Andrew Tertes was praying on the beach.
It was yet another picture-perfect Hawaii morning. The ocean crashed at his feet, palm trees and a huge volcano cast a shadow over his back and a shofar sat across his lap. It was Yom Kippur.
“It was powerful and very raw. And it was freeing,” said Tertes, a 36-year-old Oakland author and teacher.
“But, at the same time, it was lonely. I like being around family and community during the High Holy Days. There’s a group aspect of forgiveness for things we’ve done personally or as a community.”
Like so many Jews, Tertes parted ways with organized religion following his bar mitzvah. But seven years ago he came to realize that “there was something in my tradition that was worth exploring,” and discovered Jewish options in the Bay Area that weren’t available back in his native Connecticut. He began attending services at Berkeley’s Chochmat Halev, and is currently the congregation’s coordinator of Jewish healing programs.
In the past few years, he’s come to look forward to the High Holy Days the same way baseball fans pine for Spring Training. Rosh Hashanah, Yom Kippur and the rest are more than just calendar dates where he hustles off to temple and thinks serious thoughts. Tertes uses the High Holy Days as the measuring stick for the previous year and his springboard into the next. It’s a time Jews are supposed to think about how they can become better people.
“A lot of the preparation is before Rosh Hashanah and between that and Yom Kippur. I work on contemplating where I’ve wronged others or felt wrong and work on forgiveness or preparing to ask for forgiveness,” he said.
And while much of Tertes’ High Holy Days routine involves deep self-analysis, he now makes sure to share this time of year with the family and Jewish community that wasn’t sitting beside him on that beach in Hawaii. Both of Tertes’ brothers live locally, and he spends the High Holy Days with them, in addition to as many Shabbats as he can spare.
High Holy Day services “keep me honest with where I am and with what I’ve done and who I am on a large-scale, annual basis,” he said.
“If I’ve really screwed up and if I haven’t cleaned up the aftermath, it’s a context to do that.”
Even left-handed people or short people must have their own Jewish community here in San Francisco, jokes Tanya Samuels .
Everyone can find a synagogue that works for him or her, right? Well, she can’t.
Samuels, 32, who grew up in the microscopic northern English town of Cleethorpes and spent her formative years at Britain’s only Jewish boarding school, has not yet found the temple that, as Goldilocks would put it, is “just right.” And she’s gone to eight different congregations here in the Bay Area alone, ranging from Reform synagogues to Chabad services.
And while her inability to find the perfect match kept her away from High Holy Day services for several years, it no longer does.
“OK, I didn’t initially find what I was looking for, but rather than reject everything completely, doesn’t that mean I should just search more deeply?” asked Samuels, who works in the business development department of San Francisco’s Financial Finesse.
“Really, I was doing myself a disservice. I still haven’t found that community I feel comfortable with, but I definitely think I was being dismissive.”
Samuels, who currently attends both San Francisco’s Reform Congregation Emanu-El and Conservative Congregation Beth Sholom, views services as a sanctuary from secular life — “By Friday night at 7, I won’t have to think about what an awful week I’ve had.”
High Holy Day services in particular are a chance to counter the increasingly hectic and haphazard nature of our lives with the stability of thousands of years of tradition and continuity.
“In this modern world there are so many conflicting ideas and the media is constantly telling you how you should think, so it’s a very refreshing experience to go to synagogue and be reading from the Torah, which has existed for almost 6,000 years,” she said.
“There’s something very special and untainted about being in that environment and I personally find it both relaxing and rejuvenating at the same time.”
That being said, synagogue life isn’t perfect for Samuels. It’s hard for an Englishwoman fluent in Hebrew who grew up in a highly traditional and observant situation to find the perfect match, even among the Bay Area’s myriad Jewish communities. And while the High Holy Days are a time for family, hers isn’t even on this continent.
And she isn’t particularly thrilled about the high cost of High Holy Day tickets — “I can’t think of anything else I’d pay 150 bucks for for a few hours. Maybe front-row seats to ‘The Lion King,’ but this is going to a good cause.”
On the other hand, if 150 bucks is “the cost of feeling part of the community and remembering what’s important to you and connecting with your Jewish identity, can you really put a dollar value on that? If you’re able to get that when you go to synagogue, that’s certainly a very low price to be paying.”
Josh Neiman fidgets a lot in temple. And the same recurring thoughts find their way into his head:
*Why can’t I find any meaning in this?
*Man, I hope this ends soon.
He has never missed a High Holy Days service in his life.
Neiman, a 24-year-old molecular biologist who lives in Albany, may have trouble comprehending the meaningfulness of services, but he doesn’t have any trouble figuring out why he attends. It’s the oldest Jewish emotion of them all.
“I feel terrible saying this, but it’s the guilt. When I talk to my grandfather if he asks me if I went [to High Holy Day services] and if I said I didn’t, I’d feel really crappy,” he said.
“All four of my grandparents are Holocaust survivors. I’d feel really bad if I stopped doing it because it would make their sacrifices seem sort of meaningless. They sacrificed so much to survive because they’re Jewish. And what if I stopped being Jewish? That would be such a waste.”
So, year in and year out, Neiman travels back to his hometown of Riverside to attend High Holy Day services.
“Services in Riverside are always the same. It’s like watching a movie you’ve seen many times and are already tired of. I don’t walk into the temple and get an overwhelming feeling of spirituality,” he admits.
“Occasionally, the rabbi or guest speaker will hold a service that stands out, and that becomes a meaningful experience. Sometimes when I go it’s meaningful, but many times it’s not.”
What’s always meaningful, however, is the time with family. And Neiman confesses that, no matter how badly a service is going, he’s always moved by large groups standing and singing spiritual songs.
“Songs always resonate so strongly,” he said. “Even if individual prayers don’t. When you sing, you pay attention more.”
Despite the annual tedium of High Holy Day services, Neiman has no doubts about his Judaism. He just doesn’t see himself as a temple-going kind of guy. Even if he is.
“If you look at all the really strong tenants of Judaism, a rabbi would probably say they’re all equally important,” he said.
“But most people pick and choose.”