it falls on the fourth weekend in September. Like all new life it chastens those who watch its arrival and resolves them to do better in future. Purification, repentance, atonement, until, on the tenth Day of Awe, Yom Kippur, God determines whose name will remain in the Book of Life and who will be cast out. It may be a really stupid idea to give in to it, but when I wake up five hours later in the same subdued, chastened mood, I feel the pull of my past.
Freddy Katz’s synagogue is across the river and about three miles due west. There are a couple of minibuses parked on a small lot nearby, their drivers smoking and listening to the radio, and about a dozen bikes and mopeds. I can’t bring myself to park in full view of the entrance, flaunting my non-observance, so I guiltily drive round the corner and walk back. Temple Beth David has an open-door policy for Rosh Hashanah, so I have to stand in line for ten minutes to get in. The doorman narrows his eyes at me.
“Ba’alat teshuvah?” he asks.
That’s a very good question, mister!
“B’ezrat HaShem,” I reply. This doesn’t soften his expression, so I explain that I am a new colleague of Freddy Katz’s and that he invited me. This does the trick, and he points me toward the stairs. I pick up a prayer book, squeeze into a back row on the balcony, smile bravely at the women who glance over at me, and wish them L’shana tova.
The New Year prayers and their melodies are familiar to me, but it’s such a long time since I studied them, such a long time since I heard any Hebrew at all, that I well up and give thanks for the humility that made me come here today. Could not this be my home? I settle into a reverie of listening and praying and translating and meditating on the words, which totally gives me away to the frum-from-birth women around me who sit quietly chatting and nip downstairs to the restroom or to check on their children.
Hours later, when I slowly and stiffly inch out of my seat and wish my neighbors that God may inscribe them in the Book of Life for another year, the comforting familiarity of the service is superseded by the unfamiliarity of the faces. I feel overwhelmed and out of place and give up any thought I may have had of trying to find Freddy and his family in the crowd. But I’m glad I came. I feel much more grounded than I did this morning, much more confident that I will find my place in this part of the world and that the next few years, though stressful, will be a good and rewarding period of my life.
Although to an orthodox Jew this would be pointless at best and an abomination at worst, I stop at a grocer’s on my way home and buy eggs, yeast, and flour to bake a challah, the round, braided, yeasty bread eaten on religious holidays. With honey, apples and wine, this makes up my solitary, candle-lit Rosh Hashanah meal, and I even say the prayer over the apples and honey.
May it be Your will, Lord our God and God of our ancestors
That you renew for us a good and sweet year.
Physically I am tired but my mind is supple and awake, and I manage to finish the book review for which I had allowed myself the whole weekend. Sunday morning, still calm and concentrated, I write two coherent-sounding pages for my Notre Dame paper. Then I begin to wobble. I eat the rest of the challah for lunch and decide to honor the late summer day by taking out my bike.
Pretending not to have a fixed destination, I cross the main road and wind my way slowly to the suburb of Ardrossan, where I explore the side streets and keep my ears open for the sounds that waft toward me on the soft breeze from the river.
And there they are. The horns.
The secondary but historically older meaning of the New Year holiday is that of Yom Teruah, “Day of Blasts,” on which the shofarot, the rams’ horns, are blown to alert Israel to the fact that the Highest Judge is in session and will rule over their lives. Many communities combine the shofar-blowing service with the tashlikh ceremony, a symbolic casting off of one’s sins into a body of flowing water. Parents who