The Register Citizen (Torrington, CT)
Comfort and hope in Yom Kippur service
Why am I, a non-Jew and an agnostic, attending this service? I find something strangely comforting in taking part in this communal ritual of remembering.
There is a break in the service. Some members of the congregation get up and leave while others come in to take their place. A cantor rises and intones an ancient melody. A second cantor joins in, accompanying himself on a guitar. The music is non-Western, yet vaguely familiar. Where have I heard it before? Was it in Morocco? Or during my visit to the Arab quarter of Cairo? But I am in a Jewish synagogue in Westport, and this is the Yom Kippur memorial service.
I follow the rabbi’s words in my prayer book, and when he recites a passage in Hebrew, I am struck by the similarity with Arabic. Of course, they are both Semitic languages, I tell myself, much like Dutch and German, which have common roots in the Germanic language group. So close in so many ways and yet so far apart.
“Our life, at its best, is an endless effort for a goal we never attain,” the rabbi reads. “Death finally terminates the struggle. … Master and servant, rich and poor, strong and feeble, wise and simple, all are equal in death. The grave levels all distinctions and makes the whole world kin.” I feel a shiver run down my spine. Is it only in death that we can be kin? Are all efforts towards peaceful coexistence in Ireland, or Serbia, or Israel and Palestine doomed to fail? Is there any point in even trying?
But wait, the message continues. “Help us, Lord, to fulfill the promise that is in each of us, and so to conduct ourselves that generations hence, it will be true to say of us: The world is better because, for a brief space, they lived in it.” The shiver subsides. If it is true that there is a promise in each of us, and if each generation can make the world better, does that not mean that there is hope for our planet and its future inhabitants after all?
Why am I, a non-Jew and an agnostic, attending this service? I find something strangely comforting in taking part in this communal ritual of remembering; in allowing myself to acknowledge the pain of the loss of my Jewish husband at the far too early age of 55; in reflecting fondly on my father and mother-in-law, who opened their home and their hearts to a stranger from another continent and a different faith, and made me feel a cherished member of their family. When the rabbi reads, “At this hour of memorial we recall with grief all Your Children who have perished through the cruelty of the oppressor, victims of demonic hate,” I weep for my best friend Lili, whose life ended in a gas chamber when she was only 16, and for my other classmates and their families in the Netherlands who became part of Hitler’s “Final Solution.”
In contrast to Christian religious services, the rabbi refrains from a personal sermon, for which I am grateful. I cannot stand these intermediaries between an Almighty and me, who feel qualified to show me the way. Here we read and recite the same words that thousands have read and chanted before us and thousands will continue to do in the future. It is the active participation in this age-old ritual that creates the emotional and spiritual impact. And surely, if it is true that our spirits survive when our bodies die, they cannot fail to hear when voices all over the world chant “we remember” year after year.
Every year I come away from the service feeling melancholy but glad to have been a part of it. For the Jews a new year has begun. May it bring peace to all mankind.