the rest of the group is eager to produce an example for him or her. It’s an exercise that makes us laugh, but also makes us confess real things. It’s hard to capture the moment when intimacy ratchets up in a room, but this is one of those times. We’re a little closer afterwards.
After cupcakes and brownies, as I start rushing everyone away from the table to get to synagogue on time, my seventeen-year-old nephew, Ethan, suddenly shouts, “Where are our commitments from last year?”
He’s remembered something I’ve forgotten: the previous year, I’d given everyone an index card to write down something they vowed to do better. We’d sealed the cards in envelopes with our names and the date to be opened: 10-3-14. Tonight was the moment of truth. I run to the cabinet where I keep things I don’t want to misplace, and when I open it, there they are: a pile of thirteen brisket-stained envelopes. We rip them open to see what we promised ourselves.
I read mine aloud, because my seventeen-year-old son, Ben, gives me permission: I’d vowed to nag Ben less and just appreciate him more. Boy, had I failed. I treasure my son beyond language; what Jewish mother doesn’t? He’s magical to me in a million ways. But I had not for a moment stopped pestering him. And on this particular Yom Kippur, when he’s applying to college, I am hit with the stunning fact that he won’t be living with us this time next year, that my on-site parenting will be finished and our face-to-face interactions will no longer be daily. How could I have spent these past precious months noodging Ben so predictably? Why do I feel compelled to ask if he’s finished the essay yet, signed up for Driver’s Ed yet, or remembered to write that thank-you note?
I show my index card to Ben, who—true to form—just gives me a knowing smile and says I’m forgiven. “I know you nag me because you love me,” he says matter-of-factly. He gives me an easy pass, and I take it. But I look at that index card, want to tape it to that stupid goat and send it off to Azazel, that vague place in the Bible to which the animal is exiled, a word that, according to some, means “for the complete removal.” I would love “the complete removal” of my screw-ups.
I’ve decided to attend the start of services at my mother and father’s synagogue instead of going with my husband and kids to mine, because I want to make sure I see how other shuls do it, at least for an hour or two. Being with Mom and Dad takes me back to the time I used to go to High Holy Day services with them in my teens, how I always felt somehow like a tag-along, aware that Mom’s synagogue wasn’t really mine, that she was heading into familiar territory, which was, to me, largely foreign.
B’nai Jeshurun (known as BJ) is a popular Conservative synagogue on the Upper West Side known for exuberant dancing in the aisles on erev Shabbat and for its erudite Argentinian-born senior rabbis, whose accents have their own mystical effect and whose sermons are often impassioned and dense. BJ rents out a hall at Lincoln Center on Yom Kippur because they’ve also outgrown their space.
This service marks the kickoff to twenty-five hours of food-free hard-core penitence. The central Kol Nidre prayer is technically not a prayer but rather a legal declaration—an appeal to a court of three judges, asking to have vows annulled so that atonement may commence. The three judges are symbolized by the cantor flanked by two Torah-carriers (or three Torahs displayed) on the bimah, and the haunting melody is sung three times, louder each time, repeated thrice so latecomers don’t miss it. Its text has been both controversial and confusing for generations.
All vows we are likely to make, all oaths and pledges we are likely to take between this Yom Kippur and the next Yom Kippur, we publicly renounce. Let them all be relinquished and abandoned, null and void, neither firm nor established. Let our vows, pledges, and oaths be considered neither vows nor pledges nor oaths.
It reads as if we’re being absolved of promises we’ll definitely break. What? What’s the point of making vows we’re sure to violate and be forgiven for? There is a common theory that the Kol Nidre “prayer” was added when Jews were in a time of extreme persecution and forced conversions. Jews needed to know that God would forgive any promises they were forced to make renouncing Judaism.
Historically, Kol Nidre has been invoked as proof that Jews can’t be trusted because it basically asserts that we promise to renege on our promises. In the mid-nineteenth century, congregations in Europe wrestled with whether to rewrite or jettison Kol Nidre. The Reform Movement took it out of its prayer book in 1844, then put it back in 1961. Some congregations today recite the Hebrew without translating it in English on the page.
So Kol Nidre is obviously a thorny non-prayer, but I look forward to hearing it this year, now that I understand its complexity. For Jews who have grown up with its melody (and despite my childhood synagogue deficit, I’m one of them), Yom Kippur is the sound of Kol Nidre. The tune is melancholy and reliable to me, and it’s beautiful to hear in BJ’s temporary sanctuary tonight—the Frederick P. Rose Hall of Jazz at Lincoln Center. Because of the amphitheater’s design, it feels like we’re embarking upon penance-in-the-round, which seems apt: we should have to look at each other when we’re thinking about hurting fellow human beings. The rabbis explain that we’re only pardoned for vows we made to God—not to another person. For those sins against each other, we have to face the people we’ve wronged and hope they absolve us.
Mom and Dad find seats in the orchestra, but—since I know I have to cut out early—I find a chair in the “bleachers,” high up behind the bimah, a perch that ends up being dramatic theater in itself. Whenever Rabbi Marcelo Bronstein (who could be cast as a tall Tevye) and Felicia Sol (a steady, focused Golde) turn to face the ark (the Torah cabinet), they are turned toward me, and I can observe their more private demeanor—eyes clenched, bodies rocking. I envy their catharsis. They look fervent and present. I imagine what it must feel like to be carried along by prayer, and wish I knew the liturgy by heart. Mom is visible across the auditorium, her eyes also closed. Dad looks indifferent, but I know he’s content to be where he is every Kol Nidre: next to Mom.
It’s disorienting to be away from my congregational home. I am not known here, and I feel like a tourist; the faces—and most of the melodies—are not familiar. However universal the prayers, every synagogue puts them to their own particular tunes, their own cadences and keys.
And yet one song, “Ya-aleh” (rise), is recognizable and, surprisingly, opens me up. I remember it from when my parents took me to BJ decades ago, and I notice now the ache of the music and the words, taken from a medieval poem, translated here:
May our voices rise up at evening,
our righteous acts arrive with the dawn,
our redemption transforms the dusk.
I love this prayer’s idea of multiple voices rising up together. Tonight amounts to a collective sorry. I like the notion that there’s always the chance to behave better when the sun comes up.
After about an hour, I feel the need to be back in the company of my husband and children. I exit one Lincoln Center auditorium and walk into another, Avery Fisher Hall a few blocks north, where my own synagogue holds overflow services. I take my place next to Dave and Ben and we begin the work of Yom Kippur, side by side. I mentally run through my missteps—moments of insensitivity, inaction, impatience. Contrary to previous years, I’m not casting about for sins. They’re all at my fingertips, thanks to weeks of advance introspection. My Elul training kicks in tonight.
I have no idea what my children or husband are thinking or regretting. But I also don’t feel entitled to ask. Though Jews atone communally, the truest confessions are private. And I know that prying can
