1412R WHEN DID YOM KIPPUR BECOME MY FAVORITE HOLIDAY?

2015
Having enjoyed the melodious chanting of the sacred Kol Nidre service the night before, Will and I arrive for the morning service early enough on Yom Kippur to claim four seats on the aisle in the second row, so that we can sit with a couple, who has become very dear to us, both.  So dear, in fact, as to have graced our holiday table with their presence, over the past several years.  In short, these friends have become family.

Of all our holidays, the Yom Kippur service has become my favorite, even more so than Purim, Chanukah and Simcha Torah, when clergy and congregants are seen enjoying themselves and each other, immensely.  So, why, you might ask, have I come to enjoy the most solemn service of the year more than those in which the holiday spirit centers on children in costumes or the rabbi indulging in spirits of another sort right there on the bimah in celebration of the service in which the reading of our holy scroll is completed and, yet again, begun, symbolic of the Torah's perpetual significance in guiding the direction of our lives.

As to the latter holiday, my fascination is stirred by the rarity with which authority figures feel free to express joy as naturally as is true of children.  I mean, seriously, what is it that sucks the juiciness out of a child's joy as we grow up, so that it is seen, like holiday finery, only on special occasions?  (More about that awareness, sometime later.)

As to my growing fondness for Yom Kippur, I've come to love the solemnity of the service because of my magnetic attraction toward absorption of deeper truth.  Since I've attended Yom Kippur services for decades, you might ask what my conscious mind could possibly encounter within the 'siddur' that I'd not thought to consider countless times before, and yet, each time certain passages within the prayer book are recited, this one or that one speaks as though directly to me with a greater sense of clarity than had been mine before.  Why?  Well, the answer to why a certain passage speaks directly to me, currently, depends upon which string of insights has most recently emerged from a pocket in my mind.

Throughout early adulthood, my body attended services while my mind drifted elsewhere.  Upon advancing to early middle age, my body attended services while my mind coaxed a trio of freshly bathed, well dressed, wriggling little boys to behave like mini men rather than a band of brothers, too bored to sit still.  Then, during services, about twenty years back, an unusual occurrence jogged my sense of introspection from idling into high gear.  The rabbi, who had descended from the bimah with the holy Torah in his arms, walked amongst the congregants, all of whom were on their feet, when he stopped the procession, right before me, and looking deeply concerned, our spiritual leader asked:  Annie, are you all right?

Imagine the expression of naked misery that must have shown on my face
Imagine my shock at my rabbi's concern while holding the sacred Torah in his arms
Imagine tears, cascading down my face, freed by my friend's compassionate heart ...
Imagine my need of compassion at this most trying time of my adult life ...