Putting More 'Secular' Into Yom Kippur

Yom Kippur is a beautiful night in Israel—cars stop, Israeli television doesn't broadcast, not a single store or restaurant opens, children don their skates and climb onto bicycles to pedal (safely) down the middle of roads, neighbors mill about in intersections.

Some Israelis fast, but all use the opportunity to take a deep breath and reconsider the past year, what the next might hold. Of course, when I say everybody, I largely mean Israeli Jews. Yom Kippur is of course a Jewish holiday. But, all Israelis, Jewish and non-, observe the ‘no-drive’ edict. It’s not a formal law, but no one, I mean NO ONE drives (except in emergencies). Think about it--in a country of over 7 million people, not a single car on the road!

Last year, when a few Israelis ignored what might be called a voluntary law, violence erupted. This year, things were calm.
 
This is the lovely side of a religious state. And don’t misunderstand, Israel is a religious state. Religion infiltrates education, marriage, civil decisions. My husband, who is Jewish, and I couldn’t marry in Israel because I’m not Jewish. We married in the US, and Israel does recognize all marriages conducted outside its borders. Interestingly, Cyprus does a brisk business in marrying secular Israelis who don’t want to be married by an Orthodox Rabbi. On another sour note, this year, Israel initiated daylight savings a full month before the rest of the world because the ‘religious’ demand it happen before Yom Kippur. Supposedly it makes the fasting a bit easier (so much for torturing one’s soul).

Today's Ha-Aretz (an Israeli daily newspaper considered by many to be left wing) featured a prominent editorial titled “Why Israel must become a secular state: a thought for Yom Kippur.” It’s not a new idea within the secular Israeli community and one supported to various degrees by many Israelis speak with. He writes, “Nowhere else are Jews trying to impose their religious creeds on each other; nowhere else has the conflict between religion and freethinking remained as bitter as in Israel. The involvement of religion in Israeli politics has led to a polarization that is not to be found anywhere else in world Jewry. Far from leading to Kiddush Hashem, the involvement of religion in politics has led to a culture war that is completely unnecessary.” One person told me yesterday, that the worst thing that could happen to Israel would be peace with its neighbors; then we’d have to focus on what’s going on internally. Of course, that’s a fight we’d all prefer.

Of course, after being mistaken for Jewish (I mean my name IS Sarah Fishman) many times, I fully believe Israel is necessary. Antisemitism is alive and well. And we only have to turn on the television, open a newspaper, hear the vitriol coming from Iran to understand. But, isn’t it something more to think about as this year’s Yom Kippur comes to a close?

And, finally, here was a poem I wrote after last year's Yom Kippur violence and after just having returned from a few days in beautiful Akko.

Everyday History

Violent clashes between Jewish and Arab residents of Akko erupted
when an Arab resident of the Old City drove
through a predominantly Jewish area on the eve of Yom Kippur.

If history must be made every day, let it be one
in a car with all four windows rolled down, on the way
to stay in a hotel composed from bones
of what used to be a fortress. Let it be where the air
is pomegranate sweet, where grass grows the color
of crayon on parapets buried six inches deep
in loam and fertilizer. If history must be made
every day, let it be in a place where metal shutters
don’t function, but polyester pillows stuffed in windows
muffle the men singing karaoke in Arabic and Hebrew
well enough for sleeping, where the only museum refuses
to display anything airport security might confuse
with a weapon. Let it be one where locals gather
on carpets to eat khummus and salad, whistle
at women (especially those wearing caftans, brightly
patterned scarves) and the women understand
that if one of them walked up, history might be made
even that day. If history’s got to be made, let it be
the place where every one-legged policeman gets paid,
where cats crouch in the shadows waiting for scraps
they know are coming their way, any second.

In Between Rosh HaShana and Yom Kippur

In between the Jewish New Year and Yom Kippur (the Jewish Day of Atonement), we were all treated to Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's continuing tirade against Israel and his portrayal of the Holocaust as some mass delusion created by Jews and encouraged by Western governments. All of this from the podium of the United Nations. While many of us inside and outside Israel worry deeply about Ahmadinejad's intentions, we can but hope saner heads and hearts denounce not only his words, but also his deadly intentions toward Israel.

Of course, belief in irrational and extreme ideas goes far beyond the boundaries of Iran or those opposing Jews, the US, or the West. Rationality is not always humankind’s strongest suit. Apparently 1 in 12 (8%) Americans believe President Barack Obama is the anti-Christ. Another 13% aren’t sure. My brother, meanwhile, keeps telling me that Obama is ‘God,’ tongue in cheek to be sure, but my hope is that his assertion provides some counterweight to those other just-as-ludicrous beliefs. Anyway, if you're shocked by those stats, remember just how many Americans think the apocalypse is right around the corner. In a poll from earlier this decade, 17% said they expected the world to end in their lifetime.

So, as I think about those statistics, and as I revisit recent speeches at the United Nations, I'll add my plea to that of Adrienne Rich, one of America's greatest poets (and a Jewish lesbian, to boot, which means she is probably not on Ahmadinejad's short list for a dinner invitation) from a poem she penned in 1950, “At the Jewish New Year,” “May the taste of honey linger / Under the bitterest tongue”.

At the Jewish New Year

For more than five thousand years
This calm September day
With yellow in the leaf
Has lain in the kernel of Time
While the world outside the walls
Has had its turbulent say
And history like a long
Snake has crawled on its way
And is crawling onward still.
And we have little to tell
On this or any feast
Except of the terrible past.
Five thousand years are cast
Down before the wondering child
Who must expiate them all.

Some of us have replied
In the bitterness of youth
Or the qualms of middle-age:
"If Time is unsatisfied,
And all our fathers have suffered
Can never be enough,
Why, then, we choose to forget.
Let our forgetting begin
With those age-old arguments
In which their minds were wound
Like musty phylacteries;
And we choose to forget as well
Those cherished histories
That made our old men fond,
And already are strange to us.

"Or let us, being today
Too rational to cry out,
Or trample underfoot
What after all preserves
A certain savor yet--
Though torn up by the roots--
Let us make our compromise
With the terror and the guilt
And view as curious relics
Once found in daily use
The mythology, the names
That, however, Time has corrupted
Their ancient purity
Still burn like yellow flames,
But their fire is not for us."

And yet, however, we choose
To deny or to remember,
Though on the calendars
We wake and suffer by,
This day is merely one
Of thirty in September--
In the kernel of the mind
The new year must renew
This day, as for our kind
Over five thousand years,
The task of being ourselves.
Whatever we strain to forget,
Our memory must be long.

May the taste of honey linger
Under the bitterest tongue.