What more appropriate way to start my first blog after Yom Kippur than by asking for your forgiveness! Or, perhaps, ‘What less appropriate…’, since I was required to ask forgiveness for all of my sins against my fellow man before the Gates of Heaven closed at sunset last night.
Be that as it may, my apologies to those of my faithful readers who, always to my astonishment, open my blog within 15 minutes of my posting it, ideally every Tuesday at 09:00 Israel, or 06:00 UTC.
Incidentally, what does UTC stand for? Universal Time Coordinated, or, if you prefer Universel Temps Coordonné. And just what is that supposed to be? Universal Time Coordinated is bad English; it should be Coordinated Univeral Time, or CUT. Equally, Universel Temps Coordonné is bad French; it should be Temps Universel Coordonné, or TUC. The explanation for ‘UTC’ lies in that word equally. When the International Communications Union decided to adopt UTC as the time standard to be used throughout the world, they wanted to avoid confusion by having one single set of initials adopted globally. They could not adopt CUT, or the Francophones would have been furious; they rejected TUC, because the Anglophones would have sent a gunboat. So they decided on a compromise which made equally little sense in French and English, and UTC it is. (Things were much easier when Britannia ruled the waves and we called it GMT.)
I can offer you an explanation for the delay in this post, although you may feel it is the equivalent of ‘The dog ate my homework’ or, as schoolchildren probably say in this corona world, ‘Our internet was down’.
Before Rosh Hashana (the Jewish New Year) 11 days ago, when severe restrictions were imposed on maximum numbers allowed in synagogues, a neighbouring family volunteered their spacious backyard for a small minyan (prayer quorum). Bernice and I had previously decided that we were not going to shul; despite the extremely hard work done in preparation by the shul officials, it would, we felt, be very difficult to impose the restrictions on a congregation that, at this time of year, usually includes many who have no affiliation to the shul, and we anticipated some unpleasant arguments. (I’m delighted to say that, from what I have heard, everything passed peacefully.)
We had been planning to daven (pray) at home, which seemed, in prospect, to offer both swings – being able to daven at a pace that suited you individually, rather than being driven by the pace of the leader of prayers – and roundabouts – the New Year services include very many wonderful tunes, and being part of a 200-strong congregation all singing enthusiastically certainly enhances the atmosphere of the day.
In the event, we were able to attend a ‘shul’ just down the road. I have never lived less than a 15-minute walk from the shul I daven in – and always an uphill walk – so to leave the house four minutes before the service begins and still arrive a minute early is wonderful. (Mind you, I have never wanted to live round the corner from shul, since that usually means that you are the person the rabbi calls at 6 AM when they are one short of a minyan of 10 men for the morning service.)
Services over Rosh Hashana, Shabbat and Yom Kippur have been very special. On Yom Kippur morning, we began at 6:00, in the cool of early morning and cut many of the optional piyyutim (liturgical poems) that are usually sung. This enabled us to finish the morning and additional services at 9:40, and be back home before the real heat of the day. For comparison, our shul usually starts at 7:00 and finishes around 3:00. There has been considerable talk of whether, post-corona, when things get back to normal(!), we should aim to keep this streamlined davening. I suspect there will be advocates on both sides of the argument.
I must say that davening outside is a different and refreshing experience. Davening the closing service of Yom Kipper as the light dwindled and the air cooled certainly reinforced the sense of squeezing everything out of the last moments of the day, the last opportunity to make our voice heard on High.
The make-up of the minyan is also very interesting. The core, from our shul, is five or six men strong, and our numbers have been augmented by another five or six locals who are not only not members of our shul, but are Sephardi rather than Ashkenazi Jews. The differences in the liturgy are significant: on Shabbat, less so, but on Rosh Hashana and Yom Kippur, more so. For most modern orthodox Israelis, this is not daunting: many Ashkenazi communities daven in a Sephardi-lite style, and the average person, through school, army, and workplace minyanim will have been exposed fairly often to both liturgies.
On the other hand, growing up in Britain, I scarcely knew what a Sephardi was. I had an aunt who had married a Sephardi, and I seem to remember that we attended my cousin’s barmitzvah at Bevis Marks Sephardi shul in London. This was, I should point out, in the Spanish-Portuguese tradition, as brought to England largely from Holland, whereas in Israel most Sephardi families are Mizrachi, coming from Arab countries in the early years of the State. So there are differences within the Sephardi world. I mean no offence in suggesting that the Spanish-Portuguese tradition is more High Church, and the Mizrachi tradition is Low Church.
Of that one service in Bevis Marks I remember nothing – although, in my defence, let me say that my cousin Ian is seven years older than me, which seemed a much greater difference on his thirteenth birthday, when I was not yet six, than it does now.
Apart from that, the extent of my first-hand experience of Sephardi liturgy before we came on aliya was hearing two Sephardi cousins in my brother’s community recite the longer, Sephardi, text of the mourner’s kaddish.
I still vividly remember our first shabbat on the absorption centre where we lived for the first 18 months after coming on aliya. I had heard that there was a minyan in a shelter on the absorption centre, so I looked no further. I walked in on Friday late afternoon, with my Ashkenazi prayer book, and found myself a seat just as the service was about to start. I didn’t recognize what was being recited, so I waited for the first words of Ashrei, with which I was expecting the service to begin. By the time Ashrei came, I had almost given up hope, and was wondering whether these people were Jewish at all. I had not known that, in the Mizrachi Sephardi tradition, Song of Songs is recited in full before the afternoon service.
To return to our neighbourhood minyan. While many men can capably lead the daily and shabbat services, leading the services on festivals, and especially on Rosh Hashana and Yom Kippur, is more of a specialist role. Luckily, the host of our minyan is a wonderful leader of prayer, and I was anticipating very enjoyable services. A couple of days before, he approached me, pointing out that, of the congregants, only he and I had any experience of leading these services. He is a regular leader in our shul, and, at various times since we came to Maale Adumim, I have led services: the shorter evening and afternoon services on Rosh Hashana, and, when we were short of real experts, I have even tackled the longer and more demanding morning services.
However, I was younger then, arguably less riddled with self-doubt, and felt that I was among friends. Nevertheless, when our host asked if I would share the load with him, how could I refuse? So on Rosh Hashana I led the evening service both days (the one service I am most comfortable leading), and also the afternoon service, which required more homework, but not too much. All went well, so I’m told.
However, I had made it clear to him that on Yom Kippur, I was prepared to lead the afternoon service, but not the evening. This evening service includes the famous Kol Nidrei and is, in addition, a longer and far more complex service than any other evening service. At the end of Shabbat, he took me aside and said, quite reasonably, that he felt the burden of leading the evening and morning prayers would be too much for him, especially since we would be continuing into the heat of the day. I felt that I could not say no, much as I wanted to. Bernice assures me that I have once led this service in shul, but I’m not sure whether she just wanted me to feel less sick.
Having agreed on Saturday evening, I then had to devote all of Sunday to locating demonstration videos on YouTube, to refresh my memory of the liturgy and the tunes. As Sunday went on, I felt less and less sure of myself, and more and more queasy. To my relief, it was, so I’m told, ‘alright on the night’.
All of which explains why I was unable to write my blog on Sunday, as I had planned, and instead I am writing it on Tuesday morning/noon, with Yom Kippur behind us for another year.
While we have all been breaking out and exiting, to pray outdoors, our outdoors grandson seems more intent on breaking and entering. It’s never too early to learn a good trade!