And who shall I say is calling?
Tomorrow night’s Kol Nidre, and Monday is Yom Kippur.
There have been times in my life when I’ve felt more observant than others. Preparing to become a bat mitzvah, for example, was a time when I felt very in touch with my Jewishness. In graduate school I began going to Friday night services every week. But mostly Judaism is a backdrop for me. Some years it has been a very pale, subtle backdrop.
One year, the first year I had a job, I decided to work on Yom Kippur. I’m not especially observant, and I got very few days off from this job, so I figured I’d just go.
That was the first and last time I did that. I felt like there was some electrical forcefield of wrongness surrounding me, all day long. I recall looking at the front page of the paper and reading some headline about how Jews the world over were observing the holiest day of the year, and I felt almost as if I’d shunned myself by not being part of the observance. In retrospect, it was probably the year that I did the most atoning, but I don’t want to repeat that experience.
Each year I’ve been in Northampton, I’ve gone to the Conservative synagogue in town. Philosophically I think I fall more in line with Reform Judaism, but circumstances have conspired to bring me to CBI instead. Strangely enough I have more Jewish friends here than I had in New York or Boston — why? I couldn’t say — and so synagogue is always something of a social hour. With the kids I spend at least half the time out on the playground, anyway, and there’s always a lengthy meet-and-greet before and after services.
Come Yom Kippur, though, I tend to feel more introspective.
And so I say to all of you, forgive me. I am human. I make mistakes. Sometimes I know I’ve done wrong; sometimes I do it inadvertently. Please accept my apologies. And happy new year.
And who by fire, who by water,
Who in the sunshine, who in the night time,
Who by high ordeal, who by common trial,
Who in your merry merry month of may,
Who by very slow decay,
And who shall I say is calling?
—Leonard Cohen
