High Holidays

Happy New Year's 5769 everybody!

High Holidays this year kicked off in a fashion with Selichot Sept. 20. "But," ye well-informed protest, "Rosh Hashanah wasn't until Oct. 1, why the extra week?" Normally, Selichot would come on the Shabbat before Rosh Hashanah, it's true; but this year that would not have left enough time to prepare to repair and repent to God and on earth. So this year, when even the folks who were fired because they wouldn't stop saying "Merry Christmas" at Kmart were scratching their heads and saying "Mid-September Selichot?", candles were being lit and passed and professions of sins sung and chanted across the world. Here, we had the first go-around of the ashamnu, my favorite song from the machzor, singing: "Who are we? We're light and truth/ And infinite wisdom, eternal goodness/ Yet we've abused, we've betrayed/ We've been cruel, yes, we've destroyed...Wipe it out! Clean it out!/ Yes, throw it all out!" It's like the Jewish Renewal movement managed to combine the Catholic acknowledgement of guilt with the Unitarian forgiveness and acceptance...um, and then travel back in time hundreds of years to claim them in their own rituals.

By Rosh Hashanah (if you are reading this out loud, you get style points for putting the emphasis on the last syllable in most cases with the Hebrew words), the observant folks have a big jump on the "twice-a-year Jews" who don't start coming until the Erev or day of Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur. However, "twice-a-year" Jews are a different breed than their Christian counterparts. Aside from, in most cases, having to give up a day at work to come to synagogue, we are talking about marathon worship services complete with dancing, singing and fasting. If you show up early and stay late to help, you can get in as many hours on those two days as people in many denominations rack up in six months; throw in the Erev services and you've got a year's worth of summer-skipping Unitarian attendance lined up there. I remember as a child sitting in church and looking at Mom's watch so I could think to myself, "Sweet, only fifteen minutes to go until I can listen to the Pats pregame show" (for more on this check out Things Bucky Didn't Put on His Divinity School Application, Volume XII: When Spirit and Sports Collide.) Now, I go to church and mistake the Postlude for a landmark that there's only 10 hours left until the potluck.

About 3/4 of the way through Kol Nidre/Erev Yom Kippur (or 11/4 of my original estimation of the time), Rabbi Lerner followed my favorite machzor song, "To Dwell in the House of the Lord", with an explanation that to acknowledge our sins and ask for forgiveness was the true meaning of living in the Lord's house. He preached that not just a general prayer of atonement, but rather in-depth, specific contemplation of ways to be better people in our communities and our lives was what it meant to come closer to God (whatever one's conception Thereof may be). He enjoined each of us present to spend the time before sundown the next day praying in a very specific manner of examining our shortcomings and planning ways to do better by those around us. And to help those of us who get that "who, me?!" look every time sin is brought up, there was a list of things we as a community could atone for. These ranged from "for not helping singles we know to navigate the marketplace of relationships" (Will and I, in charge of passing out the forms, took a highlighter to this one in advance and wrote down his and Dan's phone numbers next to it), to "for not speaking out against the continued occupation of Iraq as effectively as we could have" (ditto- gotta cover all your bases).

Will and I finally stumbled home in the wee hours, he burdened with enough left-over salad greens to cleanse the collective GI tracts of the greater Milwaukee area, I with the beginnings of an upper respiratory infection. Still to come, however, was the Sukkot. Marvin, the Beyt Tikkun carpenter and guitarist, and others put together the outdoor dwelling, roofed with tree branches to let in the rain and a clear view of the sky, and hung with fruits and vegetables representing the harvest and the myriad ways that God provides. Ironically, the one day during which you are not supposed to come together in it during the week-long celebration is Shabbat, right when we did it; however, that injunction is based on the assumption that people will be carrying their esrogs to the Sukkot (carrying is one of the forms of work prohibited on Shabbat), and since Rabbi Lerner was clever enough to know none was actually going to bring an esrog we went ahead with it anyways (I mean, they're basically lemons that can cost up to $60, come on!)

But next year ought to be easier- High Holidays start yet another week earlier, so there will be less to atone for.

Glide Methodist Church Celebrations

A few blocks from Powell St. BART stop in San Francisco, in the "Tenderloin" district of the city, stands the Glide Church.  On most days, it is noticeable for its height and grandeur- four or five stories of impressive rock complete with a prow-like steeple.  Sunday mornings, however, you tend to notice the line of people outside the door, stretching to the end of the block, who are waiting to get into a service.  You could be forgiven for thinking the queue-ers awaited service from a barista; the only place I've seen a line with that many young people in California so far during my limited was outside a BK getting their morning coffee on Rosh Hoshashanah.  There may have been as many couples in their 20's and 30's waiting to go into Glide on Sunday as there were attending all the UU services in the Clara Barton District.  From the perspective of a prospective UU minister, I was perspirational with aspiration for such demographic comeliness in a congregation.  

Inside, greeters Les and Erly had shook everyone's hand by the time they got to a pew.  Chairs had been set up on the end of each row to accommodate overflow (not because it was the week of Rosh Hashanah).  The choir, band (yes, BAND, replete with five professional musicians) and congregation were as a whole about half white.  It seemed like slightly more whites from where we were sitting because there were more blacks sitting in the front.  The service began not with centering words from the baritone Reverend Cecil but a wicked sax-piano duet.  That got people's attention and applause erupted immediately.  Then came the first "hymn" (the service was called a "celebration"; I'm not sure what the analogous synonym was for the hymns- "ballads" perhaps?)  Throughout the pre-celebration period, band intro and foot-stomping, hand-clapping choir number a projector was sending huge slides onto the back wall. Announcements were mingled with inspirational photos of members in calm or triumphant poses.  Now, the slides showed the lyrics for people who wanted to sing along, alongside with worldwide images of the love and gratification being extolled.  

Between songs, Rev. Cecil would rise to share words of encouragement to each other's highest goals and ideals.  After several songs an early middle-aged congregant got up to talk about how "the worst is not the end".  In the context of his mother dealing with her fourth bout of cancer and him having lost over 300 pounds in the last few years, it was a powerful reminder.  

I will always appreciate the slow, contemplative wisdom of UU churches and Quaker meetings for worship.  But getting lost in the exuberant clapping and singing of close to a thousand people was cleansing and inspiring as well.  As the folks who've ever sat near me in church know, having music loud enough that it overpowers my own efforts is not a negative.  I did not agree with everything said from the pulpit, but 98% of it worked for me, and multiplying that by the coefficient of inspiration made for a quantitatively up-lifting experience.  As I told Will and David once we left: "I might not come here every week of my life, but knowing it is here and that the celebrations go on every week is a really positive thing to remember."