The New Year

This is the Gaon (Genius) of Vilna, allegedly my ancestor


It is the new year for us Hebrews (as we were called at Ellis Island) or Israelites (as we're called in France, because Juifs is too reminiscent of the Nazi occupation). My father used to say he was a WASH--a white Anglo-Saxon Hebrew. He wasn't Anglo-Saxon except in language. And much culture. I always think of my father during services, because he was known for whispering bons mots and sharing sugarless chewing gum. There's a prayer called the Aleynu, during which, according to tradition, Jews would kneel. That was discontinued because it was too much like Christianity, the rabbi said today. Generally, we bow our heads at one point in the prayer. The next sentence of the prayer begins with: Lifneymelech. See, it sounds like Lift, my father used to always say. Today some of us did kneel, because it is a high holiday. A big deal. Christians have Christmas and Easter, and we have Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur. Ten days apart. During which we are under judgment: Shall we be written in the book of life? Should we be allowed to live? Should we die? All this is metaphorical, at least to me. We twist the tradition this way and that in order to make it relevant. Or I do. When you look at the prayers, you can't *not* think about the Holocaust. If you're me. You can't *not* think about the professions of faith you're chanting, the images of divine light and protection you're conjuring. They believed all this (some of them), they believed they were protected, and they were torn from civilization and murdered.

There is a portion of the Yom Kippur service that recognizes martyrs through time. You are not encouraged to be a martyr, but I suppose the architects of the religion have thought that it's important to stay aware of the historical defenders of the faith. As a community we mourn them. Do we pay tribute? Perhaps. We make them (some of them) the stuff of legend. Role models in extremis.

Rabbi Yitz Greenberg tells us: When the righteous Rabbi Akiva was flayed alive by the Romans for daring to rebel, we are told that the angels shrieked in horror. "It is my decree," was God's inscrutable answer. Or as Stanley Elkin once put it in his novel "The Living End" (this is paraphrase:) God is asked why he created so much havoc and suffering on earth. He answers: It made a better story.

As always, our martyrs are better than their martyrs. Our guerrillas are freedom fighters, theirs are terrorists. God's on our side.

The Right Side

The weather was cool today, so it was Yom Kippur without that Bikram feeling. I had scheduled my arrival to services just about right: I got to the little-synagogue-that-isn't-there at about 1:30, with just two prayers to go before the break. Then there was yoga. Most of us were wearing white, which is the traditional color worn for the High Holidays. It was nice to see so much white. Made the mind calm. Unlike black, it shows up. You notice it. I was thinking of making white my signature color. Though unlike black, it is not slimming. I liked our yoga instructor. At the end, in savasana, corpse pose, he listed all the parts of each side of our bodies, as we checked on them or touched them with our minds. As he was going through the right leg, for some reason I started thinking of my cousin B, who died two autumns ago, at age 97. I cried a little. I remembered sitting in her kitchen with her with the bird clock on the wall, and me watching a lizard through the window. Why did going over the right side of my body make me think of B? Is there a message there? It makes me almost believe it is possible to commune with the dead. That was maybe the penultimate time I saw her. She was still walking around then. Her last year she was in the hospital and back.

At the break I talked to B, who told me his wife had died of breast cancer. It bothers me to look at you, he said, because of it. She was 50 when she was diagnosed, and had 10 years before it came back. How old are you, he said, in your 20s? I'm 51, I said. When I told him the cancer was not in my lymph nodes, he gestured dismissively, as if I had nothing to worry about. I also talked with an 18-year-old diabetic who was fasting, but who had insulin and food with him, just in case. I said I was fasting but I was drinking water. Did your oncologist tell you to do that? he asked. No, I said, my husband did. The young man told me when he was diagnosed, the first thing he wanted to know was if he could fast on Yom Kippur.

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I have just finished reading through a blog written by the cat of a friend of mine. I think her style is influencing mine here. She is a surrealist and a dreamer with typical evil cat aloofness. She has angry leftist politics and a hatred of squirrels. In other words, she is no Mehitabel.

Bikram Kol Nidre

O man, was it hot in services tonight. We had an erev (eve) Yom Kippur dinner here and then R, P2 and I went to the little congregation that meets in a church. There were two ceiling fans and one rotating fan. I wanted to go stand by the rotating fan but didn't want to hog the air. I have been a very sweaty Cancer Bitch it seems like forever. Partly it's because I stopped taking black cohosh because it interferes with one of my Pills to Combat Melancholy. Partly it's from being zapped from peri-menopause into full-blown menopause by the chemo. Partly, according to X, my acupuncturist, it's because I'm still getting rid of the toxins. When I get warm, I stay very very warm. And get sweaty. When I have a slightly unpleasant thought or think of a time when I was embarrassed or irritated, I get sweaty. I get a clammy peach-fuzz head and then sweat streams and streams around my face. And then too when I'm just sitting around or standing or walking, calm and minding my own business, a flash starts. Sometimes I feel my ears get red first. I don't mind the heat, it's the *sweat.* I can't take soy for the flashes because I had the kind of breast cancer that feeds on soy, because it's estrogen-like. In other words, the cancer (the cancer that is no longer with us, the cancer that was cut out with wide margins, the cancer that was sliced and diced and put in parrafin) feeds on estrogen and estrogen-like substances, such as soy and pesticides and bovine growth hormones. Which means I'm supposed to eat organic as much as possible, and soy as little as possible. Which brings us to this musical question: If the oncology nutritionist said to have more protein, and to take it in the form of whey powder, should I still eat it even though I can't find organic? How do I know that this concentrated powder isn't full of contrated hormones? Next time I'm in Whole Foods, I'll ask at the courtesy desk about ordering the organic. Or I could even ask the nutritionist directly, God forbid.

But services. Erev Yom Kippur services are called Kol Nidre after the first prayer*, which is chanted three times. My father always said, Kol Nidre can make or break a cantor. I thought that was funny. Our family tradition was to wise-crack during services. Tonight we got to services late, after the Kol Nidre. I think the real reason it is repeated is so that latecomers will get to hear it. Forgive me, I missed the Kol Nidre at the Kol Nidre service.

The confessions on behalf of the community: We have done this, we have done that. But our prayers, repentance and charity will help us be forgiven. Every year we say we are sorry. And then we go out and sin some more. We are supposed to ask forgiveness of people we have sinned against. But I am stubborn. I am unchanging. I had a best friend. I don't have her any more. It has been more than 10 years. I tell people: We brought out the worst in each other. I should ask forgiveness for hurting her. Did I hurt her? I still feel competitive with her. Is that a sin? Yes. A sin against her, against me, against the universe. If I am competitive, it means there is not enough. It means that I am paying too much attention to what she has. I am looking to the side when I should look ahead. Or inside. I do rejoice when other friends rejoice. I am not always ungenerous. I should ask forgiveness for the times I provoked her. For being late. For staying annoyed. For holding a grudge. We have held grudges, we have bribed, we have betrayed, we have cheated, we have stolen. Forgive us, all of us. We are sorry. By tradition, we beat our chests while we confess, but the modern thing is to massage our hearts--after all, we are of the generation that believes in "not beating yourself up. " Just as we no longer give one another 39 (light, according to tradition) lashes. Massage your heart until it produces regret. Massage your heart until it is soft, and warmth radiates from it, settling on all the bits and pieces and the big large things in the universe. Massage your heart until it opens. It is a hard heart. It is a frightened heart. It is afraid that if it opens like a locket and takes in the universe, it will disappear. It is afraid that it will then become the universe's heart. It will no longer be the heart of the one, the only Cancer Bitch. It will be just like anybody else's. But it already looks like anybody else's. It pumps blood. It does all the things a heart does. Its blood is type O+, which is the most common type, the type that billions of other humans have and had and will have. Its blood can be given and taken. Its blood can be shared. Its blood can be sorted and separated and centrifuged and spread between clear glass plates. It can be spilled. ("If you prick us, do we not bleed?")

One story about Eden, said the rabbi, is that Adam and Eve were pure light. And then when they were exiled from the garden they were given skins. To contain them, to separate them from every other thing in the world that they had not been separate from. Another story is that everything in the world was made of light. Then the light became fragmented and we are trying in this life to collect and connect all the light, to restore and repair the world. The way to heal, I think, and I mean heal the soul, is to train yourself to see the light everywhere. Until you know without looking. Until you feel it without pointing it out to yourself, mouthing the words. It's just there. Like it's been all along.

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A few hours after I wrote this I realized: I wanted too much from her. I wanted too much and didn't tell her and then the resentment started. And when I told her, the resentment had already taken root. For all that I am sorry.
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*(The Internet tells me that Kol Nidre is really a declaration, not a prayer.)