In the last posts I've been reflecting on different aspects of Yom Kippur including the singular, solitary observance of the day. Now I want to say something about Yom Kippur in community.
I see the High Holiday prayer book as a resource (Eddie's new Machzor Lev Shalem is extraordinary, rich, transformative); similarly, the rabbi leading the service is a resource, the hazzan (usually some number of people serving as cantors) a third. But ultimately "wherever you go, there you are" - while the prayer book, the rabbi, the cantor, can help lift you higher, the experience you have depends on what you yourself are bringing to it. Many of us spend the days and weeks leading up to Yom Kippur working to prepare our souls - this is the traditional blueprint - and then the day itself is upon us...
I don't fast because I enjoy being hungry, because I enjoy denying myself, rather, I fast because it is a good way to get my own attention, to underline the solemnity and majesty of the day, and because it is my people's long tradition to do so and especially on Yom Kippur I want to place myself in the powerful circle of all who've prayed before me, I want to feel their unseen support.
In a similar vein, thinking about how we garner support to strenghthen and focus our prayer work, I am reminded of something I heard many many years ago from Zalman Schachter (now Schachter-Shalomi), "I can't talk to the people I can pray with and I can't pray with the people I can talk to." In the last dozen years I have been blessed to pray in a shul which is for me a true community. Some fellow congregants are amongst my dearest friends, but whether we are intimates or just old-fashioned “cordial” with one another, we are a part of the same community. Over the years, as a community, we have made Shabbos together, we have studied together - hundreds and hundreds of times. We have visited one another in mourning, we have celebrated new births, new books, new incarnations, important anniversaries; we have confided heartache and doubt, we have shared laughter and kugel and challah. Slowly we are growing old together.
Truth is, during the day on Yom Kippur I am attending to my own work – confronting your soul on Yom Kippur is indeed heavy lifting – and I’m not so aware of who’s in the room with me. But for mincha, Neilah, for the end of the day as the shadows lengthen in the starkly simple sanctuary and my legs ache, scream, from standing, I need and feel the support of all the other daveners so well known to me. My eyes scan the room to drink in all the faces. I sing, they sing, we all sing with gusto – thank you God for giving me the strength to still be here standing, singing, praying, searching, striving to tend a spark of holiness. Please God, give me, give each of us, another year...
The shofar is blown, the ark closed. Sometimes Eddie and I break-fast with a few friends, more often we go home to a quiet evening alone together. Either way, with what (I like warm soup and scrambled eggs) and with whom we break-fast is incidental - the height of the day concluded with the blowing of the shofar, the closing of the ark. The height of the day was praying in community.
