Try as I might, I just can’t muster the year-in-review feeling for the last day of Elul. When I was younger, it was easier — Rosh Hashanah came close to the start of the new school year. But now that I’m a working girl, September isn’t much different from January or July. So like any good assimilated American Jew, I consider Dec. 31 to be the end of the year — complete with resolutions, champagne and midnight celebrations. Happy New Year to me!
One night last week, while crocheting some arm warmers, my mind wandered onto the past year and what it had brought me. 2007 was bookended by major events — getting engaged and going to South Africa. I bought a new car, joined the local JCC and saw my Red Sox win the World Series.
It’s weird, but as big a deal as it was to me a few months ago, my High Holy Days experience didn’t really register at first. Could something that seemed so important at the time really make so little impact?
In case you haven’t been following along, in my first column for j., back in August, I talked about how I was forgoing High Holy Day services for the first time in my life and doing my own service at home. Going to synagogue felt like a waste of money if I wasn’t getting anything out of it.
I’d love to say that the experience changed me — that I had some grand philosophical discovery or made peace with religion or something like that. But in all honesty, the biggest discovery I made was that fasting is way harder when you’re not at synagogue.
Fasting is typically pretty easy for me, but this year, by 5:30 I was ready to quit. And I did. I don’t know why, but that gnawing stomach pain set in around noon and refused to go away. By 2 p.m. I was starting to obsess about the fully stocked kitchen on the other side of my bedroom wall.
Without the distractions of the synagogue — and the knowledge that I was more than 10 feet from the nearest bagel — all I had to entertain myself was my own mind. And that mind wanted brownies.
(Oh, and I also learned that Caltrans works on 101 during the day, and it’s loud. The constant metal clanging noises started at 8 a.m. and went on through the afternoon. Not the best way to get into a reflective mood.)
I was never bored during my solo experience, but I wasn’t exactly moved, either. I read from “A Jewish Book of Days” and “Hours of Devotion,” a book of prayers for Jewish women. I lit candles and said prayers and wrote reflections and when I had nothing left to do, I read the story of Creation, which I couldn’t actually remember reading from beginning (no pun intended) to end.
It was all very nice and interesting. But if I was waiting for a thunderbolt, it never came.
I had made a decision not to include a machzor in my “service” — if I wasn’t going to go to a formal service, why should I do the same service in my home? But without the machzor to guide me, I felt a little lost.
It’s hard, after so many years of going to shul, to break out of the shul mindset. The first day of Rosh Hashanah, I ended my “service” at 11:30. If I were in synagogue, the service would still be going, I told myself guiltily as I made lunch. Even when I could make my own rules, I still felt like playing by the old ones.
Though it’s only January, already I’m starting to think about what I’m going to do come September. Will I go back to the traditional service, go alternative or stay home again?
Whatever I do, I know now that I’m capable of doing it for myself, not because it’s what’s expected of me. I definitely defied expectations last year, and being able to stick to my convictions — even if it wasn’t exactly what I’d imagined — was pretty empowering.
So maybe I did have a thunderbolt, after all.
Rachel Freedenberg lives in Burlingame and is a copy editor at j. She can be reached at [email protected].