The Jewish Fast and Yom Kippur.

 The Jewish Fast and Yom Kippur.

We are days away from that momentous day in the Jewish calendar. You can almost feel the solemnity, the sense of impending doom and gloom gently hovering above us like a drifting cloud over the mountains of Middle England. You can probably hear the moaning and the complaining, the whinging and the heavy hearts. And then you can hear the voices of contentment, resignation, acceptance and let's get it over for another year and besides it can't really do you any harm. But some of us love Yom Kippur and it's something personally very satisfying.

On Sunday evening the global Jewish population will begin their yearly Fast or Yom Kippur. It'll be quietly ushered in because we'd rather not be disturbed by any brass band playing or any real commotion. For some of us Yom Kippur is that 25 hour period of abstinence, self-control and discipline. It is the one day of the year when you stop thinking about your stomach, put food and drink to the back of your minds and think about anything rather than eating and drinking.  It is time to just forget haute cuisine and think of something else.

So here we have the one event in the Jewish year when most of us just attend the very sombre Kol Nidre service the night before Yom Kippur and firmly shut out any distractions from our mind. We do so because we just want to ponder on the year that has passed and pray for a happy, healthy and sweet New Year. We find comfort, at this time of grave reflection, in family, parents, grandparents, cousins, aunties, uncles, nieces, their achievements, their setbacks, our continuous love and respect for them and then you think about yourself because although you're not selfish and self-indulgent you just want time for yourselves.

This year though, as we're all now painfully aware, has not conformed to the script. In fact that script ended up in the wastepaper basket because it just seemed to be badly written and eventually became totally incoherent. We were hoping that the year would simply pass off without any incident, a simple, straightforward year where everything ran smoothly and finally Brexit would reach a natural conclusion. 

But oh no. Not this one. It is hard to believe that this year would be dreadfully unhealthy in every sense of the word. When the Jews of the world huddle together in front of their Zoom TV screens on Sunday evening they'll probably be wondering what on earth has happened to 2020  thus far. They'll briefly look at each other on their sofas, cocoon themselves in their bubbles, staring vacantly and then hoping that this was just some weird gothic fantasy novel or a petrifying science fiction series and you'll just wake up.

Some of us sadly and most, unfortunately, will not be going to synagogue(shul) for Yom Kippur which is a sentence that you thought you'd never have to write. But it's true and we are not going. It's as  simple as that. At first you might have thought it was some practical joke but then the kaleidoscope of colours turned very grey and then black and white. You are about to be plunged into a world where everything is quite clearly not the same. But as humans we'll get used to the fact that sometimes things do go haywire but not on this monumental scale surely. 

This year you were preparing to go to your local shul and then discovered that this wonderful idea would have to be condemned to history or just abandoned until it was safe to do so. Now where have we heard that one before? This year it's all about staying at home and watching the holiest of Jewish days reduced to a video conference call. Now how does that sound? You could decide that you want nothing to do with this daft arrangement and refuse to associate yourself with what could be considered as a pathetic excuse for a Yom Kippur service. But then you pull yourself together and just get on with it. 

And yet millions of Jews across the world will be sitting obediently and reverentially on their sofas, turning the pages of their prayer books, flicking through those pages even more respectfully and then following the hymns, the paeans of praise, the wonderfully and lyrically descriptive stories and fables, the poignant prayers, the Torah in all of its majesty. This time you won't be joined by family, extended family and friends because Covid 19 has kyboshed it all, blown it all out of the water and there's no turning back now. 

So you privately re-adjust your mindsets and innermost thoughts and imagine that on Monday morning you'll be there, bright and early, shuffling deferentially into synagogue and ensuring that if you do happen to see a familiar face you'll just smile affectionately, walk towards your seat and then sit down tallit(shawl) draped over your shoulders and kippa on your head. 

You'll sit down and then stand up, sit down and then sit down over and over again quite comically. But above all you'll sing your heart out because you're just totally besotted with the Yom Kippur service. Let the spirituality and communality ring out. Now why you might ask are you totally overwhelmed with joy because you should, under no circumstances, be happy? That's the last thing you should be or demanded to be. You should be utterly sorrowful, full of contrition and remorse, beating yourself up at all those pernicious sins you've committed. You know the ones. There are the innumerable armed robberies, the unforgivable burglaries and then theft. Now those are the ultimate sins. 

In the real world of course we're all upright, upstanding citizens with absolutely no criminal record whatsoever. Why though do we feel the need to go through this seemingly traumatic ordeal when your soul has to undergo a thorough examination, your mind and body switched off emphatically and then you subject yourself to 25 hours of complete concentration, sacrifice, homage and religious absorption, praying for forgiveness, peace on earth, no more wars please, no more health-related catastrophes, just calm, sweetness, good health and, quite literally, goodwill to humankind. 

For some of us though Yom Kippur is essentially about fond childhood memories. There was that insistent reluctance to accompany your parents to shul on the day of Yom Kippur. There was that miserable sulk, the stubborn refusal to fast when your parents told you that you had to from the year of your barmitzvah, the slouching pre- teenage demeanour, shoulders permanently slumped in some bolshie act of rebellion. Mum and Dad! Why did you have to fast now. It seemed so unnecessary.

But then you trooped dejectedly into synagogue, seeing your grandparents and your parents and everything in the world was right because they were to support you in your hour of duress and stress. So you sat next to your family, turning the page to what you thought was the right one and then just perfunctorily twiddled your thumbs because you hadn't a clue where you were in the service and were just happy to be there. 

There were row upon row of padded seats, a mirror if memory serves you correctly, the men downstairs and the women upstairs, the great gender divide. There were rows of women downstairs but they were veiled by a curtain, hidden away in some shameful corner. Within the Jewish community this still happens but there is a sense here that not only could this be construed as sexist but terribly insulting to women. 

On Yom Kippur itself the morning service would be concluded by the prayer for the dead(Yiskor) at lunchtime. There would then follow the mass exodus from synagogue, the perfect chance for all the teenagers to escape from shul like released convicts. Suddenly there was a frantic surge for the exit doors, the revolution was here at our local shul on our doorstep. It was every man or woman for themselves, no holds barred. It was time to rush home for whatever it was they were supposed to be rushing home for. 

During the afternoon the Jewish community of Ilford, Essex would converge on our local park Valentines Park for a collective cleansing session, repenting their sins quite obviously at their leisure. Then the kids of your age would light up their cigarettes, show off their smartest outfits and giggle at all the latest fashion fads. Young families would wander and then pause for breath, wheeling prams and pushchairs up to that lovely little bridge next to the boating lake next to the clock tower. It was all very heartwarming and perennial rather like that petunia at the bottom of your garden. 

Then after returning back to your parents home you would eke out the rest of the afternoon for a couple of hours TV, a totally thoughtless stream of adverts for lavish roast beef and veg dinners, bars of chocolate, cakes, biscuits, sweets, jacket potatoes, tea and coffee, all the things the Jews were not supposed to eat or drink for 25 hours. By tea time and with only a couple of hours to go before the end of the Fast, you privately counted down the remaining time left and then went back to shul with your late and wonderful dad for that final hour. 

The memory of passing out roughly a year or two after your barmitzvah will live with me forevermore so etched indelibly is it in the mind. It almost feels like a lifetime ago and yet you'll always have it as some very sentimental keepsake. We'd reached that final hour and the least you could have done was wait for the fast to finish before collapsing in an embarrassed heap. 

But here we are on the verge of this most unconventional of all Yom Kippurs. We will observe all the protocols in much the way we have with the coronavirus.  We will do our hardest to look on this first TV broadcast of Yom Kippur. There will be no captive audience because that audience are Zoom squares. You may be able to see them and vice versa but then you'll have to compose yourselves for 25 hours of a variation on a theme, a historic Fast, a ground-breaking Fast, something we must hope will never ever happen again. Well over the Fast.