (Although I don't expect I'll need to contemplate it for a year, like the last one.) And just when you think the holidays have wound down, here they come again: Sukkot, starting tomorrow night, and then Shemini Atzeret and Simchat Torah, as well as my favorite, Hoshana Rabbah, when I get to release my tensions by beating that poor lulav to a pulp against the floor. This also means, since they all happen to fall in the middle of the week, that I'll be spending my remaining time over the next ten days trying to stay sane while cramming five days of work into three.

So it may be awhile before I can gather my thoughts about last Thursday. I don't think I've ever experienced the day more fully, or felt less resolution and more confusion at the end--but this is good. That's how it's supposed to be. If you believe all your problems have been solved by that last shofar blast, you're not really human.

More to come shortly. Meanwhile, happy Sukkot!

194. Sounds

At the end of every Friday evening service at my synagogue the rabbi offers a blessing, words found both in Psalm 29 and the Shabbat morning liturgy: "Adonai oz l'amo yiten; Adonai yivarech et amo vashaslom." "May God bless humanity with strength; may God bless humanity with peace." I had long forgotten the meaning of those lines when I listened to them six years ago, the first time since I was a kid. I was immediately intrigued by the sound of one word, in particular: "oz." Too embarrassed by my ignorance during those initial months of discovery to ask anyone for a translation, I still knew it had to be important; the rabbi always preceded "oz" with a slight pause, and gave it just a bit more emphasis than its companion syllables. The whisper of the "z," like a breath, the vibration of a hundred soft voices, a kiss, made me shiver. When I learned that the quiet persistence of "oz" meant "strength," I began to fall in love with the Hebrew language. How amazing to include the sound of compassion in a word about power.

I thought of those sounds, and others, during this morning's d'var Torah, offered by a member of the congregation. He contrasted Shirat HaYam, the Song of the Sea, in which percussive words of hope at the beginning of the Israelites' journey dance joyfully in staggered lines across the parchment, with the poem in this week's portion, Ha'azinu. It's written in the scroll as two narrow columns, rhythmically heavy language divided by an empty space that represents Moshe's absence from the promised land, and also perhaps the hole in his heart. The Torah provides us with a multimedia experience millennia ahead of its time. I realized, while listening to this d'var, that the Shaharit service I sang on Yom Kippur morning was Shirat HaYam, as I tried with all my energy to make strong, clear sounds to help carry us on a day-long voyage of hope. And Ne'ila, nine hours later, when I was tired, hungry, and doubting that my words of contrition had even come close to those gates, was Ha'azinu, a final loud and hoarse entreaty. As I sang, I wished my Hebrew were fluent; how could I communicate meaning if I could not, at that instant, think it? I struggled with this all day on Yom Kippur, as I tried to formulate my own lists, intentions, and apologies, but could only conjure wordless yearning and regret about what I had done and not done. I became frustrated at the refusal of my thoughts to become verbal at prescribed moments. But as the day grew longer, I became aware that if my voice was honest and from a place of hope or despair, if I didn't cheat and try to hide from myself or God, then maybe the music would be equal in prayer and meaning to the words themselves. Then the sounds, rhythms and spaces would get the message across, just as they do in the Torah scroll. Whether I was able to do this, I have no idea. But I tried.

193. G'mar tov

So, to my surprise, I really did finish the story of last Yom Kippur before this next one begins in a few hours. (There's still a postscript, to follow sometime soon.) It's been a challenging and fruitful ten Days of Awe, including a difficult rehearsal for Ne'ila that was, fortunately, followed the next day by a much better one. And my voice is almost back to normal. I could, of course, use another few weeks of preparation for the atoning and soul-searching part of the holiday, but that's always the case. I hope I can learn something tomorrow, in whatever state I may be.

G'mar chatima tovah ("be sealed and inscribed for goodness") to everyone, and may you have an easy fast.

192. Fever

(Continued.)

I could sing, but I couldn't really speak. That entire part of my voice now sounded like Harvey Fierstein, but I was still able to hit all the notes without any problem.

I arrived at the church to see the cantor lying on the floor, legs sticking out from under the keyboard. After a horrified moment, I realized he was fiddling with wires in order to get the keyboard to work. It did, finally, and so he ran back to the synagogue two blocks away to lead services over there.

After assuring the rabbi, who looked alarmed when I said hello, that I really did have a voice, we went out to the bima and began the service. Everything, at first, was fine; I could sing, although it took extra effort, and I knew my part backwards and forwards because I'd already done it twice the week before. After a half hour, however, I began to get tired. Really tired. And hot, especially my throat. I had hidden a cough drop in the back of my machzor, just in case. But since the thousand people in front of me were fasting, I couldn't actually pop it in my mouth; I would have to find an occasion to retreat discreetly to the Secret Rabbi Room. Such a moment wouldn't arrive for another couple of hours.

So I just fantasized about my cough drop instead. Shaharit ended, and then the Torah service. My voice and, even more so, my energy level were beginning to fade. The Torah reading, and my role as gabbai, began and ended and I grabbed my machzor and headed back out to congregation, thanking God preemptively for the water I wasn't supposed to drink today but would, anyway. But the rabbi walked over before I could sit down.

"Can you stay up here for Yizkor?" he whispered. "I want you to read the English parts." (English isn't his first language.) Most of the people who come to shul once a year on Yom Kippur only do so because of the memorial service of Yizkor, among the most solemn moments of the calendar. At my synagogue we add sad music and testimony from a Holocaust survivor, and after about ten minutes a thousand people, without fail, are in tears. It would be an enormous privilege to take part in those moments, but I had no speaking voice left whatsoever. But the rabbi didn't know this. "Let us read responsively," he said, and looked at me. I got really close to the microphone and started whispering; afterwards people told me it sounded very dramatic, perfect for the moment.

An elderly woman got up to speak, and the rabbi and I were able to sit down for a few minutes. He took a look at me, first time since we began. "Are you OK?" he whispered. I can only imagine what color of grey or green my skin had turned by that point; I felt like I was in a sauna, and the church was starting to spin very slowly. "Just fine!" I answered. It seemed rude to worry the rabbi as he was in the middle of leading the most important service of the year.

I didn't hear a single word of the elderly woman's heart-wrenching life story, or the sermon that followed, as I continued to yearn for the hour when I could taste the cough drop now clutched and melting in my sweaty palm. Finally it was time for Musaf, and the rabbi nodded to me in thanks. But he was wrong; I still couldn't leave the bima, because I had to help the woman who couldn't sing on key. I stood off to the side and hummed along, and then joined them both for a stanza of Uvechen and a very, very high verse of Hayom. Dear God, I prayed each time I had to open my mouth, please let a sound come out and I swear I'll be good for the rest of my life, or at least until next Yom Kippur. God was amenable, and I made it to the end of my first Yom Kippur as occasional shaliach tzibur intact, if a little worse for wear.