Category: Religion

Every year on Yom Kippur, my dad & I make our annual trip to temple so he can recite Yizkor, the prayer for the souls of his dead parents. You can find my past writeups about this experience here (5768 edition) and here (5769). I was ready to continue this tradition on Monday morning, when I got a phone call from Dad around 8:30 a.m. (as should be abundantly clear by the fact that we go out to pray once a year, we’re not so observant that we won’t use the phone during a major holiday).

He’d pulled a muscle in his back on Sunday, and was laid out. I told him I was heading to shul around 11:00 a.m., and would call to see if he was feeling well enough for me to pick him up by then. He said, “If not, I need you to pray for my parents for me.”

“Sure thing, Dad,” I said. Then I thought, “Is that even allowed? I thought Yizkor was for the souls of immediate family! The rabbi always leaves the room before Yizkor because he’s ‘blessed to have both parents living.’ Is Dad trying to pull a fast one on God?” Considering my dad once took flowers from someone’s grave and put them on the underattended grave of his pal, I wouldn’t put it past him.

I decided not to think about this too much, mainly because the lack of caffeine was already crippling my higher brain functions. This summer, I managed to step down my caffeine use, but the month of September was pretty stressful and I really backslid in the last few weeks, setting myself up for a rough day of fasting.

Which is what it’s there for, y’know? We don’t fast on Yom Kippur so we can lose weight; we fast to afflict ourselves before God. The downside of this is that the only time I meet Rabbi Zvi, I’m a thick-tongued, headache-plagued wreck.

I called Dad at 11, but he was still immobilized by his muscle-pull. Even though I forgot to grab my yarmulke and my tallis before heading out, I at least had the presence of mind to ask him for the Hebrew names of his parents, so the rabbi could add them to his prayer. I also remembered to go without a belt and to wear canvas shoes, since we’re not supposed to wear leather or any other animal skin on the holiday. This led to my new fashion trend of suit-with-solid-black-Chuck-Taylors; it’ll be the next hot look.

This year, services were being held at a hotel, instead of the rabbi’s basement. It was only when I walked into the anteroom that I realized I’d forgotten my things. I looked around for the table with spare yarmulkes & tallises, but didn’t see one. The women and kids looked back at me from their partitioned area of the room, but didn’t offer any suggestions. Eventually, one of the men noticed me and gestured to a congregant along the back wall of the main room. He had been blocking my view of the phylactery table. He picked up a basket of yarmulkes and told me, “Pick a color! Any color!” I grabbed a light-blue suede kippah, a not-so-clean tallis, and a prayerbook. Another congregant pointed and said, “There’s an aisle seat in the second row,” so I took it.

Rabbi Zvi came right over and said, “Gil! Great to see you!” Last year, I was impressed that he remembered my name after a 1-year absence. This time, I was kinda embarrassed, since he’d e-mailed several times last spring to invite me & Amy over for shabbat dinner and Something Always Came Up. I told him about Dad’s plight, and he replied, “Well, at least you made it. We need you to put the cover on the Torah!”

One of the congregants was just finishing his aliyah. When the prayer was complete, he and the rabbi rolled the scroll back up. Then he lifted it, sat down in the front row, and my job began. All I had to do was put a binder around the Torah, put a cover over it, and hang its silver pointer from one of its handles. As I began to put the binder around it, the holder said, “Not so high.” I moved the binder all the way to the bottom and began to affix it. “Not so low,” he said. I went halfway. He said, “It should be around the top of the bottom third. If you can figure that out, you’re a real Jew!”

I did my best.

A few more prayers followed, then Rabbi Zvi announced the schedule for the rest of the day. He explained that we were a little behind, so he’d make up the time by cutting the breaks short. This is known as Yom Kippur humor. He told us that he wanted to give the full speech/lecture/sermon he had planned, but he had a cold and wasn’t feeling well, so he’d try to keep it short.

The first part of his sermon was about his experiences at the Lubavitcher high holiday services, which blended into an anecdote about Bibi Netanyahu c.1984 and the Rebbe Schneerson’s opinion that the U.N. was a house of lies. It wasn’t too politicized a speech, although I’m sure that wouldn’t have offended anyone in the congregation.

Then Rabbi Zvi told a story of Maimonides. Some rabbis were arguing (imagine!) about what it means to be human. One of them decided to train a cat to be a waiter, to show that animals could act just like us. So he trains the cat to wait tables, and the cat does a wonderful job of taking orders, bringing out plates, handling bills, etc. Then one of the rabbis lets a mouse free in the restaurant. The cat sees it, drops his plates and takes off to eat the mouse.

“Some of us,” he said (in paraphrase), “only come to services once a year. We take this day to atone to God for our sins. For one day, we fast and ask for forgiveness. But what about the other 364 days? Who are we on those days?” Our sins and temptations are our mice, he said. Which raised the question of whether our mice reveal our true nature. Are we hiding ourselves behind once-a-year piousness? Do studying Torah and fulfilling the mitzvot help us shed our cat-nature and become more human?

Naturally, I felt like Rabbi Zvi was looking directly at me when he talked about once-a-year congregants. I don’t feel too much guilt over this. I know I’m not living a Torah-directed life, but I also believe I’m living a good life. I try to help others in need, try to learn every day, try to improve on my bad habits (I’m back to a small mug of coffee this morning), try to laugh. Do I flip out in a rage at other drivers? Sometimes, but never to the point of cutting someone off to prove a point. Do I brood way too far? Sometimes, but then I’ll hear a Sam Cooke song or a see a pair of clouds that look just like Groucho Marx’s eyebrows, and my heart will lighten. Do I sin? Sometimes, but I’m also filled with love.

True to his word, the rabbi finished his sermon early. I prayed for the peace of my grandparents’ souls, stuck around for another 45 minutes, then headed home when a few other congregants started to disperse for a few hours. Despite my cloudy vise of a headache, I fasted through the 25-hour mark, then ate 6 slices of a pie from my favorite pizzeria, along with 3 glasses of water. I also had half a glass of Amy’s iced tea in order to alleviate my caffeine withdrawal but not keep me up all night. Oh, and Dad was feeling a little better by evening, but it was for the best that he stayed home.

One of my pals from high school just e-mailed to tell me that she found her mailbox crushed in this morning, with this motorcycle helmet lying nearby:

She asked if I would translate the text, which looks like a slightly miswritten YHWH to me.

There’s only one conclusion I can draw: there’s a hasidic biker gang on the prowl in Poughkeepsie! Lock up your children!

Except on Friday night, of course.