Rosh Hashanah
It’s the first one since my mother died.
I’ve been trying to figure out why I’m not in the holiday spirit, which usually means guilt. You grow up going to temple on the High Holy Days, oftentimes it’s blisteringly hot. You sit in the back, pay your dues and then go home and eat. Yom Kippur is even worse, you’re supposed to fast for 24 hours and it’s heavy, God is supposed to be deciding who will be written in the book of life for the following year, who will make it through.
Do I believe in God?
I wish there was a man in the sky overseeing everything, settling scores, steering his people, but the fact is there’s not. No, I cannot disprove his (why do they always say “his,” isn’t thinking that God would be a guy sexist on its face?) existence, but the truth is religion was a way to explain phenomena that we can now explain via science.
As for the burning bush and the parting of the Red Sea…those are bubbameisers, old wives’ tales passed down through generations and…the truth is Judaism is not a didactic religion, it’s a questioning religion, and you can question and still be a member of the tribe. Why not, everybody else is considering you to be Jewish, even if you say you’ve never practiced, you can’t deny your lineage.
So I was watching a streaming show and they were trying to figure out who the culprits were and they said not to bother checking the museums, because the offenders were not Jewish. I never realized that was a Jewish trait, but my mother lived for the museum. And now I do too. Everywhere I go, that’s what I check out. Doesn’t matter the city. I guess someone could go somewhere and soak up the flavor, but unless you know locals, I’m not exactly sure how you do that. But the museum hooks you, makes you feel plugged in, especially in the big burgs that have city museums.
But my point here is there are Jewish characteristics. Like being verbal. I’ve never met a silent Jew in my life. That’s one thing I couldn’t understand at Middlebury, all the people who had nothing to say. In our family, in Jewish families, people have so much to say that you can’t get a word in edgewise, it’s a scrum, you’ve got to fight for your position to be heard, by butting in and talking over everybody else, otherwise you become a nonentity.
And that was another thing that blew my mind, especially in college, people wouldn’t speak up. There’d be ten or twenty people in the class and the teacher would ask a question and no one would volunteer an answer, and believe me the students had done the reading, otherwise they didn’t show, they didn’t want to be exposed.
So in some cities the High Holy Days are holidays, there’s no school. Not in my town. Then again, no Jew went to school on those days, and oftentimes, after years of unproductive days, the non-Jews stopped going too, at least in the top track, populated by Jews, who may not have been inherently smarter, but whose parents pushed them to get ahead.
And there are so many other Jewish things. Like summer camp. You sat at home all summer and watched TV? Unheard of in a Jewish family! You’re shipped off to camp whether you want to go or not, so your parents can travel, that’s another Jewish characteristic. And despite all this talk about Jewish mothers, that generation is dead and buried, for the last fifty or sixty years Jewish mothers told their kids what to do, but they didn’t spend all their time with them, guilting them. It was clear, if you didn’t do what was expected, get good grades and go to college…you would die at the hands of your father. You think I’m joking…
So I’m a Jew through and through.
And I like that Sandy Koufax didn’t pitch in the World Series on Yom Kippur, but…
I must admit, the last few years of high school, my family didn’t go to temple on Rosh Hashanah. We never missed Yom Kippur services, but my family went to Vermont, played golf at the Equinox, called it “The Rosh Hashanah Open.”
And if you want to feel really Jewish, go where there are no landsmen. That’s how you get in touch with your identity, especially when the people around you, often educated and rich, make anti-Semitic comments, not realizing you’re a member of the tribe. They can tell if someone is Black, or Asian, but Jews slip by and…it’s clear not everybody is on your side.
So ever since the Internet I’ve gone to High Holy Day services online, starting in 1996. It was a more intimate experience, the Rabbi was right in front of me on the screen. And it assuaged my guilt. Yes, we have Jewish guilt baked in, because of the six million, because of the endless persecution, there’s nothing worse than a denier, someone who’s trying to pass for a non-Jew. But this year I had no guilt.
And I was trying to think why.
Well, first of all Rosh Hashanah was on a holiday, in this case Labor Day. That’s another thing about the non-Jewish world, they can never cotton to the fact that Jewish holidays start the night before. Essentially every calendar is wrong. The one on my Mac certainly is. But at least in the internet age we can Google and find the exact date, whereas all the calendars have it the following day.
So this year Rosh Hashanah wasn’t especially novel, it didn’t stand out.
And then there’s this damn coronavirus. It’s hard to believe in God these days. And then you’ve got the yahoos on the other side who say God is going to save them. Believe all you want, just don’t impinge on me. But no, they get vaccine exemptions from their house of worship, they’re working the rules, and denying the rights of gays at the same time. That’s one place the Jews were way ahead, with gay rabbis. Never mind the fact that the clergy can get married.
So I can’t say I’ve been in a festive mood.
And then it hit me, my mother is gone.
Now I’ve got to tell you, last year when she called me on the High Holy Days she wasn’t very with it. She knew it was Rosh Hashanah, or Yom Kippur, but her short term memory was close to obliterated. You could have a long conversation and then she wouldn’t remember it. I got to the point where I just let her talk. The more out of it she got, the more she talked, not that she wasn’t a talker to begin with. There was a stretch of a few months, about six months before she passed, when she didn’t want to talk on the phone, and that gave me a heads-up she was on the way out, but as she got worse she got more talkative and the truth is if you said anything it was open season for judgment, even if she couldn’t remember it the next day, my mother loved to question my choices, make me feel bad.
So I must say it’s kind of a relief my mother is gone. I’m free.
And I’m trying to adjust to that. It’s really about the passing of the generations. It’s not like my mother got ripped off, she almost made it to 94, but when they’re gone, you realize you’re next. It changes your entire perspective, you see the way of the world, a lot becomes less important, you become somewhat distant and disconnected from the everyday, you start to realize what is really important, and when you see people your age in the same boat, sans parents, who are still playing the game, showing off their possessions, telling you how great they are, you laugh, because they got the memo, they’re just denying it. That’s right, there’s a conveyor belt, and you’re being pushed down the line all the time, even when you’re asleep.
And when you’re young you can’t wait to be older. To drink. To drive. To leave your house.
And 21 is a breakthrough. But suddenly you’re an adult, no one treats you like a child anymore. Doesn’t matter how mature you are. Then again, there are family dynasties where they never let the kids grow up. But not many Jewish ones. People keep saying the Jews run the world, but if you look at who has all the money this is patently untrue, they just want a scapegoat.
So I knew that call would be coming. I’d wait for it, I’d expect it. My mother would dial and I’d pick up the phone and she’d wish me a happy new year. She’d be bright, she’d be sunny, she’d tell me where she was going for dinner, it wasn’t a long conversation, it was a check-in.
But all my mother’s friends died and those who remained abandoned her so she was living alone, in a silo, and she was getting depressed, and she wanted to move to California, to be with her kids, and she came here and promptly died, of sepsis that could have been avoided if the people back in Connecticut were on the ball.
Then again, she wanted to have no help but she needed it. Which made it hard to find a place to house her. The totally independent facilities are not up to the challenge, and despite deterioration, my mother kept saying she was so much better than those in the dementia ward.
And I can try and rewrite the past, think if people were on the ball in CT, but…
This is the way it plays out. Your time comes. You go. It’s never pretty. It’s frequently something small that grows into a conflagration.
So on some level it’s a blessing that my mother passed, we didn’t have to see her get worse, and in many ways she was in good health, the doctor said she could live years.
But she didn’t.
But it wasn’t like my father dying, at 70, the first of my parents’ circle to go. You could rely on my father, he was the backstop. He was at times positively insane, truly, but down deep he had a good heart, and if things were really bad he could hear it in your voice and soothe you, send you some money for a good meal.
And when my father died I was penniless and freaked out. You can’t live with no money, it’s all you think about all the time, while the bill collectors leave endless messages on your phone, which you can no longer pick up. They say that after a couple of weeks people don’t recover from being homeless, it’s the same thing with being broke. Took me years of therapy to get back into the land of the living, but I still know where every dollar I’ve got is, I still think about it lasting me, I still have trouble spending frivolously.
But now I’m in a better space. But I look at my friends who have little savings and took Social Security early and have no real income…what is going to happen to them when they’re 90?
Which I’ll probably never make. Having cancer and pemphigus. Maybe, but I’m not counting on it. But I want to be prepared, I don’t want to run out of money, if I die with a ton in the bank I’ve won, I’ll just pass it on to my sisters.
Not that my mother understood money. She was cheap. My father was frugal, but he’d spend on what he wanted, especially for his kids.
But now I’m in control. The years went by and I continued to feel young, but then my mother passed and…
Reality set in.
I like that people are wishing me a happy new year from around the world. But I also know that religion is about community, at least Judaism, as for belief and helping you…better to go to the hospital than pray to God.
So I’m a bit off-kilter.
But I gotta say…HAPPY NEW YEAR!
