Yom Kippur at Saracens rugby union club.

 Yom Kippur at Saracens rugby union club.

The early autumnal light was fading sweetly into a North London horizon. The evening birds were fluttering gracefully towards distant shores, wheeling and singing quite merrily without a care in the world, swooping and then soaring towards some far off landscape where night time dreams beckon. Then there were the concluding verses of a Yom Kippur service which moved seamlessly towards a close at 8pm. What a day, what an occasion bathed in the luxuriant glow of nature where the intimacy of our surroundings wrapped a warm hug around our shoulders. 

Yesterday Finchley Reform Synagogue(shul) excelled itself in quite the most breath taking day of all days. In ordinary circumstances a high profile rugby union club wouldn't have been the preferred choice of venue for a sacred and deeply religious service, a service so pivotal and grandiose that the thoughts of the assembled congregation inside Saracens ground would probably have been concentrated on the day itself rather than the events that normally unfold on a rugby union pitch. 

The truth is that a rugby union ground seemed a totally alien environment for a Kol Nidre and Yom Kippur ceremony. There were some of us who were still bewildered by the strangeness of it all, the stands, the terraces, the seating arrangements and of course the uniqueness of the location. Besides, all we could see were row upon row of hard backed seats, floodlights on all four corners of the ground and, weirdly, builders at the opposite end of the ground from where we seated. It might have seemed an unnatural juxtaposition of sport, architecture, labour and industry. But it wasn't and how surprised we must have been. 

So at roughly 10.30 in the morning we all settled down in our seats surrounded by buzzing, drilling, construction workers wearing their familiar hard hats and hammering that echoed around the whole of Finchley and possibly the rest of the capital city of London. Around us all there was a sense that we were about to witness the most spectacular music concert of all time. The stage was set, the rabbis were ready and oozing anticipation and the choir were ready to unleash perfectly modulated, mellifluous voices and away we went. 

Everywhere you looked there was an almost idyllic naturalism about the day, a soothing tranquillity that made you think of England's richly fertile countryside. Out in the yonder there were masses of birch, poplar, pine and every conceivable set of trees bunched together like old, loyal friends. And then there was the day itself. It was the most heavenly day of warm sunshine and if you didn't know it was the beginning of autumn you could have sworn it was the middle of June. You found yourself overcome with gratitude and wonderfully blessed. 

And then there was Saracens. Much to our own surprise the ground was in the throes of dramatic re-construction with the huge stand opposite us also subject to a major re-development. There was a mass of concrete seats and the skeleton of a stand that seemed to be some way off completion. Then the men in orange hard hats could be seen wandering around the outskirts of the building work. You would have loved to have been a fly on the wall in any of the conversations that must have been going on while the workers were going about their working day. 

Besides, there was a community of Jewish people trying hard to believe where they were and why they were  there. And yet why ever not? Nobody had said anything in the Torah about Yom Kippur that you couldn't hold the Day of the Fast on a rugby union pitch, a setting where stocky prop forwards and flankers had thundered across a green pitch and where rugby union posts at either end of Saracens ground had promised thrilling try after try. 

Then we looked down on the pitch itself, emerald green, sun bathed grass, thick and beautifully manicured rather like the green you'd normally expect to see at a summer game of bowls, crown green bowling where ladies and gentlemen wear crisp white shirts and in the case of the men, smoke endless pipes. For much of the day nobody felt inclined to walk across these hallowed acres of rich greenery. Then occasionally you would see a silhouette of Jewish members of the shul, trotting slowly across the pitch with prayer book in hand, going somewhere and perhaps seeking their own private space where they could just take in the sheer, enormous magnitude of the day itself. 

You then noticed the athletics track vividly fringing the whole of the ground, seemingly and completely out of character with a rugby union pitch. There was a strong temptation to pull on some shorts and trainers and embark on a leisurely jog around the brown cinder track. Then you remembered where you were and why you were there. Of course it would have been not only deeply embarrassing and inappropriate but just unnecessary since there were no track marshals with time keepers and no records to be broken.

Underneath the framework of the new stand was what looked to be a large, new media centre where shortly the clatter of fingers on laptops would reverberate across rows of seats and tables. It is quite the most impressive sight you'll ever see even if you were Jewish and had no intention of ever going to Saracens at any point. 

At frequent points you would see cranes and JCBS, no bulldozers as such although you half expected them to be there as well. But every so often a couple of builders would shuffle down the empty seats, brushing dust away or just figuring out why there were people at the other end of the ground, praying for all their worth, singing in glorious unison and chanting once again in both Hebrew and English. And why were they wearing gorgeous shawls(tallit) or kippot(skull caps on their heads)?

Suddenly, there was afternoon and from a bright, clear, cobalt blue, azure sky poured forth the hottest, warmest sunshine any of us could recall at either Rosh Hashanah or Yom Kippur. You found yourself looking for superlatives and you knew there were far too many. So you just relaxed and thought you were in Tel Aviv, Israel. It felt like a stunning summer's day, maybe June in disguise from two years ago or 1976 revisited. The weather had done us proud and here we were pinching ourselves at how fortunate we were. 

Now came the changing moods of the day. The afternoon would normally be devoted to Torah story telling, dignitaries from the Jewish community with their reflections on both Rosh Hashanah, Yom Kippur and a whole host of references to Jonah the whale, moments heavy with symbolism. More sermons followed and then you became aware of the passing hours and the inevitable arrival of the blowing of the shofar. Our guitarist for the afternoon solemnly and respectfully intoned the blessings and lengthy passages of Hebrew and literary beauty. 

Then our wonderful female rabbis achieved the perfect balance of wit and humour, seriousness and a marvellous eloquence that you could never have hoped to emulate from the comfort of your seat. So you sat there and admired the rustic surrounds, the late evening blackbirds whistling their evocative messages to all and sundry. And you could hardly believe what you were witnessing. It was utter perfection. 

As afternoon turned to early evening, a realisation of something markedly different crept up on you almost unobtrusively. On the Jumbotron electronic board which had already moved us with whole screens of Zoom choir singers throughout the day, there was an eerie sense of foreboding. At the end of this February, my mum sadly passed away and at roughly what should have been tea time, a Yahrzeit candle flickered to denote the passing of loved ones. It was an obituary list the length of which seemed to take an eternity. 

So there you were sitting next to your wonderful brother in law and sister in law, father in law with your beautiful wife and daughter at home. After what seemed the most sombre series of announcements ever heard anywhere your heart was lifted to the stratosphere. There was your mum and dad on their wedding day now 60 years ago. A shiver went down your spine, the whole core of your being severely jolted and tears were never far away. They were no longer here but they were still in your hearts for evermore. 

 You thought of their enduring affection for you and the love that had been lavished upon you so unstintingly. You wept a tear or two but then realised that perhaps you'd exhausted all of your tears throughout the year. The raw grief and hollowness had never gone away but you had to look to the future and that, for a moment, felt almost immaterial because both of your parents were no longer here to share your good times. 

But the future had to be illustrated sooner or later whether on a laptop, PC, pen, pencil or charcoal. Of course we can never tell what the future may hold and yet on Yom Kippur it seems fitting that a 25 hour period of introspection, retrospection and penance, in some cases, can be observed. For that very specific period of time Jewish people across the world would stop what they're doing, stand still or sit down whichever is the more comfortable arrangement. They refrain from eating, drinking, watching the telly, listening to the radio, checking our multitude of texts and e-mails on our phones before just pausing for breath. 

We close our eyes, pulling ever closer our cherished tallit, and then ponder for however long seems right for you. Then there must be melancholy or maybe not, the grief, the togetherness of families, the immensely supportive voices of those who mean the world to us. There can be no regret as such because whatever happened was meant to take place for a reason. You love your family immensely and endlessly and you look for the normality that used to be there but perhaps was always there anyway. 

The moods of the day were rapidly changing, the unblemished blue sky now being slowly overtaken by bubbling darker clouds which, although never ever likely to turn into rain, now blotted out the seductive and caressing sun. Covid 19 had now been exhausted as a discussion point for so many months that you almost felt that at no point would the world ever psychologically recover in the immediate future. So we chanted exquisitely, soulfully, truthfully of course with a powerful, heartfelt love in our hearts.  

The darkness of late evening hadn't quite made its presence felt because this year the Jewish holidays were being celebrated right at the end of summer and there were patches of brightness half an hour before the Fast went out. Mid September was still with us and it would be sticking around for quite a while until the festival of Succot( similar to the Harvest Festival with its emphasis on the fruits of the earth and the consumption of apples, pears, oranges, pineapples, mangoes, bananas whatever may ever appeal to your discerning palate. 

And finally there is Simchat Torah, the ulimtate outpouring of happiness and joy. Here we unfold the whole of the Torah abandoning ourselves to absolute delirium, dancing, singing, eating and drinking the whole day through. We clap, throw sweets at the kids and adults and  gobble down the chocolates in one very special act of unashamed hedonism. It is one long party of that there can be no doubt. Short of doing the conga in a drunken stupor, it is Jewish life as it should be. It is being there for each other, wherever you or they may be.

It is indeed the perfect consummation of all those old fashioned Jewish principles bundled up in the loveliest of packages. We do it every year and we love Judaism and being Jewish. L'shana tova everybody. A happy, healthy, sweet and peaceful New Year to you all. It was a time for my lovely family and families around the world to finally gather around a heaving feast after the Fast, expressing eternal love for each other. Thankyou Finchley Reform shul.