Strange: my fast has begun while it is just a Friday for you-(Friday)

I cannot even remember what I did today, sitting here in my BOQ after Neila, the opening services of Yom Kippur, the holiest day of the year.

I am a liturgy cynic. I admit it. I have been, for quite a while, struggling to connect to the liturgy. I will not share the details here and now, but the bottom line is, it has not been working for me. But Yom Kippur is different. I still have the first naivety that Dr. Larry Hoffman teaches about in his liturgy class. When it comes to Yom Kippur, I still believe in fairies, Santa Claus and the Tooth Fairy. I buy in to the whole construct of judgment and longing for forgiveness. It just speaks to me.

So tonight, we had a beautiful festive meal. I was swept up in a very healthy sense of magnitude (which feels something like anxiety, but without the negative) before the service. I needed…wanted…that moment alone in my office before going off to lead this community in prayer.

I preached ,we prayed. We all prayed, even me in my way. It is not the same majestic kind of part of something bigger sort of prayer experience I used to have when I was a kid. It feels more like saying a whole lot of words I really believe in. It is something like the feeling I have when I hear certain songs which, for reasons I can never explain, speak to some piece of my very soul.

It felt like such an incredible privilege to stand before these people and get to lead them through these prayers. I felt very humble, very small and very prayerful that I could succeed at the task. After services in general, people often (hopefully for all of us) say, oh the Rabbi lead a lovely service, but as a prayer leader, I reject it. I do not think I did much. The words are there. I did not create them, nor did I pick them. Our sages gave us a lovely service. Our prayer book editors created beautiful translations and readings. Our communities provide an energy and a life to the words. I know I have a role in this, I am not saying I am nothing, but I am just one small piece. The smallest piece. I feel like the conductor or director or chief engineer. I am just helping to put all the gears and cogs together in a fluid way. The hardest work is done by everyone else. I think my role just looks scary…well, I guess, kind of…it is.

What I want to say, it is not that the Rabbi does it or does it alone. We all do it. All of us over all of time and space do it.

I am about to go to bed now. For all of you who are now or who will be participating in the Yom Kippur experience, I pray you will each and every one of you have the strength to do your part, to do it well, and to do it with kavanah and meaning.

Tzom Kal (Easy Fast) Gamar Chatimah Tova (May you be granted a good inscription in the book of life) and Shana Tova (Happy New Year)

With love and thinking of each of you,

Rachael