Day of Atonement (ca 1907) by Isidor Kaufmann (1853-1921)
Patrick Comerford
Today is Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement. This is a day a fasting and prayer, when Jews ask for forgiveness for their sins over the past year as well as being a time for reflection and thinking of others.
Yom Kippur officially started with Kol Nidre at sundown last night, and ends at sundown this evening (28 September). Yom Kippur concludes the Ten Days of Awe, which began on Rosh Hashanah.
The greetings exchanged during Yom Kippur include גמר חתימה טובה (G’mar Hatimah Tovah), ‘May you be sealed for a good year [in the Book of Life]’, or צוֹם קַל (Tzom Kal), ‘Have an easy fast.’
Rabbi Dovid Rosenfield says, ‘Yom Kippur is not about personal resolutions and private reflection. It is about standing up and talking to God. It is about apologising, about re-establishing our connection with our Creator. We must tell God who we are, where we are holding in life, and what we know needs improvement.’
This is a day of repentance, fasting and solemn reflection, and its liturgy includes a tribute to ancient sages who died under Roman rule. Many people mark Yom Kippur with a recitation of the martyrdom of 10 ancient Jewish sages. In recent decades, similar liturgies and poems have been written to commemorate victims of pogroms in Europe and of the Holocaust.
Many synagogues in the US today will also be commemorating 11 new martyrs, who were murdered two years ago on Yom Kippur, 27 October 2018, when a gunman killed 11 worshipers from three congregations as they gathered for worship and Torah study at the Tree of Life or Or L’Simcha synagogue in Squirrel Hill, Pittsburgh.
They were from three congregations — Dor Hadash, New Light and Tree of Life. Some were saying a prayer of thanksgiving and praise known as the Kaddish d’Rabbanan, others were opening the siddur or prayer book.
It was the deadliest anti-Semitic attack in US history, and in the weeks before the US presidential election it remains a reminder of how racism and anti-semitism have seen exponential increases in Trump’s America.
Rabbi Jonathan Perlman, of New Light Congregation, who survived the Pittsburgh attack, paid tribute to the 11 murdered victims by writing a new poem last year, ‘Eileh Ezkarah for Pittsburgh.
Rabbi Perlman wrote the poem in Hebrew and in English, with help from other rabbis and Hebrew experts, Tamar Elad-Applebaum, Martin Cohen and Tovi Admon. The Hebrew title comes from the opening words, ‘These things do I remember’:
These things do I remember and my heart is grieved!
How the arrogant have devoured our people!
Who would believe that in our day there would be no intervention
For the eleven slaughtered from our holy community?
What occurred in our Holy Sanctuary that day
As the enemy came to tread upon our holy space
His wielding sword to break apart our memories from that place
The sanctified recalled a few that remained —
Among some their faces turned to one another before ‘Kaddish d’Rabbanan’
Among some their faces turned toward the door to welcome new faces
Among some they quickly assisted their friends in finding
their place in the Siddur
Among some those engaged in Torah Study
And among some who were in the kitchen preparing the next meal.
And to the eleven, God spoke in a whisper
‘The time has arrived to sanctify My Name in public ...’
For in the future their children and congregations would remember
That we are Sanctifiers of Life who come to live.
We buried our bodies
And upon them we wept
And even so, this did not break us.
As long as this breath is within us
We ponder the world you created for us
And evening and morning, each and every day,
We gather and we cry out as one:
Hear O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is One.
28 September 2020
On Kol Nidre, ‘we are like
wild grapes. We are
beautiful, and we are sour’
Inside the Spanish Synagogue in Prague, built in 1868 (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)
Patrick Comerford
This evening is Kol Nidre, the evening that marks the beginning of Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement, the holiest day of the year in Judaism. Its central themes are atonement and repentance. This holy day is observed traditionally with a day-long fast and intensive prayer, with many Jews often spending most of the day at synagogue services.
On her blog, ‘Velveteen Rabbi,’ Rabbi Rachel Barenblat says, ‘Our task on Yom Kippur is to wrestle with the radical idea that God has already forgiven our screw-ups – and we need to love ourselves enough to forgive our screw-ups, too. Because there is work to do, and we can’t do that work if we're still stuck on the old year’s failures.’
She first published this poem, ‘Kold Nidre,’ in What Stays, the second chapbook of her poems (Bennington Writing Seminars Alumni Chapbook Series, 2002.) Since then, it has been used in congregations and independent minyanim during Kol Nidre services.
KOL NIDRE
I.
My people break our promises publicly.
We stand and say ‘Hey, God, you know,
you can’t hold us to anything really,
I mean we’re creation, right?’ We declare
all vows, promises, and oaths of the year to come – all vows we’re too silent
or too weak or forgetful to uphold –
null and void in advance.
We say, ‘God, you’re listening, right?’ We say,
‘Don’t worry, God. We still feel guilt.’
We are like wild grapes.
We are beautiful, and we are sour.
Forgive us, and forgive
the stranger in our midst.
II.
In Stolpce, my grandfather’s town,
some sons ran away, abandoned God.
Joined the army, splashed water
on bare faces, cooked pea soup with bacon.
Even they would gather once a year,
press their ears to the synagogue door,
whisper the Aramaic words and weep.
My grandmother’s house in Prague
had a Christmas tree up to the ceiling.
When children said she’d killed their God
she said, ‘That must have been the Polish Jews.’
For Kol Nidre she wore her new fur coat
and walked the cobbled promenade.
At eighty she still fasted, stood and swayed.
Once my Hebrew teacher stood a girl
in the trash because she wouldn’t learn.
I came home bursting with new sounds
and imitated his accent at the dinner table.
I argued with our yardman, a Jehovah’s Witness.
Later Eloisa chewed him out in Spanish:
didn’t he know what Jewish meant?
III.
So that our vows may no longer be vows
we knock on our breasts with loose fists,
we speak an abecedarium of sins.
We know the disclaimer only lasts so long;
next year we’ll be back with our court
of three, holding scrolls, looking solemn.
We know how foolish we sound
but the melody is old, and makes us cry.
Kol Nidrei, sung by Cantor Angela Buchdahl at Central Synagogue, New York, on Friday 13 September 2013
Patrick Comerford
This evening is Kol Nidre, the evening that marks the beginning of Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement, the holiest day of the year in Judaism. Its central themes are atonement and repentance. This holy day is observed traditionally with a day-long fast and intensive prayer, with many Jews often spending most of the day at synagogue services.
On her blog, ‘Velveteen Rabbi,’ Rabbi Rachel Barenblat says, ‘Our task on Yom Kippur is to wrestle with the radical idea that God has already forgiven our screw-ups – and we need to love ourselves enough to forgive our screw-ups, too. Because there is work to do, and we can’t do that work if we're still stuck on the old year’s failures.’
She first published this poem, ‘Kold Nidre,’ in What Stays, the second chapbook of her poems (Bennington Writing Seminars Alumni Chapbook Series, 2002.) Since then, it has been used in congregations and independent minyanim during Kol Nidre services.
KOL NIDRE
I.
My people break our promises publicly.
We stand and say ‘Hey, God, you know,
you can’t hold us to anything really,
I mean we’re creation, right?’ We declare
all vows, promises, and oaths of the year to come – all vows we’re too silent
or too weak or forgetful to uphold –
null and void in advance.
We say, ‘God, you’re listening, right?’ We say,
‘Don’t worry, God. We still feel guilt.’
We are like wild grapes.
We are beautiful, and we are sour.
Forgive us, and forgive
the stranger in our midst.
II.
In Stolpce, my grandfather’s town,
some sons ran away, abandoned God.
Joined the army, splashed water
on bare faces, cooked pea soup with bacon.
Even they would gather once a year,
press their ears to the synagogue door,
whisper the Aramaic words and weep.
My grandmother’s house in Prague
had a Christmas tree up to the ceiling.
When children said she’d killed their God
she said, ‘That must have been the Polish Jews.’
For Kol Nidre she wore her new fur coat
and walked the cobbled promenade.
At eighty she still fasted, stood and swayed.
Once my Hebrew teacher stood a girl
in the trash because she wouldn’t learn.
I came home bursting with new sounds
and imitated his accent at the dinner table.
I argued with our yardman, a Jehovah’s Witness.
Later Eloisa chewed him out in Spanish:
didn’t he know what Jewish meant?
III.
So that our vows may no longer be vows
we knock on our breasts with loose fists,
we speak an abecedarium of sins.
We know the disclaimer only lasts so long;
next year we’ll be back with our court
of three, holding scrolls, looking solemn.
We know how foolish we sound
but the melody is old, and makes us cry.
Kol Nidrei, sung by Cantor Angela Buchdahl at Central Synagogue, New York, on Friday 13 September 2013
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