At 18:37 yesterday evening in Istanbul, Yom Kippur began.
Yom Kippur is the Jewish Day of Atonement.
I decided not to go to Synagogue for
Kol Nidre because I thought I would be able to concentrate on praying more by staying home and watching a previously recorded service online. I chose to watch Rabbi Naomi Levy and the Nashuva community in L.A. celebrate Yom Kippur in 2009. This was the most recent version I could find on the Jewish TV Network. Here is the link if you would like to check it out:
http://jewishtvnetwork.com/highHolidays/.
I liked the Neshuva service for the most part. Rabbi Naomi (great name) gave an funny, passionate, and original sermon, and the music compositions were creative and entertaining. But it is always hard to attend or watch a service of a community that you are not familiar with. I grew up going to services at
Temple Emanu-El in Honolulu, Hawaii and at
URJ Camp Newman-Swig in Santa Rosa, California. Both communities are reformed Jewish communities that incorporate musical instruments into their services and read aloud English translations to and along with Hebrew chants and prayers. I chose to watch this particular service because it seemed the most similar to the type of service I am used to. While I was right in that regard, it was still hard to watch because I am not part of the Neshuva community.
I am sure Rabbi Naomi would argue that I am part of the Jewish community and therefore her community, and although that makes logical sense, that was not how I felt when I started watching the service. It is not that I felt uninvited or unwelcome. On the contrary, Neshuva and many other Jewish communities across the United States welcome thousands of Jews to watch services from around the world on the Jewish TV Network. In 2009, 220,000 people watched the Neshuva service live on the internet. I can't speak for them of course, but personally in the beginning I felt like I did not belong. Rabbi Naomi led prayers in tunes that I had never heard before and in an order I was taught was incorrect. For me this highlighted the fact that Judaism, like many other religions, has so many variations that it is difficult to define a Jewish identity. There are distinct religious variations, but also variations in ethnicity, geography, economics, culture, and politics. Indeed, there are Orthodox Jews in Israel that would deny my Judaism because it is so different from theirs. I don't blame them. The way in which I celebrate my religion is so reformed and so far from what the Torah describes as Jewish ritual and tradition. However, no one follows the Torah exactly. And the Torah contradicts itself all the time, which makes it impossible to follow exactly anyway. So the question becomes is someone who follows the Torah closely more Jewish than someone who follows the Torah loosely? Who is considered Jewish?
Are these questions even helpful? I am not sure if they are because while I consider myself Jewish and the Neshuva community considers itself Jewish, in the beginning I still felt like I did not belong. Perhaps you picked up on my past tense, as I have been referring to "when I started watching the service" and "in the beginning of the service." It is true that at first I felt like I did not belong in the Neshuva community, which made me question if I belong in the Jewish community. And then I heard Ki Anu Amecha and other prayers that I could not help but sing along to. During Ashamnu I stood up and hit my fist against my chest and heart, reminding myself of all the sins I have committed and asking God for forgiveness. In moments like these towards the end of the service, I felt I was a part of the Neshuva community and the Jewish community as a whole. Instead of focusing on what separates Jews, I focused on what brings them together.
For me, it was traditional prayers that are the same for all Jews that brought the Jewish community together for Yom Kippur. But what will it be tomorrow?
When I was preparing for my Bat Mitzvah in 2003, my mother gave me a list of quotes about Judaism and the Torah to study. One of them was from the story in the Talmud (Shabbos 31 A): A gentile approached Rabbi Shammai and asked the Rabbi to teach him the Torah while he stands on one foot. Rabbi Shammai thought that the man was not serious and chased him away. The gentile then approached Hillel with the same question but was met with a very different reaction - Hillel agreed. He said, "This is our Holy Torah: 'What is hateful to you, do not do unto others... That's the meaning of the whole Torah. All the rest is only an explanation of that. Go, go, my son. Go and study it.'"
The whole Torah, the ideology of Judaism, and the base of the Jewish religion rests on the golden rule for all of humanity: Treat others the way you want to be treated; Treat your neighbor as yourself.
The Torah is what brings Jews together, the Torah is the golden rule, and the golden rule is what brings humanity together. The Jewish community is just one community in the community of communities that we all belong to.
I know these statements make me sound dramatic, a little pretentious, and also kinda dumb. All I really said is that we are all part of this world and we should be nice to each other. But it was a good feeling for me to go from watching a service of a community that I did not feel I belonged to, and then remembering all the things I just wrote about, to finally feeling like I belonged to the Jewish community and consequently the world community. I hope that didn't sound like I'm saying the Jewish community is the world community. I just meant the teachings of the Jews are the same as the teachings for humanity. I also forgot to mention that I spent a full 24 hours alone in my apartment yesterday fasting and doing a whole lot of nothing. I need to wrap this post up before I ramble even more... Sorry if reading this was a waste of your time. I'm sorry for anything I may have done to you in the past. I'm sorry I have not had the courage to apologize. And I'm sorry if I have not realized that I need to apologize.
