The headache begins about 11. About the time the caffeine can’t believe you didn’t have your morning coffee. Caffeine is in shock. “What’s going on?” she asks.
It’s Yom Kippur, I answer. The fast began at 6 last night. Just as the Kol Nidre service began.
To me, Kol Nidre (I explain to Caffeine) is the holiest of all the holy days. The prayer annuls any vows or promises I made to God for the future year and the past year as well. When the promises are annulled, you are absolved from any commitment you had made to God.
I have to think. What promises? And did I really make them to God?
I can think of one right off. At 12, I quit piano because I couldn’t concentrate enough to play “Für Elise,” because it required two hands. On my birthday, this last May, I made a deal, not with God but with myself, that I would learn the song by Labor Day. Since God is omnipresent, he/she/they/it knows I didn’t keep my promise.
I remember as a kid going to confession with my Catholic friends, and being so envious that they got to go into a special booth and tell someone who cared deeply about them all the stuff they had done wrong. They could leave with a fresh start. I used to complain, saying I have to wait a whole year before I get forgiven. You guys are set for another week.
Interestingly, in the reading the night of Kol Nidre, the word “sin” seemed to be everywhere. Growing up, I don’t remember ever hearing “sin” in my synagogue. Maybe I wasn’t listening, or I blocked it out; honestly, I really can’t remember. But I always associated sin with feeling evil and seeing it as religion at its worst. When my buddies used to talk about original sin, I argued, How could a brand-new baby come in without pure innocence? But something interesting in the reading the night of Kol Nidre: the word sin seemed to be everywhere.
I had no trouble with it, because I had just heard the best translation of the word. Sin means “missed the mark.” Missed the mark I can fix.
The 40 days before Rosh Hashanah, with its intense soul-searching, self-examination, and the aspiration to right wrongs, to Yom Kippur, we get to really look at how we’ve missed the mark. That’s doable, and not fraught with feeling horrible about myself. It’s got hope and possibility. And it’s thoughtful. I actually want to think about what I can do to be better. At least set the intention. Missing the mark is built in. We’re human. Forgiveness is built in. God is human.
Meanwhile Caffeine has lost patience with me, and is giving me a look like, I don’t have time for this — when will you be needing me?
NOW, I practically scream, but I’m not giving in. So get thee behind me, Satan. Meanwhile, back at the Missed the Mark Ranch, I’m feeling I have to confess a sin (haha, there I go) I have been committing throughout this whole column.
There’s some irony here. You have been reading and possibly feeling compassion for me. And thinking what a good observant Jewish girl she is. Well, don’t. All of what I have written thus far I would have and could have written last year. And it would have been true. This year (missing the mark big-time), I came home from services and ate my leftover Indian food. So I’ve already broken the fast. I have no headache, and I’m hoping that the null-and-void thing really works.
