Kol Nidre

Tonight is the start of the holiest day of the year for the Red Sea Pedestrians, and I'm finally going to services...

I was raised with zero religion, simply a "bagel Jew" as my sister calls it. In college, I came under the spell of Eric and Barry, and I would attend services with them. I always found myself looking at the coeds at Hillel, or, when I went to the very wealthy Beth Am with Eric's family, wondering how folks had so much money that they dripped with jewelry attending a synagogue.

During the early years with Wifey, neither of us attended services --I even went to work on Rosh Hashohah and Yom Kippur. That stopped after I spoke to Ronnie, an Ecuadorean Jewish friend, who pointed out to me that doing so was downright disrespectful to my own peeps. He was right. Anti semites do enough disrespecting of Jews without my helping them along by putting a finger in the eye of those who celebrate the holidays...

Then we became friends with Rabbi Yossi, and Nechama, and had a rebirth of our religion, sort of. We put the Ds into Hebrew School, and attended services. Still, try as I might, I sat there, listening to the chants and prayers, and not feeling anything.

Rabbi Yossi said it was ok, to go thorough the motions, and my heart would follow, like learning to walk again. Never happened.

Except for Kol Nidre. There's something about the service that grabs me. Lewis Black says the music is the creepiest ever written --the basis for every Hitchcock movie. The chant starts out softly, "like a subject meekly seeking an audience with the King," and then builds.

The service itself is a renunciation of all vows one makes to himself, for the coming year. In other words, it recognizes out own failures --knowing they're going to come despite our best and most noble efforts. By coming clean with ourselves, we can try to then go about repenting, to the Big Guy upstairs, and to our fellow men.

Tradition holds that we should bless our children today. I just did that to the Ds, via email. We should also apologize to all those we have hurt and offended. I'll do that in a minute on FaceBook (tm).

D1 emailed last night that she worked at the restaurant, in order to take tonight off. She won't go to services either, but shares my sense that this highest of holidays must in some way be observed. I imagine D2 will do the same, though she told me her boyfriend and his traditionally Jewish fraternity is taking a bus trip to LSU to watch the Gator game. Ha. The Lord shall punish them by having the more gentile LSU smite the apostatic Gators...and all will be right with the world...

So I'll head to Kol Nidre tonight, and then fast tomorrow. My friend Steve the crazy cop just got divorced, and he invited me over tomorrow to watch the Canes game. He's Jewish, too, but completely forgot about Yom Kippur. I told him to order pizza in the 3rd quarter, so it would get there just after sunset. Ah, what a way to break a fast --pizza and beer and college football...

So another Jewish year is upon us. May it be healthy and sweet to all...