Occupying Yom Kippur

Leaderless Resistance

There are no microphones up front. Women with small voices shout and we, the “mob,” repeat them: the people's mike. I'm about mid-crowd, a crowd of I’d say less than a hundred. To my left, two women my age hold each other, their torsos in puffy vests. To my right, a friend. His tallis begins to slide off one shoulder. Our impromptu congregation is mostly young people, some middle aged and older, a few small children. About five people seem to be leading. They seem thrilled with the turnout.

When the people around me left and right begin chanting as one voice, clapping in unison, throwing fists in the air, pumping each other up—I should feel extraordinary. I should feel backed up, part of a movement, not alone. Ahead and behind me, heads tilt up to the leaders—who think of what to say, who pause at the ends of phrases so we can amplify their words, who sing—and we echo them. Their words bounce off a wall of repetition. Are we, the crowd, formulating new thoughts? Are we singing new songs? No, but we are participating, and that is power. We are the 99%. It’s like holding up a ladder for a friend climbing up to the roof of your house: he depends on you to hold steady, to not think too hard, just to hold the thing. Soon more people climb up to the roof and you are still standing there holding the damn ladder.

If you agree with the leaders then why shouldn’t you mimic them? With that thought, a panic starts to take over my body. I need to make it to the back or to the side and escape the crush of bodies surrounding me. The assembled people become part of a photograph of a skeletal near-dead mass slumped on each other in a boxcar. At the same time, I’m alone with my camera, facing a military formation, everybody in great-coats and straight-armed salutes around the plaza. The lead singer has morphed into some kind of dictator, and all the faces of the audience turned up at him in adoration are willing to do whatever he wants them to do. I am paranoid and I realize this, but I can’t help myself thinking that mobs have inherent power in numbers, and maybe someone will call out and point his finger at me—the 1%. For we are all the 99% and the 1%. We have all contributed to the state this country is in.

Kol Nidre (All Vows)

There is a violinist performing the air of the Kol Nidre. She really should have practiced, because the tune is ancient and unforgiving, and her instrument is straining with the off-notes and hesitations as she struggles to sight-read the music. Nonetheless, I strain my ears to listen as honking cars, rumbling trains, rush-hour pedestrian traffic goes through Dewey Square. The high rises are lit, beautiful in the sunset. I can see inside a few offices in a row on one floor, and on top of one another, they form Tetris-like shapes.

It’s dusk. Now the violinist takes her place in the congregation and two women go up to sing the Kol Nidre in Aramaic. Because I’ve come from work, I find myself wondering who’s still in these skyscrapers at 6:30 on a Friday night, what they’re doing, if they sympathize with us or are oblivious or resentful. The fluorescent lights are beacons—hard not to look up at them.

I attempt to focus on the singers and their ridiculous praying. They appear to me at times like cardboard cutouts or puppets. I am entranced by the melody, because it is mournful and lovely. Incidentally, the one thing I can get behind in any Jewish service (since I don’t believe in a personal God) is minor chords. The world is in such a horrid state; it should be a crime to pray in C major.

We stand bowing our heads like lawyers in office buildings working late into the evening. Perhaps they bend toward their laptops in supplication, touching the keys—precise, light, hesitating to come up with the right wording.

One leader opens her mouth like a professional singer, breaths between phrases expertly. The other closes her eyes, loses the pitch here and there, gathers her tallis around her face as if it’s a shawl. When the refrain comes, the congregation joins in.

I know that when we read the Kol Nidre in English, it will seem clunky and out-of-date, so I dread it. Every year I think about how odd it is to begin a confession with an annulment of obligation. These vows are annulled, canceled, voided. It’s crazy that we are shouting these words with conviction, but usually congregations read these words silently in English, so perhaps it’s only because we are the people’s mike. Let’s be simpletons, repeating this forsaken prayer under city streetlights with video cameras rolling and reporters taking notes! Medieval rabbis debated keeping the Kol Nidre in the liturgy, but we in the 21st century, occupying Boston, holding our bankers and our government responsible for their injustices to the 99%, shout stupidly in the public eye that our promises are not vows.

Then a bearded man holding a half-size Torah stands up on a bench and tells us he has a quick teaching, as if reading my mind, or maybe he saw in our eyes some hesitation or embarrassment. He repeats the arguments of the 13th century rabbis: Do not assume that what we have just recited relieves us of our promises. Instead, we take these promises so seriously that we must let ourselves off if we can’t fulfill them—maybe we’ll die trying or have to save a life or submit to hunger or grief—we are forgiven. Later I find out this man is a rabbinical student. Because he is not amplified, we repeat every phrase distinctly, and embody his teaching.

For the Sin

I don’t need a book or a handout. The words come forth, my mouth open in the call and response. When the leader begins barachu et adonai hamvorach I sing barachu et adonai hamvorach l’olam va ed. The song is involuntary, like breathing out, like a pulse. I hate these words, these prayers that are inside me, drummed into me daily as a child. Now I have no choice but to sing them when called on. There are plenty of Jewish atheists and agnostics; we are encouraged to question and push back. The rabbis themselves argue with each other interminably.

When the sun sets and the woman in front of me says sheepishly she can’t read the handout anymore, it’s too dark, and asks if I want it, I shake my head no. I watch the back of her head while my vocal chords and my tongue and my lips move of their own accord. Her long gray hair sways in a loose knot. I chant the prayers that mean almost nothing to me—except that I am beginning to fight back tears.

“By heart,” you say in English. B’peh, “in the mouth,” you say in Hebrew. The Al Ḥet confession is both in my heart and in my mouth. In my mouth, for I have no choice but to utter the sins, and in my heart, because from the sins of my ancestors to the sins of our modern society to my own personal wrongdoings—they are the same, and have not ever changed. For the sin of causeless hatred, for the sin of rebelling, for the sin of cheating, for the sin of lying, for the sin using coercion, for the sin of foolish thought, for the sin of prattling on, and for those of which we are aware and those of which we are not aware. And on and on. It jars me to realize that I’m holding back tears that are offering to crest my lids, that I’m flexing the atrophied muscle of concentration to bar myself from crying out.

At this moment the Hebrew chanting stops, the other woman leading asks us in English to contribute by shouting out sins, and we all repeat—we are still gleefully the people’s mike—for the sin of for-profit health insurance, for the sin of neglecting the old, for the sin of neglecting the young, for the sin of entering two unprovoked wars, for the sin of imprisoning men without evidence, for the sin of torturing, for the sin of hypocrisy, for the sin of working for a financial institution, for the sin of not defending Palestine, for the sin of not standing up for ourselves. And this could go on all night and all day tomorrow and the next day and the day after that. The Al Ḥet is a long prayer, and we are supposed to say it aloud three or four times on Yom Kippur, the day of choosing life, new beginnings.

A teaching: The Talmud says our deeds are passed down three generations. Our children and their children and our children’s grandchildren will understand that we have failed at caring enough to stop looking the other way. The woman leading chokes up and I find myself weeping with her, with the assembled people. For all these sins, pardon us, forgive us, atone for us. Selach lanu! Caper lanu! I have given up trying to hold back my tears: I am losing my irony. I am no hipster tonight, I am no reluctant mommy mumbling the Ma Tovu while someone braver leads.

God, I am ashamed! What right do I have to live on this earth, this paradise unpunished? But of course, there is no God. The rabbinical student up front reminds us, intermittently and fervently. A teaching: God is not away, up on high. God is us, We are God. Look around, at these Tents.


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