Yom Kippur

I'm generally a little scattered in my ways. No, really. This week, I've had to find a way to be organized- to study my Torah chanting for Wednesday, put together my class for Thursday, straighten up the house so the cleaning woman can come, post questions to the League of Women Voters to ask candidates at their event tonight. And I haven't been feeling that well. On and off fever, coughing, feeling tired. When I last lived in this part of the world, in January 1978, I had been sick on probably my last ten October 21 birthdays in Baltimore. A doctor finally suggested it was a seasonal allergy. After four years in the East, the allergies are coming back.

These are the things I was thinking about as we started Yom Kippur. The evening service, when Kol Nidre is sung, is easy, unless you're the cantor. Traditionally, Kol Nidre is sung three times. At Tree of Life we had a pianist and  celloist play Bruch's Kol Nidre, a concert piece based on a traditional melody, then the cantor sang it once. The prayer asks that we be excused from vows we were forced to make. It was written when Jews were forced to convert to other religions to save their lives. Modern Judaism has tried to take it out of the service, but regardless of its meaning, it is what people expect to open Yom Kippur.

I worked as a cantorial soloist for High Holy Days from 1997 to 2003, at four different synagogues in seven years. When the rabbi said "And now the cantor will chant Kol Nidre," I realized what an awe-inspiring task I had taken on. Not about the words in the prayer, but that Jews in many countries had heard this prayer for hundreds of years, and that I was part of a great tradition. I felt ancestral cantors looking over my shoulder. When someone dies in the Bible it is said they "are gathered to their ancestors." When I sang Kol Nidre, I felt that the ancestors had gathered with us, that they had come to listen to this prayer with their descendants.

I guess I was jealous of our cantor, Daniel Hazan ("Chazzan" is the Hebrew word for cantor). He is a French Jew from Morocco, who escaped back to France with his family, then emigrated to Israel, and now, with a Doctorate in Music, teaches at a college in Mexico. He sings both Sephardi (Spanish) and Ashkenazic (German) melodies. He's learned a few more modern pieces, mostly because Joe asked him to and got him sheet music. He improvises a lot. It works well and the congregation loves him. There is no accompanist and he gets through pages of material quickly by not stopping to do fancy melodies.

I loved those fancy melodies. Lots of new tunes were written in the post World War II era by composers following Aaron Copland and Leonard Bernstein. At the cantor conferences I used to attend, new pieces were introduced, some of them just gorgeous. Many of them called for a keyboard and choir.  The last four years I worked, I was a good enough singer to pull them off. I had a full choir and accompaniment two of my seven years, and a pianist most of the other years. While Cantor Hazan was singing, I often imagined the beautiful piece I would have sung at that point. Of course, I won't ever do that again.

We had a break in services at 12:30, and Joe and I came home. He left to go back for his teaching session at 2:30. I stayed home, slept about 45 minutes, had a peanut butter and banana sandwich, fed the cat, and left the house at 3:30 to be back for the 4:30 afternoon service, where Joe had asked me to sing "Zog Nit Keymil" a Yiddush song sung by Polish-Jewish partisans in World War II. I walked a half-mile to the PRT, our driverless mass-transit system here in Morgantown, then walked another half-mile to the temple from the end of the line in the center of town. It was 75 F. and sunny out, so there were no weather issues. I was so tired, I didn't think I would make it. Why? Well, in addition to my seasonal "cold," I had chanted nineteen lines of Hebrew in the morning, memorizing the tune, the vowels and the punctuation. That alone was exhausting. I know I could not stand through an entire Yom Kippur service, even if I didn't fast. Daniel Hazan, who is at least ten years younger than I am, and thin, was in strong voice until the end.

It's no good longing for what you can no longer do. People don't want a cantor like me, and in places where there are many alternatives, i.e. not Morgantown, people often like peppy tunes played on guitar, where the congregation can sing along easily. Daniel Hazan and I both do a few things that people can sing with us, but we don't play guitar, and peppy melodies are not our style. Jewish liturgical music has moved on.

I try to live in the times I live in, and act age appropriately. It's not cool for someone married and my age to tell a younger person they look "hot." I still work out at a gym, carefully, and ride a bicycle, also carefully. I don't wear clothing that reveals my numerous tattoos, like some of the young men and women at the gym, and I don't lift 100 pounds. I try to be asleep by eleven. I can't physically do what a High Holy Day cantor does anymore. I get that.

Rabbi Joe was brilliant. I don't know if people realize how hard it is to script every word you say that is not in the book, to write two lengthy sermons and then have to do more for the following weekend. He's not afraid to talk about God as a believer, and yet to admit that the whole concept can be hard to swallow.

Our prayer book is the 1976 Reform  version. Lots of it is readings about social justice, in English. While it is non-partisan, it's clearly not in favor of the selfishness we hear today in conservative circles. The emphasis is on sharing what we have, helping those in need, especially refugees fleeing for their lives. It speaks of showing compassion for others, about treating "the strangers in our midst" as our equals, about understanding that all people are created in the image of God.

For me, it means not calling people "troglodytes"(what Joe makes me say instead of "assholes"), and sticking to issues when talking about politicians who have been bought off, or don't see things as I do.

There is a memorial service late in the day. We publish a book of names people want remembered. Joe and I both list our parents and grandparents on the page we buy, and I add my Uncle Steve and his boyfriend of many years, and my grandparents' brothers and sisters, who were kind to me, but had no children. They are my mother's Aunt Grace and Uncle Bernie, and my father's Aunt Yetta and Uncle Jake. I thought about them during the yizkor service. People were called on to read pieces about loss and about love after someone dies. The readers, softened up by fasting and a long service, often cried.

At Yom Kippur, we wish to be renewed for another year of life. With most of the congregation over sixty, that wish takes on a more literal meaning. I thought about myself, and about Joe, and the future of our congregation here in Morgantown.

It was, for me, and I think most of the congregation, a meaningful Yom Kippur. I will think about what I saw, heard and felt this year for a long time. Meanwhile, our next holiday starts Monday night. And I'm teaching the hits of 1962 in an hour and a half! Someone just asked me about adding Bob Dylan to the mix.