Yom Kippur was a regular work day when I was growing up. About a week before the holiday, a note appeared on the bulletin board at the chadar ochel (communal dinning room) stating: “Anyone who wishes not to work on Yom Kippur must inform the sadran avodah (work-assignment coordinator) at least three days in advance.”
Hardly anyone did. The adults worked as usual and we just hung around since schools were closed by the Ministry of Education
Yom Kippur was unique in that way. All the other Jewish holidays had been dressed in new secular, agricultural garb, and celebrated with great preparations and intense excitement. We spent at least a week helping build and decorate the huge kibbutz sukkah, seating 300 people. We created colorful chains, alternating dates, pomegranates, tufts of cotton and the brown, wart-like fruit of a nasty thorn bush that grew in every neglected corner of the kibbutz.
For the adults the non-celebration of Yom Kippur was precisely the point. By working on that day they “showed them” (God, their parents, the rest of Israel) that for them the work of their hands had replaced the spiritual fasting of the disaspora.
My first experience fasting on Yom Kippur was in 1972, with my then boyfriend David (we married the following March and celebrated our 34th anniversary this spring). We fasted and went “Yom Kippur shul hopping” in Jerusalem.
There was, of course, a terrible heat wave that day, like almost every year. After breaking the fast, David became ill. A family friend, who was the chief doctor for the Jerusalem area, came and pronounced him “pretty sick,” but said if he could keep down liquids he didn’t have to go to the emergency room. A good thing, because on Yom Kippur, emergency rooms in Israel are filled with kids who have had myriad accidents on a variety of wheels — bikes, skateboards, rollerskates and scooters, since the streets are empty of cars
David was sick for six weeks following that Yom Kippur fast. As secular Jews, we didn’t take it as any kind of sign. Still, to be on the safe side, neither of us has fasted since. Instead, we developed our own Yom Kippur rituals. We go to Muir Woods and spend the day in the presence of the incredible redwoods.
Over the years. friends have joined us, so we now have our own little Yom Kippur minyan. We go for a hike and stop every once in a while, hushing everybody so we can hear the stillness. Then we break out the Yom Kippur sandwiches; fresh baguettes from the Cheese Board in Berkeley with avocado, tomatoes and kefir cheese.
Every year we run into a few Israelis, speaking loudly in Hebrew. We jolt them from their bubble with “tzom kal” (“may you have an easy fast”). Some get the look of having been caught; others enjoy our shared moment of simultaneously honoring and undermining Yom Kippur.
Two years ago our minyan was there again, but this time it was different. Our close friend, Ami, died shortly before. He had grown up on a HaShomer HaTza’ir kibbutz, far to the left of mine. I suspect that on his kibbutz they not only worked and served all meals on Yom Kippur, they probably had a once a year splurge and ordered some ham. Ami was a philosopher and musician. The walk in the woods greased the philosophical gears of his mind, and he heard jazz beats in the rustle of the trees.
He was ridiculously modest, self-effacing and quiet. Now dead, his absence was louder than he had ever been when he was with us.
During lunch we began to talk about him, indirectly at first. Someone spoke about how troubled she was as a child by the image of God sitting with the Book of Life and Death open before Him on Yom Kippur. What did this mean? What did we all make of the clichés about
the meaning of the life of a person who is gone? Our conversation meandered, but the theme of death and remained with us, jarring under the giant Sequoia sempervirens.
We were celebrating Yom Kippur on our own secular, irreverent and idiosyncratic manner. Yet we were touching the very core of the traditional understanding of Yom Kippur — the moment of fear and resembling before the possibility of death. The terrifying awareness of the proximity of death is central to the meaning of Yom Kippur. That is why it is traditional to wear white clothing; to be mindful of the burial shroud. Fasting is a brief foretaste of death’s detachment from the body, from physical needs and pleasures.
Last year we were in Paris for Yom Kippur. We found a meager substitute for Muir Woods in one of the city parks and had lunch in a little bistro nearby. That night we both got sick and stayed sick for six weeks.
Following the logic of David’s 1972 post-fast illness, we should be making a 180 degree turn in our Yom Kippur practice this year. Does that mean I am going to go to synagogue and fast?
I don’t think so.
I think I’ll go back further, to my roots and be sure to put in a couple of good hours of honest, hard work in my garden.
Then we’ll head out to our Muir Woods Minyan
Rachel Biale lives in Berkeley.