The Story of Yom Kippur and Me

What would happen if one woman told the truth about her life? 

The world would split open. 

– Muriel Rukeyser

This is a story of a Jewish woman who loves God.  This is the story of a Jewish woman who tries very hard, time after time, to pray in a synagogue and feel God's presence.

This is a true story of Yom Kippur and me.

Many years ago, I developed a discomfort with synagogue attendance.  I rarely attend synagogue without pain.  There are two primary sources of pain for me in the synagogue experience and both are, in essence, all about feeling left out.  

Occasionally, but especially on Yom Kippur, when the prayers are so lengthy and unfamiliar, it pains me when I can't find my place in the machzor.  Today, I was lost for at least 30 pages.  When that happens, I am bereft. On Yom Kippur, I am trying so hard to feel God in the tefillot.  Sometimes my machzor has a different nusach than what's being said.  Sometimes things are skipped that I didn't anticipate.  Sometimes I can't make out the words that are being said or sung or the tune is so unfamiliar that I can't participate.  Whenever I don't know what's going on, I cry.

Sometimes my pain comes from the difference between what is accessible to me as a woman and what I sense is accessible to the men in the same shul.  From where women sit, it's impossible to tell when the aron is open.  I can't see the Torah, unless I walk up to the mechitzah during hagbah and lift the curtain.  In the shul we attend most commonly, a man will carry the Torah to the mechitza, open the mechitza for a few seconds to give women a moment to kiss the Torah.  Only a few do.  Whether it's from personal preference, from early conditioning or from the inconvenience of trying to reach the Sefer Torah or something else altogether, I don't know.  But it always pains me that I am barred from nearly all visual and physical contact with the Sefer Torah.

In the shul we attend most frequently, there is much lively singing.  From over the mechitza, I hear and sense a potent energy.  The men dance around the bima, often several times, in nearly every service. Where I sit, there is mostly quiet.  Women fuss with their young children, or sing quietly to themselves.  Even if they do sing, there aren't enough women's voices to blend as a kahal.  So I sit, overwhelmed by the difference between the prayer experience for men and the one that is available to me as an un-man.
  
Today, at the height of feeling left out, I shouted and shook my fists at God.  "Is this what You want?"  I raged.  "Is this how You want it to be?"  I felt left out.  I am hurt that I don't have the same range of spiritual expressions in shul.  It seems a thousand times harder to connect because I can't rely on the energy of those around me to lift me.

This hurt is very, very old.  Many women, even if they felt something like it in the long ago past, have developed a way to deal with it.  My wound is still fresh.  And I still bleed from it.

Sometimes I think I should have evolved past this stage already. I've been living this life for so long and, although synagogue architecture varies a bit, nothing essential has changed from the very first time I experienced a traditional prayer service, decades ago.  In all this time, I have been unable to transcend this pain.  It never stops wounding me. It never stops making me cry. Shouldn't I be past it already?

But the rest of the time I know that I will never evolve beyond it... because it is fundamentally unfair.  It's unfair that men have visual and physical access to the Sefer Torah and I have none.  It's unfair that men circle dance with one another around the bima as an expression of their bond with one another and with God and that pleasure is denied me.  It's unfair that every single visual cue about what is going on in the service is hidden from me.  It's unfair that, a good percentage of the time, I simply feel left out.

I try, truly I do, to transcend this pain and focus on God.  I close my eyes sometimes.  I consider the immediate area around me to be sacred space and I try to keep my eyes in my machzor and not look around, avoiding distractions. I coach myself that it's only about me and God. I remind myself that most women aren't bothered by these things, for if they are, then an awful lot of women are holding it very close to their chests.

I tell myself that this pain, this tension, is a gift from God.  The very presence of my pain demonstrates how much I care, how much I long for experience of plugging in, connecting to the Divine.  If I didn't care, it wouldn't matter. The absence of the ability to connect in shul certainly wouldn't make me cry.  But it does, again and again.

At the very end of Neila, when I am all but drained from a 25-hour fast, from countless hours of physically taxing prayer, from being tossed about by conflicting emotions, from tears and fleeting joy, we shout seven times, in full voice, "Hashem Hu HaElokim" - God, He is God.  I also shouted, as loud as I could, seven times in full voice, just like everyone else.  And then we sing, "L'shana haba b'Yerushalayim," - next year in Jerusalem.  "L'shana haba b'Yerushalyim habenuyah," - next year in the rebuilt Jerusalem.  I close my eyes and imagine being at the airport, greeting the aliyah flights of everyone I love who still lives in America.

I cry again.  But for the first time all of Yom Kippur, it's a good kind of crying. 

In those final moments, something has been restored. My heart is open. I love God and God loves me.
  
Even if I almost never feel Him in shul.