Kol Nidre and Yom Kippur

 Kol Nidre and Yom Kippur.

So it is that we approach the half way point of the Jewish High Holy Days. Last weekend the vast global Jewish population welcomed in Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year but without those Auld Lang Syne traditional melodies ringing in our ears. Nor do we go through that now familiar rigmarole of linking arms, jigging in between swords in tartan or watching either Moira Anderson or Andy Stewart booming out from our TV speakers at the yearly Scottish Hootenanny and then launching into a rousing rendition of I'll Take the High Road. 

And, after all those Jewish festivities last week where the shofar was blown for the 5,787th time, now we have a completely different set of circumstances. For as long as any of us can remember now Yom Kippur has become the yearly homage to starvation, abstinence, asceticism, willpower, physical restraint and sheer dogged discipline. Yes folks it's that time of the year again, when the simple pleasures of eating, drinking, carousing and cavorting in bars, clubs and restaurants have to stop for at least 25 hours. 

Yom Kippur is that deeply solemn period of our lives when the lovely Jews of the world detach ourselves away from the serious and frivolous moments of every day living that we often take too seriously at times. There can be no consumption of food and drink, no smoking or vaping, no raving to the modern day compositions of Ed Sheeran,  garage, funk or grunge music and no indulgence of anything that may be have meat, milk or fish in its dietary requirements. In fact it may be advisable just spend all day in synagogue(shul) praying, chanting and repenting our sins. Forget about the feasts just for a while. 

While we were growing up, some of us embarked on our yearly rebellion, storming the barricades, threatening to eat every piece of bread in our bread bin before stuffing our faces ravenously with various combinations of pizzas for lunch, tea, cakes and biscuits during the afternoon and then drinking every brewery dry of its lager, cider and spirits. As a child, you simply weren't interested in fasting, questioning your mum and dad all the time. It was both baffling and incomprehensible, 25 hours of pointless misery, unnecessary deprivation, struggle and hardship. 

But, from your barmitzvah age onwards, you knew that you owed to it your family, late and lovely mum and dad and equally as adorable grandmas and grandpas to fast. Of course there was a cussed reluctance to accept the status quo, a sudden recognition of some yearly and admittedly, uncomfortable ritual that had to be endured at the time but then just took for granted every year. Yom Kippur has never been a picnic, so to speak, but you have developed a resistance to food and water and it's now really pleasurable. 

In many ways Yom Kippur and its fasting connotations has now become hard wired into your autumnal mindset. Come Yom Kippur, mum, dad, grandma, grandpa, brother and uncle would stand together in unison, kindred spirits, deep in reflection and contemplation. Grandpa would wear that grey suit and smart shirt while dad would wear his navy suit or jacket, with blue or white shirt crisply laundered and tie. Grandma was always warm, full of loving tenderness, caring, solicitous, smiling and compassionate. Grandpa would spend the whole day in what used to be the Beehive Lane synagogue(shul) while mum, dad, brother and yours truly would head for the exits at lunchtime. 

It all felt socially awkward at the time because nobody given me an adequate explanation of what exactly you were supposed to do or say. You'd started Hebrew classes(cheder) but those siddurims were like foreign language books that were just indecipherable, Hebrew words, sentences and paragraphs that were lost in translation. You could read Hebrew but you had no real idea what exactly the words meant in English. Mother was Ima, Dad was Ubba, Ma was what, Boker Tov meant Good Morning, Unai was I but that constituted your entire Hebrew vocabulary. But the whole of Yom Kippur was shrouded in mystery, some esoteric form of grammar that belonged to Biblical times rather than 1974.

As a family we would observe the same pattern of behaviour every year. The night before Yom Kippur was Kol Nidre, an evening full of sombre significance, a couple of hours of gravity, gravitas and deep respect. Then Yom Kippur would follow the next day and you must have spent at least half an hour pouring out your grievances, moaning, groaning and complaining about the Fast getting nowhere in particular. 

Personally adolescence had been mildly traumatic but nobody was to blame. Here you were on with doting family but no friendships with the wider Jewish community. Of course it was perhaps vaguely frustrating but at the time you probably felt as if you didn't really need anybody else in your life. But every time you looked upstairs to the seating gallery all you could see was a millinery shop of gorgeous women's hats and the kind of fashions that, as a kid, you must have regarded as just over the top and outlandish. 

And then it occurred to you. There were girls up in the gallery who were the same age as yourself but may just have well been complete strangers, none you'd known from your local Jewish youth club because they were having the most enjoyable time as early teenagers. You, however seemed to be trapped in a self absorbed world of isolation and estrangement, on your own and nobody with whom any kind of social conversation could be struck up. Somehow though this was the way it was. 

Anyway, every lunchtime and every Yom Kippur there would be the now customary exodus out of the shul and back home again. The prayer Yiska for the dead among your beloved ones, triggered a surge out of the building and they would head straight for Valentines Park in Ilford, East London. Here families, boyfriends, girlfriends, young children would all be seen pushchairs and prams in tow. It was rather like any religious congregation, a gathering of the great and good, the teenagers brazenly smoking and drinking cans of Coca Cola while you surveyed the scene with a certain degree of amusement. 

The afternoon itself seemed to pass by fairly quickly because you just wanted to while away the hours in the hope that the day itself would pick up a head of steam and fly past. Every so often peals of laughter and local humour could be heard quite clearly. There was a sense here that although Yom Kippur was never your favourite day, you could still smile and wander around, becoming part of the crowd.

You remember vividly now some old friends who, in one particular year, tried to lead you astray. As you left Valentines Park, there was McDonald's junk food emporium in Cranbrook Road. Up until that point in your life, you'd always fasted dutifully and quietly, never dreaming of snatching even a burger or chips for that matter. But my acquaintances decided to drift through the front door of this junk food empire and buy the most horrendously greasy burger and chips you were ever likely to see. It was all a bit underwhelming and, when all was said and done, it really did nothing to stimulate my appetite. 

And so the masses would disperse in Valentines Park and you were left with the impression that Yom Kippur was simply a case of mind over matter. My late and lovely mum always maintained that the body could quite easily go without food or water for 25 hours and that it did no harm to your digestive system.  In a sense of course she was right because you immediately called on your Jewish resilience and survival instincts and just blotted food and drink out of your mind. 

For the whole of my teenage period, my wonderful dad and I would regularly return from synagogue(shul) ravenous and famished an hour before the end of the Fast. But mum acquired this lovely habit of reminding us of the feast that would follow the fast. Bless her, she would always cook her yearly concoction of fried fish and delicious salmon cutlets preceded by the sweetest cup of milky coffee. It is a memory that can never be forgotten. 

So to all of my Jewish family and friends well over the Fast if it is medically possible to do so. Last year and for a number of years, my lovely wife Bev and I saw in the New Year and observed the Fast at the glorious Finchley Reform shul. Here Saracens rugby union ground would be the genial host for the High Holy Days. The remarkable sight of all those rugby trophies in their cabinets and those stunning paintings on the wall, may never fade away.

But this year Bev and I will be attending our new synagogue(shul) the Sinai reform shul in Moortown in Leeds. We have been overwhelmed by the warm Yorkshire hospitality and will certainly feel at home here as well. And at the back of your mind will remain one of my fondest Yom Kippur. On Kol Nidre, my dad and I started walking towards Beehive Lane shul. At the bottom of the road, a gust of wind took my dad's umbrella on the kind of journey that Mary Poppins would have taken great delight in. And so to the great Jewish population fast well if you can but if not enjoy the Jewish holidays. Keep well and best wishes to you all.