As the yearly pivot point for Jewish life, both religious and cultural, the High Holidays have been covered in this publication from a variety of perspectives — the subject of lengthy moral essays (“May Almighty bless the work of their hands and sanctify every plan and hope for happiness and prosperity”), society tidbits (“a Sukkoth card party”) and lot of advertisements (long may that continue!).
In its early years, this paper had a very clear pro-America, pro-assimilationist bent, and most of the coverage around this time of year focused on Jewish communities in Northern California. But Jews are a diasporic people, and so we have always been curious about how the High Holidays were observed abroad — or if they were observed at all.
Here’s a traveler’s depiction of Yom Kippur in Alexandria, Egypt, in 1898, where, the writer “H.S.” says, “nothing like the rigid decorum to which we are accustomed prevails.”
“A spacious building with towering, massive pillars of whitened stone, lit by casement windows of blue glass and green — in deep contrast with the lighter hues of chequered pavement. It is the synagogue of the Prophet Elijah… Huge glass candelabra depend from the roof, and shapely oil lamps of silver form an ample crescent before the Ark.
“Gradually the scene becomes more animated as the latter-day Egyptians, befezzed in brilliant red, and gowned in fine silk, saunter in and choose their seats.
“Suddenly a rush is made towards the Ark, and when the tramping of the many feet has thinned into a vague shuffling, the Chacham, standing near the opened Aron, recites in a thin quivering voice the Kol Nidre.”
Compare that rhapsodic description with the looking-down-the-nose tone of this 1904 article about the High Holidays in England. Titled “Orthodoxy run to seed,” it was written by Rabbi Montague N. A. Cohen of Tacoma, Washington, who did not withhold his judgment of British Jews. To sum up his points, they were either stubbornly unassimilated or too assimilated, paying only lip service to their Orthodox customs.
“In some provincial centers it is very difficult at times to provide sufficient accommodation for who come with dread visions of the Annual Divine Assize, but who have no scruples in mitigating the Atonement Fast with an oyster lunch,” he wrote.
“English Orthodoxy is a religion of convenience, offering a maximum of reward for a minimum of effort. Each individual is a law unto himself. It is usual to see ladies attend a fashionable synagogue in London or the larger provincial centers, and no sooner the service is over see to their shopping.”
That same year, and in very different tones, we traveled to the Holy Land for the High Holidays.
The author described “the pilgrimage to Rachel’s Tomb, undertaken by Jews of all classes during these days of hope.”
“It is chiefly at the corner of the bastion of the Tower of David, on the very spot where the Jaffa Gate stands wide open, that indescribable uproar prevails. From the foot of the fortress and reaching along the Jaffa and Bethlehem roads in inconceivable confusion, may be seen a great number of vehicles for hire, such as ill-assorted landaus, hackney coaches with torn hoods, coupes, dirty wagons, most of them drawn by horses so poor that one can easily count their ribs.
“Groups of poor pilgrims, composed of Ashkenazim, Sephardim, Yemenites, Persian and Moorish Jews, were walking along the road, through clouds of dust, to offer up their prayers at the holy tomb.”
Jumping ahead, we have this very brief but touching note from Spain in 1931.
“For the first time since 1492, Jews in Madrid, Spain, have placed an order for prayer books for Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur with a local Jewish bookseller.”
The year 1492 was, of course, referring to the Alhambra Decree, under which Jews had to convert to Catholicism, leave Spain or face death. Over 400 years later, in the spring of 1931, the country removed its king and established a republic, and for a few short years the celebration of the High Holidays was something the Jews of Spain could hold again — at least, until the republic crumbled in 1936, leading to the Spanish civil war.
And this even more tragic brief comes from Frankfurt in 1945, a city that before the war had a population of around 30,000 Jews, almost all of whom had been murdered.
“The 150 surviving Jews of Frankfurt-on-Main will use their own Sefer Torah in their Rosh Hashonah services—the first to be held in a Germany free of Nazism. The Torah was smuggled out of the city at the height of German persecution and brought to America for safekeeping.”
There were American Jews on foreign soil in 1977, when we wrote about High Holidays observed by Jews in the military who were stationed in “Germany, Greece, Turkey, Italy and the Far East.”
“A corps of civilian and reserve rabbis and military lay leaders will conduct Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur services at every base where there are Jews,” we wrote.
And they used the technology of the day too! For those in Veterans Administration hospitals, “traditional Selihot prayers and liturgical melodies of the High Holy Days and Sukkot are available on three CJC-produced tape cassettes.”
Drawing closer to the present, 20 years ago we observed that Mexico’s Independence Day fell on Erev Rosh Hashanah, in this article written by Corrie MacLaggan.
“Abdiel Garduno, a Jew in his early 30s who lives outside the capital in the neighboring state of Mexico, said that most years he celebrates Mexican Independence Day with friends. ‘I love to hear the Grito [de Dolores],’ a rallying cry against the Spaniards, Garduno said. ‘When Independence Day doesn’t fall on a Jewish holiday, I go to discos, I go to parties. When it does, I prefer to go shul, but in my heart, I’m thinking about Independence Day.’”
We are in a familiarly fraught time for Jews, and yet the holidays have come again as they always do, giving us an opportunity to reflect on our past, our present and our future. It’s interesting to take a look back at a sermon published by this paper’s founding editor, Jacob Voorsanger, in 1899. His style and references to divinity may not be in fashion now, 125 years later, but even so, something in his words might resonate for today’s readers.
“It seems sometimes as if the struggles of the past had gone for naught and Israel had been cast again in the whirlpool of persecution,” he wrote.
“Yet should we not enter the portals of God’s house in a degenerate mood. The approach of the holy season should bring tenderer thoughts and loftier emotions. It is unbecoming, though human, to pray for crushing out of our enemies. Let us endeavor to forget them the while. After all, they who know history understand the spasmodic character of persecution. It will pass, it must pass.
“This is a season of peace to be commenced with no frowning glances, no snarling speech, no bitter thoughts. It is rather the season for the renewal of bonds of peace, for the repair of breaches in the facts of amity and friendship, for the reunion of families and for the exchange of good wishes which we pray may be heard on high and ratified by the Divine mercy.”