Yom Kippur

I had been a bit nervous about Yom Kippur, seeing as I had to break Tzom Gedaliah 2 hours early, since I was in a lot of pain. On Yom Kippur you don't really have that option.

Luckily, I went through the entire fast feeling fine except for being very thirsty and very tired. I talked to Rabbi Mike last night, and he said I could have 1 oz. of water every [hour I think]. Obviously only if I had to. I managed to only drink 3 times- once when I took medicine before going to bed, once when I took medicine in the morning, and once in the afternoon when I was practicing mincha. And none of those times did I even drink the full ounce. Though I feel like I might have managed without those. But oh well.

I showed up at CJC Kol Nidre in all white, and was one of maybe 3 people wearing all white. Usually OCP people do, but then today at OCP services, although many people had white shirts, most of them didn't go all out in all white. Thus in an attempt to dress plainly, I managed to stick out, saying "Look, I'm plain!!!" In big bold letters. Like this: Look, I'm plain!!! Kinda self-defeating, isn't it?

We had an interesting shiur led by Rabbi Mike about God, and looked at 5 different places that God shows up in tanach, and what kind of God these were all portraying (there really is a difference, though one can easily say that God reveals Godself to different people in different ways.) It ended with a discussion about why do we still use this liturgy.

Rabbi Mike had also mentioned to me that I probably would feel an adrenaline rush from fasting and that this would make it easier. Well, I did. The only problem was that this was at 11:30PM when I wanted to go to bed! So I went through mincha and eventually fell asleep.

My alarm was set for 8, but I decided to go back to bed, hoping my body would wake itself up around 8:30-9:00. I woke up at 9. And so I got dressed and headed to Houston Hall for OCP morning services.

This year they ordered these new Rav Soleveitchik (sp?) machzors (which means they have a billion extra artscrolls!!! CJC, you could use real machzors!!!!) I don't have pages memorized on the new siddur yet, except that maarei cohen starts on page 618 and mincha is on page 683. (I don't have one with me, I'm just that big of a dork.) The davening was beautiful as usual.

And then there was a nice break from 2:30-5. I went back to my room, looked at mincha, went to Hillel and took a nap there so I'd be able to be woken up in time.

And mincha went just fine. All the stuff that I didn't get up to memorizing didn't have anything special with the nuisach (so there was nothing I could mark with my random symbols) so I just winged it. And when I was davening shacharit and mussaf I had the tunes running through my head, so that was more practice. (And as a result I could do the whole Amidah in Hebrew and finish relatively quickly, sicne I actually knew what I was saying.) For the most part my voice obeyed me and hit the notes. I love the chatzi kaddish that I got to do. I poured myself into the service.

It really is a big responsibility, which I didn't think of until Yom Kippur started. Besides needing to be alive in the afternoon, and learning all these prayers, I was representing this group of people before God. And I was thinking, while waiting to start the repetition, was I really a good representative? Surely I'm not without sin. Then again, none of us are. I don't really know most of the people who showed up (they probably come to shul once or twice a year). And maybe it's good to have a shaliach tzibur who was sinned as much as the rest of the community. You wouldn't want an evil person representing you, but if you had a perfect person up there, it would be hard that person to connect with the community, think about how they as a community had sinned, but this person themself had not.

I ended with the shiny kaddish shalem, which is my favorite kaddish, and I even managed to pull off the OCP ending (I had stumped 2 OCP people when I had asked. They both started singing it through "...hu ya'aseh shalom aleinu...lai lai lai (etc.)...v'imru amen." And then I asked "what about v'al kol yisrael?" B.R. (as in the B.R. that you know, maric23) then tried to squeeze it in before the lai lais, which I didn't think sounded so great, while J.S. drew out the ending, which sounded better, if a bit overdramatic. And in shacharit, the congregation did the thing where the tune sounds like you should say amen, and people did, even though there isn't an amen there. M.Y. had mentioned it when I had been practicing, so I knew better...CJC actually didn't make this mistake.)

And then I ran downstairs to open the kitchen. And I got to daven the amidah of neilah, and learn the song that cynara_linnaea taught us ("kEl na alilah" if I'm remembering the name correctly.) And then I had to run down again. And I stayed, turned on the burners when Yom Kippur was over, and ate a well-deserved chocolate chip cookie. I was the first person to break the fast, since everyone else had to daven maariv.

Everyone was grateful that I mashed the neilah shift, but unfortunately that meant that I missed the ending of neilah, where you repeat "Hashem Hu haElokim" 7 times (and other stuff before that) and the shofar is blown, and everyone gets to feel like their sins are sent away with that blast. It's a very powerful moment. And I missed it, and thus I feel like my sins didn't get lifted away, even though I was doing a big mitzvah by mashing. I also didn't get to hear any of the shofar service in Rosh Hashana, since I mashed then as well. I'm wondering if I decided to fast again for 25 hours and have someone do the neilah service at the end, if then I would get that feeling. I doubt it, and if I fasted again after fasting, that would probably be one of the most idiotic things I could ever do to myself. And I'm smarter than I look. I'm not going to try to recreate Yom Kippur.

So in those last 5 minutes, when I was by myself in the kitchen, I prayed to God that I might have that feeling of having my sins go away. It didn't work. I want to be able to start off with a clean slate, to distance myself from past mistakes, to avoid creating new embarrassing moments (and to avoid thinking about all of the old ones.) I want to be able to grow, not to become someone else, but a better version of myself. Rachel 3.14159 or something.

I'm so glad I got through the fast without any pain. YK is my easiest fast day.

Another post on the subject of change in a moment, but a friends-only one.