“A pair of shoes can change your life. Just ask Cinderella.”

 

Flaming anti semites feel that the beautiful and haunting aramaic prayer sung at the beginning of Yom Kippur   permits all Jews to break any promise made in the previous year. Not so at all. It is a prayer said exempting us from  promises made under duress and not made voluntarily.  And although begun  in maybe the tenth century, it REALLY came in  handy during forced conversions during the spanish reign of terror.

 

As I have stated Elul is a month to perform acts of teshuvah, returning to holiness in the form of asking forgiveness and granting it. Now as Jews begin the most solemn of days one if entering the sanctuary and confronting God and having a very direct conversation with the holy one- whatever your concept of it may be.

 

If you have ever seen Jolson's Jazz Singer, Kol Nidre is the lietmotif running through out the film and once you have heard it, it is hard to escape it's slow and minor key power. A friend of mine plays it on the violin during services as her own way of praying. I close my eyes.

 

And why do we use the word services, the plural? just go to one synagogue and you will see that most rituals have no clear beginning and incorporate many different portions each call a service ...hence the word is plural.

 

Yom Kippur is one of two holidays that Jews  over all  the world will haul their rear ends into some sort of observation even if they never do anything else. The other is Passover. even if they dont tell the story of the Exodus, they get together  for good food and great wine. Okay I can tolerate Mogen David for that one evening.  But back to the suspicions people have about Jews. Well those narrow minded bigots deserve some  form of forgiveness or at least pity on a day like this because as we jews at reciting the A to Z of sins and sing alveniu malkeinu and then tomorrow we are by about 4:30 pm, hungry, faint and maybe more than a little in an altered state- those bigots will still be tortured paranoid and toxic - to themselves most of all.

 

Maybe this is why I have been making boxes for the last few days. containment is a good concept

 

L' shana Tova. Shabbat Shalom.