We all have those moments in our lives that will be forever burned into our memory, the ones we can recall with crystal clarity decades later, long after more recent events have been forgotten. For most Americans of my generation, hearing of the death of President Kennedy, the resignation speech of President Nixon and the first landing on the moon are examples. For most Americans alive today, the morning of September 11, 2001, is another.
One of those moments in my life was the incomprehensive intrusion of air raid sirens into the Musaf prayers on Saturday, October 6, 1973. Yom Kippur. I was in the women's section of a small shul in Kiryat Mattersdorf, an Orthodox community near the old central bus station in Jerusalem. The shul was in a courtyard below ground level and the sirens weren't audible at first. When a woman who had gone outside to calm a restive child rushed in yelling "milchama!," (war!), everyone thought she was crazy at first. But then the sirens got louder, and we began to hear the sounds of the barriers that block the streets on holy days being pushed aside. Men rushed to exchange their prayer shawls and white holiday garments for olive drab fatigues and jumped into waiting jeeps. The rest of us stumbled to the shelters.
Thirty years later, the sounds and sights and smells of that afternoon seem as fresh as ever. They always return with extra clarity on Yom Kippur, especially during the Musaf prayers. I'm generally cut off from the news all day and it's always with a little trepidation that I turn on the radio on my way home from synagogue in the evening. This year, the trepidation will be heightened. Suddenly, the possibility of another all out war seems a little less distant. But it's really an illusion. The threat is always there, it's just that the last few days' events push it more to the forefront of our minds.
Yes, I'm fasting this year. Yesterday, for a while, I was thinking I wouldn't. I was thinking it was time to give up on these pointless exercises in piety that I don't feel. I was thinking that it seemed so irrelevant. Fasting, after all, doesn't bring back the dead or comfort the grieving. Then I read Imshin's post this morning and, though she's come to a different conclusion for herself, her words and this wonderful letter that she linked to brought everything back into focus. The fast can provide a much-needed space for introspection. And, for me, it's also an act of solidarity. It's what Jews do on Yom Kippur. Even if it's not what all Jews do on Yom Kippur.
G'mar Hatima Tovah.
May all of us be inscribed for life in the coming year.
