It started with an invitation to a friend’s house to break the fast. But it seemed less satisfying and communal, somehow, to have eaten before breaking the fast, so I decided to fast. But to get into the spirit of fasting I’d certainly need to attend services the night before. So with that reverse planning, I made the choice to observe Yom Kippur and skip my normal activities – capoeira (not to mention eating) – for the rest of the week. (Besides, I got up early and ran at least 4 miles around the beautiful beach-side trails at Playa Escambron, so I can take a day off now…)
My boyfriend asked me, in all seriousness, if I feel more in touch with my Jewish-ness in Puerto Rico. He was quite insightful. Being surrounded by more-observant Jews in New York – my old New York law firm would have been half empty over these high holy days – makes me fade into the crowd, especially because I’m not observant and am not surrounded by a family observing the holidays together. But here in San Juan, I have four Jewish co-workers, with Jewish spouses and one Jewish baby, and we are all the Jewish community each other has. In that crowd, I’m definitely Jewish enough to fit in, and what’s more important, they need me as much as I need them – unlike my Jewish New York friends who are busy with their own families on the holidays leaving me with no Jewish community of my own in a city of 2 million Jews. There is one reform synagogue on the entire island, and their shul was about the same side as the overflow room I sat in last time I went to a New York synagogue, watching the services on a live television feed. The San Juan congregation doesn’t have their own rabbi, so they flew in one from New Jersey for the holidays, but there he was, twenty feet away from me, closer then I’d been to the rabbi in New York who was televised from another room. In that service, I felt the familiarity of the songs and prayers of my childhood, and the only signs of Puerto Rico were a Puerto Rican flag alongside those of the U.S. and Israel, lush tropical flowers in vases on the bimah, and much more ethnically-diverse congregants.
We talk about Yom Kippur as the “Day of Atonement,” where we atone for our sins. That idea doesn’t particularly move me. But the actual language of the prayerbooks and services has a much more expansive idea of what it means to atone and repent. We are asking God for forgiveness for our sins, but the language of those sins and of our search for forgiveness to my ear sounds a lot like a quest for self-improvement. There was one “silent confession” in the prayer book that particularly resonated for me, and provides some language for the ways I try to think about life as a process of reflecting, learning, and growing. I think this beautiful prayer is worth reading much more often than once a year. Thanks to Google and the Internet, I am able to share it with you, and safeguard it to return to myself:
In my individuality I turn to You, O God, and seek Your help. For You care for each of Your children. You are my God, and my Redeemer. Therefore, while around me others think their own thoughts, I think mine; and as each one of them seeks to experience Your presence, so do I.
Each person’s abilities are limited by nature and by the circumstances we have had to face. Whether I have done better or worse with my capacities than others with theirs, I cannot judge.
But I do know that I have failed in many ways to live up to my potentialities and Your demands. Not that You expect the impossible. You do not ask me: ‘Why have you not been great as Moses?’ You do ask me: ‘Why have you not been yourself? Why have you not been true to the best in you?’
I will not lay the blame on others, though they may have wronged me, nor on circumstances, though they may have been difficult. The fault lies mainly in myself.
I have been weak. Too often I have failed to make the required effort to do my work conscientiously, to give my full attention to those who needed me, to speak the kindly word, to do the generous deed, to express my concern for my friends. I have not loved enough, not even those closest to me.
I have also neglected my duties to my community. The Jewish people is only a remnant of what it was, a fragment of what it might have been. It needs strength to rebuild itself and to carry on the task entrusted to it by a hundred generations. Have I been a source of this strength? Have I enhanced its good name? Have I shared fully in its life? Have I even acquainted myself sufficiently with the history of my people and the teachings of my faith?
And do I not share some responsibility for the social evils which I see, hear about, and read about daily? Have I always used my opportunities as a citizen to relieve suffering, to speak out against injustice, to promote harmony in the life of my city, my country, and the nations of the world?
There is much that I failed to do. There is also much that I wish I had not done. By many words and deeds I have caused harm. It is not easy now to remember the details; out of guilt I tend to shut them out of my consciousness. But clearly or dimly, the regretted memories now come back to me. I have, in many ways, hurt my sisters and brothers; I have betrayed their trust, offended their sensibilities, damaged their self-respect. Sometimes, indeed, I have done harm from what seemed at the time good motives. Sometimes my supposed love for others was in reality only a desire to dominate them. And sometimes what I took to be righteous indignation was only uncontrolled anger or unforgiving vindictiveness.
How I wish I had learned to master myself; to control my impulses; to curb my craving for pleasure, power, and possessions; to display consistently those qualities which are most admirable in others! Have I made any progress at all in this, the greatest of all arts, the art of living? Perhaps a little; certainly not enough.
Why? Because I have not been true to myself. Because I have not nurtured sufficiently the good in me. For there is good in me. ‘The soul that You have given me is pure!’ There is that in me which condemns me when I do wrong and urges me to do right, which holds up before me the ideal, and challenges me to reach toward it. There is in me a spark of Your divinity.
How to realize the ‘divine image’ in me–there is the question and the answer. Surely it means to seek You more earnestly, to submit myself to Your will; to say to You: Here I am; mould me, guide me, command me, use me, let me be Your co-worker, an instrument of Your redemptive purpose.
Help me then, O God; help me always, but especially now, on this sacred Day of Atonement; help me to banish from myself whatever is mean, ugly, callous, cruel, stubborn, or otherwise unworthy of a being created in Your image. Purify me, revive me, uplift me. Forgive my past, and lead me into the future, resolved to be Your servant.
May the words of my mouth, and the meditations of my heart, be acceptable to You, O God, my Rock and my Redeemer. Amen.
