I’ve always admired the holiday of Yom Kippur for its introspective meditation and simple clarity. Known as the “white fast” (as opposed to Tishah B’Av, the “black” fast), it aspires to a sort of spiritual purity. It’s not at all a sad day, just a serious one.
Yom Kippur is a day of cheshbon nefesh, a very personal stock-taking of our vices and virtues. But we pursue this deeply subjective enterprise in a very public setting, surrounded by hundreds of our fellow Jews each engaging in their own private dramas. It makes for a special set of tensions that can bring out the best in oneself and one’s community.
But this is not at all the way the holiday was celebrated in ancient Israel. Then it was a day on which engagements were announced and there was even an element of fertility worship on such a day that might lead to such engagements.
Returning to latter-day Jewish life, you pare down things on Yom Kippur. You shed leather shoes and belts, you fast, you cleanse the soul, you pray to be sealed in the Book of Life, you summon the beloved dead in Yizkor, you pound your breast for the sins acknowledged in community, you sing beautiful, stately melodies; and then feverishly, at the day’s end as the sun sets and the doors to heaven close, you raise your worship to a profound intensity brought on by hunger and by an intimacy with the divine. Then the shofar blows those piercing, lingering notes of the tekiah g’dolah and it is over. Hundreds of you raise your voices in joy and relief. You hope that your spiritual efforts won favor and were enough for God to give you another year.
Back in graduate school, I loved the poetry of Yehuda Amichai, one of the greatest Israeli poets of the 20th century. He wasn’t a political poet per se. But he didn’t shy away from political themes either. Here he describes a walk in Jerusalem’s Old City a few short months after the end of the 1967 War:
On Yom Kippur 5728 [1967],
I donned dark holiday clothing and walked to Jerusalem’s Old City.
I stood for quite a while in front of the kiosk shop of an Arab,
Not far from Sh’chem (Nablus) Gate,
A shop full of buttons, zippers and spools of thread of every color;
And snaps and buckles.
Brightly lit and many colored like the open Holy Ark.I said to him in my heart that my father too
Owned a shop just like this of buttons and thread.
I explained to him in my heart about all the decades
And the reasons and the events leading me to be here now
While my father’s shop burned there
And he is buried here.When I concluded it was the hour of N’eilah (“locking the gates”).
He too drew down the shutters and locked the gate
As I returned homeward with all the other worshippers.–from Achshav Ba’Ra’ash (“Now, Noisily”), Schocken, 1975, page 11-12
translation Richard Silverstein
When I first studied this poem I thought it was an almost miraculous attempt to bridge worlds from Jewish Europe to Jewish Israel to Arab Palestine. But as time has passed and the conflict has deepened and grown ever more toxic, one sees more of what is absent. There is a narrator engaged in a form of communication that is part prayer. But it is so internal that he makes no real contact with his interlocutor. He wants his new neighbor-by-conquest to understand why he is here, why great suffering brought him from Europe to this Jerusalem. It is, for the Israeli, a seemingly friendly approach like reaching out your hand to a stranger and hoping he will shake it.
While reaching out to the Palestinian shopkeeper even in prayer is laudable, there is no sense of community. Who is he addressing? Isn’t this done more for himself than the Palestinian? If so, then it is a failed communication as so much of the “dialogue” between Israeli Jew and Palestinian has been for much of this century and the last.
The Palestinian. What does HE think? What and where are his roots? Why doesn’t the narrator care? Why does he only want to make his own personal story known but not to hear the history of the Palestinian shopkeeper? In a nutshell, this poem epitomizes the romance and failure of the liberal Israeli narrative. It sought to communicate to the Palestinians the Jewish narrative without absorbing any of the Palestinian. And that is the tragedy of liberal Zionism.
It is not only Amichai…it includes Amos Oz, A.B. Yehoshua, David Grossman, a veritable roster of Israel’s most distinguished men (yes, they are mostly men) of letters. There are writers who have broken free of this mold, but they are generally the younger generation (though Dahlia Rabikovitch was the exception here).
Richard,
You always see the core issue… You are a blessing to all who can hear your voice. Don’t let people get you caught up in the details, you know what is important.
I think here, in it is denial, and maybe we all can be reflective and introspective and see what we may deny within our own romantic view of our own dreams or reality…
May the veil be lifted that we may see reality and share life and creativity with all, and not keep it to ourselves.
I so agree. Happy Holiday Richard, to you and your family. I’ve been reading your site everyday for four years and you just keep getting better as a positive force. You are a blessing.
lovely poem. I was struck by the following lines,
“I explained to him in my heart about all the decades
And the reasons and the events leading me to be here now” which suggests, at some level, the narrator’s sense of wrongdoing , of usurpation. Why else the need to explain, if only in the heart. It seems today most Israelis would never feel this, although their founding fathers were under no illusions about what they did.
Yes, I agree. That was why I responded so warmly to the poem when I first read it. It was, at the time, a brave attempt to make known to the Other what he was feeling & why. Today, most Israelis would find this sentiment hopelessly naive no doubt because they are hardened beyond measure, much like Pharaoh’s heart in the Exodus story.
it is funny how you are sitting in seatle pretending to know what most israelis are.
You’d be surprised how much you’d know about a country if you studied it for 40 yrs, spoke & read its language, read its newspapers & books, lived there for a few yrs, etc. This isn’t 1870 you know. There are ways w. the internet of knowing just about everything you need to know about a country without living there.
# Shin Gemel)
We just have to see how you vote ’cause it is a democratic country, isn’t it ? In order to vote Bibi and Lieberman, you sure have to be sotf-hearted and peace-loving folks.
You are much too harsh in your judgments, Richard. I think it was an attempt to make it known to the ordinary other, the Israeli Jew. Not so brave perhaps but sensitive and perceptive at the time, surely. Things happen in steps, not all in one go.
The poem was read aloud in both Hebrew and Arabic in Sheikh Jarrah only a few nights ago at a slihot event there. The reader in Arabic was the head of one of the evicted families and the reading itself took place in the courtyard of another. Read about it here:
http://www.en.justjlm.org/216
That is very touching & heartening . If anyone captured this on video I’d love to have it for my blog. As I said, I feel ambivalent about the poem. I agree that it is deeply touching in one sense while it also betrays certain limitations that were perhaps understandable considering how little direct contact Israeli Jews & Palestinians would’ve had so soon after the 67 War ended.
There is a video of the event embedded at the bottom of the poem by Rabbi Arik Ascherman, though the sound and light quality isn’t very good.
That’s a dazzling photo! Thanks. Enjoy the holidays.
richard,
no need to add to the prohibitions of yom kippur…there is no prohibition against wearing a leather belt
not eating or drinking
no leather shoes
no washing
no annointing
no engaging in marital relations
all this is learned out of the pasuk in leviticus…thou shalt afflict oneself
I think leather belts are permitted on Yom Kippur.
I was confusing the observances of Tisha B’Av w. those of Yom Kippur.
[after enduring yr snark for far too long I put you on notice that if you want another comment to see the light of day, you’ll cut out the snark. If not, you & yr comments will sit in the deep freeze.]
call me snarky if you wish, but it is you who are giving out incorrect information regarding religious practices
if you wish to create your own religion, that is fine
you can join with the ranks of chasidim and others who think it is mutar to feed fishes on the second day of rosh hashana, or using a goldfish bowl to do tashlich
facts are facts
one is not prohibited from wearing leather, except on one’s feet and after the shofar blast, the congregation all states in unison…next year in jerusalem
the fact that you left that part out brings up serious questions
shoot…even your buddy jerry still says it…he has just expanded it to include the palestinians
not sure why my snarky comments bother you…just call me names like you did in a previous post
You don’t understand what “snark” is. Snark is not correcting an error. Snark is the witless attempts at humor at my expense. And if you don’t know to what specifically I refer any reader here can quote you chapter & verse. Don’t attempt to score pts at anyone else’s expense or engage in witticisms & you’ll have no problem here. You know as well as I that my shul & yours says L’shana Ha-baa B’Yerushalayim. Besides yr snark being a non sequitur, it was a stupid attempt at scoring pts. I have no problem with Jerusalem, being in Jerusalem or saying next yr in Jerusalem. YOu’re confusing me with an anti Zionist.
I don’t mind being corrected if I make a mistake & many readers do this both friend & foe.
I don’t want to call you names, but even more I want you to stop the snark. If you can’t (perhaps it’s an inherited condition you can’t control) you won’t be here much longer.
You forgot to mention the Yom Kippur Israel bonds drive.
At your synagogue? The synagogue you voluntarily pay dues to?
If so that would be interesting.
My synagogue doesn’t have an Israel Bonds drive. I’ve belonged to or attended 5-6 synagogues over the past 20 yrs & NONE have Israel Bond drives. You are so Old School! We raise money for our own shul at Yom Kippur services.
You change synagogues approximately every 3-4 years? You get dissatisfied easily?
Again, you too are bordering into the snark region, which is objectionable. I said that I had attended diff. synagogues over the course of several adult decades. I said nothing about being dissatisfied easily or changing synagogues. That was yr snarky interpolation. Most Jews don’t belong to any synagogue, I remind you.
Thanks for pointing out the fallacy of liberal zionism. In essence, there is no difference between Amichai and Lieberman. That is why BDS is the only correct path
That’s ridiculous as you are.
Richard makes a brave post that clearly is wrestling with doubt about the lack of empathy even he felt in the past. The point is he is taking responsibility for the only thing under his control, his reactions, feelings and beliefs, no one elses. One has no real control over anything else. Throughout history it can be seen the more you fight someone the more they fight back, in other words, the more you fight yourself. The word naivety is thrown around casually when someone speaks of teaching by example following what they feel is right but true naivety is believing it can be done any other way.
Instead of passively aggressively changing the subject the prior posters should at least be honest about their true feelings instead of hiding behind a veiled moral superiority owing to their piety.
As far as where Richard lives it does not matter since he speaks about roadblocks that are universal among man in relation to those he feels are different than himself. It is always easier to stereotype “others” in a black/white framework while actively searching for their negative traits than it is to empathize with them and actively search for their positive traits.