Ad Olam Yom Kippur Kol Nidre, Day of Atonement, Evening Service,
October 8, 2019 at the Saraha Buddhist Center, led by Aruna Beth Miriam Rose and Jordan Michels.
note: i write without proper capitals. it’s deliberate, it’s my way of humbling, of remembering i’m not at the center of all things, and to do a little something empoweringly different than the “norms,” of our world, many of which i consider life-alienating.
Aruna Beth asked me to talk about why i, a secular jew, choose to come to jewish services.
for this web version: i did also want to share this brief piece i wrote when thinking of being at Kol Nidre. It’s also connected to my talk above in this seeking to live a well-lived life that Torah is our blueprint for:
in light of the forgiveness of these yom kippur days:
in my seeking to live an authentic well lived life.... i am called these high holidays, this kol nidre evening to forgive my notions of separateness, to forgive my forgetting that i am born OF this world... rather than INTO this world - ie: separate from it.
and i am called to forgive my forgetting that i am/we are a gift to be cherished... to forgive ourselves of ever believing we are anything less than beautiful.
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this is the title of my short talk:
do fully. be fully. return. forgive. inhale. exhale. repeat.
i've decided recently that i am here to reclaim my freedom from the systemic, power hungry, culturally induced oppression that i’ve internalized, hook line and sinker... much to my detriment.
and to reclaim living as alive and authentic a human being as i can. the Torah, is said to be a blueprint for being a well-lived human! and I’m learning over and over that we do that together, we don’t do that alone.
so for me, a secular, hippie jew -- why I’m here at services.. is basically about togetherness... to counter the entrenched separations that divide, oppress and squash our souls and life's flow.
so, this past weekend, i was with many trees... standing people, as they have been called by the indigenous peoples of this land we're on. and even though there will be the time when they will no longer be here... due to climate changes, and the cycles of life… for now, they stand together… interconnected, interdependent… co-creating a forest… where they live, grow, interact, and simple be alive.
there is something profound and meaningful i feel viscerally, standing among them...
so in my quest to be fully human, fully me... i find myself, regularly going to be together with people. i happen to be born jewish this life. so this is the tribe, and this is the Torah, the blueprint for the tribe. and i find i get nourished from being with people, and praying, and saying the hebrew words in particular.
i don't speak hebrew, I don’t know what the words mean, but i really like saying the hebrew prayers out loud. i like the sounds of them. and i really like singing them together in a group. even if i don't know the people, there is something about tribe, about the togetherness.
i often struggle with being incarnate in this body… fighting numbness, rage, paralysis. For me, being together… with people… praying together… can actually help ward off that spell.
and.. i haven’t told hardly anyone this: when i close my eyes during jewish services, i have the experience, especially at high holidays, when I hear the voices all around me singing the Hebrew prayers… and I know these prayers have been said in this similar way for hundreds of years, in Europe, in distant lands, in places where my ancestors lived…
and i feel my ancestors, my people, and I enter this time out of time space where I can touch and speak to my spirit, and feel my authentic essential self. And i am strengthened and nourished in this standing with my people in a way i feel nowhere else.
last thing: i heard this Native American history story: that when a ship of European settlors returned to the New World, to this land, coming back some time after having explored, and traded with the indigenous peoples, including apparently disease infested blankets…. they found hundreds of miles of tribal villages with no people anywhere in sight… decimated, no one alive. finally…they found one indigenous man emerging from a forest. he was he only one left for hundreds of miles. and when they asked him his name, he said, "i don't have a name, because i have no one to call me by it."
so i come to services... to hear the names, and the words, and the prayers of my ancestors... so i can call to my soul… and hear an answering… and know... myself… alive.
d’barti. (“i have spoken,” in hebrew)
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Author: shana deane is a second generation secular jew from polish, russian and roumanian heritage. she was bat mitzvah’ed, by reciting a paper she’d written on the lighting of the sabbath candles… because it was an orthodox synagogue and only the boys were allowed to really get bar mitzvah’ed and read from the Torah.
she comes from a “high holidays” family who walked to synagogue on those days. her father and three brothers played basketball at the shul with the macabees; and she remembers, when little, trying to peak under their talit as they stood on the bimah for the Kohein priestly blessing during Yom Kippur services. hence, she considers herself a Kohein and regularly goes to the bimah for the priestly blessings at her home synagogue, romemu in new york city.
her mother, evelyn and her mother’s sister, sally, grew up in the lower east side jewish ghettos of new york city and hester street. her grandmother took in foster kids for the money. they were dirt poor, but “you could eat off the kitchen floor.” her mother remembers the ice man coming with ice for the “ice box.” she remembers riding next to her dad in a horse and buggy while he delivered laundry to rich folks uptown; and she remembers radio shows, and seeing the first television set at a friend’s house.
shana’s father, sam, was a virginia jew, with an entrepreneurial poppa, who moved to the bronx, to go to CUNY, the city college of new york, and co-captain, with red holzman,* the 1942 championship team of the college basketball league. (*red was the head coach of the new york knicks of the national basketball association, from 1967 to 1982.)
she knows her parents are both shocked and pleased that later in life (a decade ago), she found a hippie jewish synagogue and precious community in manhattan that is now central to her life. who knew, she’d be every friday at shul, and often saturday mornings!
end.
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