Days of Awe
Yesterday I went to the river to perform tashlich. Going along the main street, past the museum you take a dip beneath the bridges like descending into the Great Mother and come out onto a park hidden from the city. The water below smells musty. I have used a ground pretzel for tashlich and the sky is bright blue ,full of sun, the bits of bread, like bits of gold scatter into the river and flow away. It is the second day of Rosh Hoshanah. I was supposed to do this on the first. Tashlich, the casting away of sin and bad fortune. But more, the casting away of the old self, the old year. And the giving of yourself to the river, to the earth, to the Mother, to God.
To begin the New Year, you must put away the old. To walk into joy and meet the beloved, you must atone, you must mend. From now until Yom Kippur are the Days of Awe, the new beginning.
Thursday I spent eight till one in the afternoon in the synagogue. Ancient words, sung from black pictures, yods and tittles traced on parchment, the letters of power given by God on Sinai. The cantor, wrapped in her tallis, chanting in my hears, the whole congregations swaying, a sea of yarmulkes, prayer shawls wrapped about shoulders. Now and again things go into English, but not often. The Ark opened, the Torahs, taken out, processed through shul to songs and shouts of joy.
Blessed art thou, Eternal our God, Sovereign of the Universe.
The shofar, blasted one hundred times, calling the soul to awake.
I board the bus yesterday and say to the driver, "Happy New Year." She says, "It's early for that." I say it is Rosh Hoshanah, that is, the Jewish New Year. She looks as if this smells bad to her, and says, "I don't know nothin' about that," which can be translated, "Nothing about that funny business." It is a funny business, a new fangled holiday by a funny people out of the mainstream. Is this a little how a Jew might feel in a place like this?
The bus driver is telling me about the pool house she wants to put up around her pool, and the money she wants to spend to do this and do that, and the lottery she would like to win, and this and that and the other. She is Christian. Like me. Like everyone else. Christianity is in the water here, the hard an ancient teaching diluted into superstitions, church on Sunday, and the phrase "Jesus saves," even though nobody knows anything about Jesus, or what he's supposed to be saving them from.
<< Home