Name:     Michael L. S.   [E-Mail]
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      Website:  Middle East Resource Center


 

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I have to take issue with Shimon as I found his article quite distressing. Firstly let me explain a bit about my view of Yom Kipur and religion. I'm not religious in the spiritual sense. Ritually I am conservadox but spiritually I am agnostic. Why? Because I see religion as a means, not an end. Like it or not, Judaism (yes, the Orthodox kind) has been the mortar that has kept us together as a people throughout centuries of unremitting persecution. It has given us a sense of purpose, our identity and the stubbornness to survive. I do not think one's heart and mind have to be spiritually atuned in order for one's motions or words during t'filah to have meaning. I go to shul regularly and keep many mitzvot; not because I believe I'm pleasing or displeasing a supernatural entity but because that is what my family (I don't mean my biological family here--who are atheists--but b'ney Yisrael) does and has been doing for millennia. Does my not believing in the religio-spiritual side of it make it any less meaningful or valuable? What is Xmas? What is Ramadan? What is Divali? Do you think any of these is celebrated as it "should be"? Does it detract from their impact on the society or nominal followers of the relevant religion if they're not so celebrated? The spirit may be important on a personal level but the act is important on the national level: to fortify Am Yisrael. It testifies to the continuity and endurance of the Jewish soul and of Yidishkeit, and is as such not at all devoid of meaning and there certainly IS a point in observing it.

Do I wish that more Israelis and Jews were more sensitive toward the plight of the Palestinians? Do I wish the datim ceded or were forced to cede power proportionally to other Israeli religious strata? Does the hypocrisy of the datim oftentimes infuriate me? Yes, on every count. But this is one day of the year that is for us alone. Leave the Palestinians, and our quirks and proclivities and flaws out of it. Sure, it's supposed to make us better people and all the rest of it. But I'm more than happy if it only reaffirms our identity, if it only strengthens our cohesion and sense of belonging to one nation. We can fight for peace in the Middle East other 364 days of the year. I have to say I find your derision of the customs (be it bicycles on the streets or the "outmoded rituals" jibe) very petty. If you don't want to ride a bike or fast or go to shul, don't. Millions of Jews throughout the centuries could not do these things on the pain of death; you don't do it out of what comes across as cynicism or disillusion or estrangement. I personally think it makes you isolated and sad but it's your choice; just as has been the choice of many Jews (including my family for at least three generations but excluding me) to dissociate themselves from Klal Yisrael.

My kehilah held the Yom Kipur t'filot at the Pinchas shul in Prague. This was extremely poignant because in this beit kneset the walls are lined with 90,000 names of Czech Jews murdered by the natzim. Round the street is the Altneushul (Old New Synagogue) whose walls are still splashed with the (now whitewashed) blood of the Prague Jews murdered several centuries ago in that selfsame building. And in that shul Kol Nidrey starts with a special piyut--not recited anywhere else in the world--which was composed by a boy who survived that massacre. Do you think you have nothing to do with those Jews? How can one recite the Eleh Ezkarah and not cry over the millions of Jews murdered at various times in history only for being Jews? They were not some other people--they were a part of you and your being; it is because of them that you are now in a place called Israel and not a place called South Africa. How can one sing "Anu amekha v'atah Eloheynu" and not have the eyes fill with tears as one feels this ineffable bond with and an inseparable sense of belonging to a people that has survived against all odds for almost six thousand years? It may be sentimentality but it gives us the resolve and solidity to keep going for centuries more to come.



To use the Xians' motto (which I normally detest in the way they use it): there are no atheists in foxholes. Let me recount to you a story from Yugoslavia at the end of WWII. A group of liberated Jews from a makhane rikuz across the border in Hungary were meandering in the countryside of Yugoslavia when they were intercepted by a partisan brigade, who thought the group was a bunch of disoriented Nazis. They challenged them to prove they were Jewish. With the partisans' machine guns pointed at them, every last one of them--atheist, liberal, conservative, orthodox, shmorthodox--exclaimed at the top of their voice: SH'MA YISRAEL, " ELOHEYNU, " EKHAD.

Kol tuv.

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