Different Slants

Seeing the World from a New Angle

Atonement Among the Christians…by Robert M. Katzman

Filed under: Cops,Depression and Hope,Friendship & Compassion,Jewish Themes,Marriage and Family,Travel — Bob at 12:57 pm on Wednesday, October 3, 2012

Robert M. Katzman’s Amazing Story:  http://www.differentslants.com/?p=355

Âby Robert M. Katzman  October 1, 2012

Choosing to be in a small town in Central Illinois over praying for forgiveness for my sins in a North Shore Chicago area synagogue on Yom Kippur, the holiest day in the Jewish calendar, is no simple decision.

God, may be watching.

Possibly, not approving.

The risk could be fatal.

But then, who knows?

When a person belongs to a group of people whose numbers worldwide consists of less than 2/10ths of 1% of the entire world’s population of seven billion or so, why worry about God noticing you, no matter what you do?

To give it context, there are twice as many Kurds as there are Jews. Most people haven’t a clue and think there are 100 million of us roaming around the planet. An actual number would be closer to fifteen million, or the populations of Arizona and North Carolina put together, not that they’d like that.

A more interesting combination would be Israel and Switzerland put together.  That would make the Swiss cheer, I bet.  Interestingly, on Wikipedia when I looked these numbers up, those two countries were next to each other (Switzerland # 96, Israel # 97).

Yom Kippur follows Rosh Hashanah, which translates to “Head of the year”, or the Jewish New Year of 5773. The exact day moves around within September or October every year because of a different calendar.  Jews who don’t ever go to Temple otherwise overwhelmingly do go on Yom Kippur because the psychic consequences are impossible to live with.  If there is a God and you don’t go, and he wants you to go, man, you could be in real trouble.  Why live with pressure like that?

Also, there is a part of the text that says on that day, it is determined for the coming year:

“Who will live and who will die; who will prosper and who will suffer; who will find happiness and who will be miserable” and this is my favorite part: “Who will die by fire, by drowning or be torn apart by wild beasts.”

Observant Catholics have to worry about eternal damnation in hell when they eventually die.  Jews have to worry about lions and tigers and bears eating them within the next twelve months! This explains why Jews invented psychiatry and possibly Valium.  In effect, God wants what he wants and are you in or are you out?

Las Vegas would never take those odds, even if the Jews created that, too.

So, after a tumultuous year in which my (unnamed temple) had a merry-go-round of new rabbi after rabbi after rabbi and shed older members faster than leaves in Autumn, I decided to find tranquility in Nature.  Walk among the shops of a small town, look at the worn Civil War monuments and watch the local river flow lazily through the center of town.  Serenity.  Think about what my bride of thirty-five years and I are doing with our lives.  What can we do better?  How can we become happier or make others happier?

More philosophically, on Yom Kippur, a person is expected to forgive those who wronged them, wounded them and who caused them great pain emotionally or otherwise.  I can understand why there are so few Jews. If a person really believes, so much is expected. Even hedge-fund managers, some billionaire, can’t buy their way out of celestial judgment, or talk their way out.  The conversation is both direct and within one’s soul.

Who can you lie to?

God?

Yourself?

Good luck with that.

There is no one to intercede for you unless you admit everything and ask forgiveness for who you are, what you are and how you have conducted yourself for the last twelve months.  And who intercedes for you?  Who (possibly) offers mercy to the guilty? and on this day, everyone is considered guilty of something?

God does.

Witness, prosecutor, judge and jury, who long ago warned us that he was a jealous God.

Makes one nervous.

So, we drove west to Ottawa, Illinois along with our beautiful granddaughter and our two dogs.  Why the dogs?

Well, our seeking forgiveness isn’t going to be helped along by leaving our two captive pets, Betsy and Jasmine, both hungry and needing to go to relieve themselves, remaining trapped in our house. They count, too.

We were going to Matthiessen State Park, near far more famous Starved Rock, to explore its quiet canyons, hear the wind rustle through brittle leaves whose time was up, watch the sun play with shadow and light as we walked among the wind-carved rock walls.  In the spring there are waterfalls and other more musical sounds of rebirth and regeneration.  Fall was the time of contemplation before the relentless seasonal death of greenery.

Despite the overwhelmingly likely fact that we were the only Jewish couple in Ottawa, and that there are no Synagogues in Ottawa, and seeking bialys and bagels or lox and cream cheese might be a cultural impossibility there, nevertheless, I felt that Yom Kippur could be honored and felt in the streets and parks and wide skies of Ottawa, Illinois.

Ottawa’s 18,307 Christians would in no way impede our intent to repent.  Why would they?

Before setting out on our trip west, I had looked online for a good place to have breakfast, calling a person at the Chamber of Commerce. He suggested I try the HiWay Restaurant, which we did.

No point in going to unusual places and eating at McDonalds. Why bother traveling at all if you choose to do that?

They have a surprisingly big menu, pages and pages of plastic pictures showing lots of choices.  I had steak and eggs ($10.00) and my wife had something she shared with our grandchild. The steak was big and thick and juicy, smothered in hash browns and I was happy.  Twice what I’d get for more money in Chicago. Baby and wife ate until happy.  Always a worthy goal.

Leaving, we thanked the hostess, whom I asked and was told was Carol Lewis.  A very nice dark-hair lady with a pretty smile. When we left, I noticed that for a small town restaurant, there was about an acre of parking. Didn’t surprise me, not after breakfast. I assumed that was my one time there and I would never see friendly HiWay, or Carol Lewis again.Â\  If a person reads this story and really wants to know, it’s south of the I-80 Interstate, exit # 90, at 210 West Norris Drive, on the right as you drive west. (815) 431-9431 Good coffee too, and it keeps coming.

I don’t have to type all this, but why not?  Never hurts to try to help someone else, even if they’re strangers.

Passing through the older more historic part of town where the wide quiet streets were traditionally named Lafayette, LaSalle, Jackson, Washington, Madison, Lincoln and Adams, and passing some of its twenty-one distinctly beautiful brick and stone churches of every variety–Pentecostal, Catholic, Lutheran, Presbyterian, Methodist, Baptist, Seventh-Day Adventist, Episcopal, Mormon, Evangelical, Congregational, Jehovah’s Witnesses, Full Gospel and Christian Scientist–was a serene sort of feeling of flowing through time and fervor.

A very nice blonde young woman named Donna, who ran the tourism office just north of this great park where the first Lincoln-Douglas debate, August 21, 1858, took place prior to Lincoln’s election in 1860, is the person who not only gave me directions, suggestions and a lot of brochures, but who also helped me with the number of churches I listed. My wife and I ran across her again the same day somewhere else which served to remind us how intimate a small town can be.

That park has a lovely blue fountain in the center of it with two larger-than-life bronze statues of Abraham Lincoln and Stephan Douglas. Douglas was called the “Little Giant” because of his short stature and was favored to win the general election. Douglas, born in 1813, died in 1861 at 48, so his winning the presidential election wouldn’t have done him much good.  Lincoln, born in 1809, was shot in 1865 at 56, so I wouldn’t call that America’s luckiest election, at least in terms of safely serving a first or second term. 

Go see the park some time if you can. It is quietly impressive and across the street from a great painted mural, one of many in Ottawa. Ottawa is like an open-air art museum of historic patriotic images on the walls of many buildings.

Though friendly Donna told me there were twenty-one churches within the town limits, I was curious and checked further, soon finding 130 Christian churches in the immediate surrounding area, and zero synagogues. Didn’t matter. I didn’t need to see a Star of David on a building for reassurance.  If I wanted to see one, I could look in the mirror and see a silver one around my neck.

I believe, and my immigrant grandparents believed, that one of the reasons to come to America from Eastern Europe in the first place–flee is a better word–was because at least here you were unlikely to be killed even though you were one of a tiny minority.  I don’t mean just Jews, either.  Look up Mormon history in Nauvoo, Illinois in 1839.  They found this state to be more hospitable than other states, I was surprised to learn.  Maybe there’s something in the water here.

In Chicago, which has about 250,000 Jews in its metro area, the real urban danger is whether you’re from the North Side or the South Side of town and are you loyal to the Sox Tribe or Cub Tribe, respectively. Wrong answer in the wrong side of town could be possibly fatal. The ocean of beer surrounding the two ball parks doesn’t calm anyone down much, either.

What I do know is that the hundreds of thousands of Poles, Lithuanians, Puerto Ricans, Japanese, Koreans, Thai, Mexicans, Russians, Philippines, Greeks (whom by Chicago law run all the restaurants), Chinese, Irish, Scandinavians and African-Americans living in the Chicago area are far more concerned about making a living and worrying about real estate values than clustering in snarling Tribes and hunting each other down.  We all left that madness behind us, over there.

So, Donna guided us to Matthiessen State Park and we wandered around the lovely grounds before descending the uncountable wooden stairs to the canyon floor.  My wife, who has MS, and our granddaughter, who is two years old this month, both decided that following me was not an option.  I was disappointed and asked why.

My wife said because we’re too old and the baby is too young. We should have waited until next year.  I nodded, because there was nothing to say, but thought to myself: But, next year we’ll both be a year older.

When I went below and took many pictures, I was surprised to run into a couple of young women in a dead end canyon.  One was lying on the ground taking pictures of the other woman, who was dressed as a stylized Native American in a shimmering golden bikini and with an enormous feathered headdress.  The petite and slender model kept changing into exaggerated model-type poses.  The photographer kept snapping photos, rapid fire.  I could hear her sophisticated camera’s staccato clicking.

I was fascinated by this unlikely tableau injecting itself in my quixotic quest for Jewish atonement.  I guess one never knows what one can find at the bottom of a canyon in central Illinois.  When the two women saw me, I smiled, waved, and turned around.  Seemed there was probably no good future for me in staying there.  I heard the clicking resume.

I followed a gently flowing rust-colored stream, watched the shifting sunlight make the golden leaves on some of the trees glow, saw red and brown leaves randomly falling near and far in a slow cascade of the remnants of Spring’s green children.

It was snowing Fall’s palate of crisp leafy flakes in the cool sunshine: a growing blizzard of beautiful death in nature floating back and forth in the air like attached to an invisible pendulum, falling from the walls surrounding me.

All the colors were so rich, so abundant, so satisfying to me being enveloped by all of it. I thought of the cornfields we passed as I drove west from Chicago on US 80.  The dry wrinkled husk wrapping each ear of corn was the color of parchment and dried tea.  Mile after mile of it made it no less mesmerizing to me. But so much variation in hue did make me think more about someone possibly listening to my repentance.

Then I thought: what if, in the last year, someone has harmed me?  What if they don’t repent?  How would I know?  If I did somehow know, should I still forgive them?  Is forgiving unforgivable actions part of the whole cleansing of the detritus of the old year?  Would my kindness go unnoticed?Would my simmering resentment be impossible to hide from the Creator of the Universe?

Realizing that pretending to forgive is impossible to hide, especially if doing so was self-serving, is cosmic in its incomprehensibility.  No plotting or intrigue would accomplish the goal of starting afresh.  Wiping the slate clean.  Either I came to Ottawa, Illinois to allow my bride and me to summon the emotional courage necessary to accept blame even if I felt blameless in harming others, or I was merely a tourist looking at pretty postcards of Autumn in the Prairie.

Because Judaism is not a top-down faith, and our religious leaders are seen only as respected teachers who are better informed about the history, customs, traditions and the Hebrew language than the average person, but not in any way considered conduits to God, there is no edict about praying in a building.  Wisconsin would do as well as any other place.

Judaism is a portable religion by necessity, due to millennia of unpopularity in irrational places.  Grab the Torah and run.  To be a “wandering Jew” would be impossible if dragging a building along with us, like Plains Indians dragging teepees behind their horses when they had to move to better hunting grounds, was essential.

We survive, but only just, because we adapted to the world as it was and is, not some unachievable ideal.

Or more bluntly, I am a synagogue.  Wherever I go, the culture, the traditions and the way I treat other people goes with me.  Though my exterior surfaces have grayed and chipped, the inner sanctuary remains intact.

The sun was setting, my two sitting girls were awaiting above me on the canyon’s picturesque pathway and it was time to go.  I felt better, different, quiet within.  We returned to our van, walked and fed the patient dogs who were thrilled to drag me around the tall trees and endless grass searching for a place to pee.  They took their sweet time, counting in dog-minutes.

We loaded up the three little ones, two feet, four feet and four feet, and went back to town to stroll around a bit before heading back to Chicago. We had our kids’ new and sturdy black baby stroller with a seat belt and probably Wi-Fi inside to make sight-seeing easier for all of us.  It looked well-built enough to withstand a meteor shower and probably cost our son and daughter-in-law more than a little.

After some exploring, somewhat weary, we went back to the van where I held the excited dogs at bay so Grandma could fasten baby securely into her car seat.  I went up to the front to get settled in for the trek home.  Then when everything appeared to be set, we left.  Two hours later, now in darkness, we pulled up to our kids’ home to deliver their sleeping child.  My Day of Atonement was drawing to a peaceful close.

But as my grandfather Jacob told my father, Israel, and as he told me as a child: Man plans and God laughs.

Grandma and I soon discovered to our mutual horror that the Hummer stroller was somehow missing and wherever it was, was too far away to find now.  We were aghast at our carelessness and wished there was someone to blame.  Initially that turned out to be each other.  The kids were far more kind at how things could happen, to our surprise.  After several more hours passed, Grandma and Grandpa forgave each other, too.

And that should be the end of my story.

Atonement disrupted.  

Serenity subverted.  

Victims of our ambitions.

But Ottawa had other plans for me.  Ottawa, Illinois and its 18,000 Christians.

True stories end when they end.

Part Two

Of course I called the Ottawa Police Department immediately, swiftly finding their phone number in one of the brochures Donna gave me.  I didn’t imagine I would use those booklets for such a reason, but they were essential right then.  A woman with a crisp voice answered and I quickly laid out the situation and where we were parked at the time, near one of the many murals and a large bank. 

I’ve known a lot of cops in my life and they really don’t want your life story.  Just the facts.  She got that from me.  I beseeched her to send a car to take a look and left my number.  She agreed to do that and hung up. I sat in my seat in my van and simmered.

An hour later she called back and told me the officer not only went to my parking spot from hours before, but also around the block, just to check.  I was both deflated and impressed by her, simultaneously. She kept her word.

The next day I went back to work and sort of dragged through my day, deprived of the lift Yom Kippur usually gives me with a sense of a fresh start to a new year.  Yeah, well, so much for that, as I did what I usually do set on automatic.  Then my cell rang.

It was the cops in Ottawa!

The gruff voice told me that some stranger had put my stroller inside the bank in hopes its owner would claim it.  Yom Kippur is not a big holiday in Ottawa, so the banks, schools and post office were all open, of course.  Someone called the cops and told them to come get it in case the stroller’s owner showed up.  Would I come get it?

I just couldn’t believe it!  Classic small town values and attitudes. In Chicago, the damn stroller would have already been on Craig’s List for hours under “Today’s Special”.  Probably already sold in our split second times.  But not one hundred miles away in another universe of how people should treat others, in Ottawa, Illinois.  Even Jewish strangers just passing through, though no one knew that, of course.  It wouldn’t have mattered, I’m certain.

I was starting to like all those many, many different churches and how I felt they must have real influence in a small interdependent society.  Though I had no plans to do so two days ago, I was on my way back to Ottawa.

The first time I could go was the following Saturday because I closed my store at 2 pm and I wanted to go there while it was still light.  I can get lost in a closet and wanted to lessen that chance on my return trip.  So, I called my old friend Bruce Matteson, t that I know him so long, just that he’s old.  Older than me.  But a good guy and adopted by my family.  He hunts and fishes and camps and knows small towns everywhere, intimately.

I wanted his company and knew he’d enjoy the circumstances and the beauty of the countryside on the way to Ottawa. The hunting and fishing part may give you a hint that he’s not descended from the Promised Land, but that was immaterial to us.  He’s a poet, carpenter, gourmet cook and loves movies, as I do and the intersections of our characters matter more than any differences.

He showed up early at my store as was his custom, and we took off at two pm.  Traffic was light on Saturday and we zoomed along, even past the perennial interstate construction.  Now there’s a job with security.

We took 294 to 55 to 80 west and exited at # 90 in about 90 minutes.  Bruce marveled at the same array of inspiring colors of the season I saw days before, except he kept imaging where the deer were and how he’d field cook one after he shot it.  I kept thinking about motherless Bambi.  I don’t want to talk about it.  He should buy venison at Costco, like a civilized person, but I kept that thought to myself. Maybe he had his rifle with him.  A small one.

We turned south and I pulled over to get directions to their station from the local cops.  That was not on my prior itinerary and I had no reason to think I’d need to know where they were.  I assured the cop who picked up the phone that I was parked while talking to him because I didn’t want to get a ticket for talking on a cell phone while driving, like in all of Chicago, and they responded that they really didn’t care about that in their town.

One thing after another. Oz.

I followed his directions and found the police station, economically combined with the fire department, in a single small building off the main drag at 301 West Lafayette Street.  Parking was everywhere.

Bruce stayed in the car and I went in.  I told the large person through the thick glass that I was the guy who lost the stroller and I was there to claim it.  He was expecting me.  As we spoke, a side door opened and a young cop, armed to the teeth, because you never know about these crazy Chicago people who carelessly abandon their baby strollers in downtown Ottawa, rolled my little black treasure out to me.  Karma restored?

So, here’s the funny part, or maybe one more funny part depending on who is reading this.

I’d read about a local steakhouse which was well regarded online.  Curious, I wanted to check it out.  There were also pretty good reviews for another similar place.  I once was in Kansas City, Missouri where a lot of beef is raised and had a first class steak for $10.00, with everything.  Maybe that was possible in this town, too.  But on my first trip here, circumstances killed any desire for further exploration.  Though there is nothing bad to say about either place, I will not use their real names.  Call one Hansel and the other Gretel.

After I enthusiastically thanked both cops, I asked the first guy what he thought about Hansel and Gretel and which did he think was better?  He replied that both were good but he personally preferred Hansel.

Then as the other cop, Rambo, returned to the other side of the glass, the first cop turned and asked him which he thought was the better of the two.  The well-armed cop hesitated and then said that he preferred Gretel.  I smiled at both of them and said:

“You’re not helping.”  They laughed.

But a third guy who had been there all the time, all dressed in black with a Santa Claus beard and a Santa Claus physique whom I was betting played that part in the annual Christmas Pageant, turned to me as I rolled my stroller out the door, saying:

“Well, if you want steak, good steak, go to the steakhouse, Hansel’s.  But Gretel’s has all kinds of food and is a different thing”.

He said it like he meant business and I liked it that he decided to interject himself in this little conversation with four people in the police station, one of them a stranger.  Mayberry.  Take a stand.

Later, I learned the Man in Black was a reporter at a local Ottawa newspaper.  This made perfect sense to me.  I always assumed that Santa Claus had an off-season day job.  Except I foolishly took for granted Santa would be riding shotgun with Peter Pan on the frontiers of Never-Never land, on the lookout for Captain Hook.

Those cops? Forget it. I won’t blow their cover.

Returning to the van, I told Bruce that I wanted to see Hansel’s because we were there and I was curious.  And hungry.  Bruce is always hungry.  Especially if there’s a deer walking by.  Or a possum.  Or a Walleye. Wait…  That’s a fish, right?

We drove around in circles trying to find it, found it, went in and found the old Roadhouse’s dark wooden atmosphere very masculine and appealing and the prices similar to an equivalent Chicago steakhouse.  With our limited resources, and needing to buy more gas to get back, we left, with regret.

So still hungry, I told Bruce about the charming HiWay restaurant, my one and happy experience with food in Ottawa.  Then, resuming my driving in circles to get back, that place surfaced in front of us, like a mirage.  We decided, what the hell, go for it, parked and went in.

Carol Lewis, the manager, saw me, looked surprised and asked me how I was and it was nice to see me again, like she and I long ago went to high school together. I paused. She remembered me?  Weird.  

Then I realized there were only 18,307 people in Ottawa and of course she’d remember me.  What was I thinking?

She smiled at Bruce, showed us to a booth and called over a waitress, Heather.  Heather Miller.

No, I didn’t go to high school with Heather either, but a writer knows a good story when he sees one unfolding before his eyes, since writing is native to my nature, so I asked her. In real life. Girls as appealing as Carol and Heather would never have spoken to me in high school anyway.

We both asked Heather about steaks which, as I expected, cost a fraction of alternative choices. As we went down the list, Bruce asked her which she preferred and she gave us an honest answer.  I could tell.  So I could both eat AND buy gas.  Cool.

Dinner was great, everybody was friendly and we paid, tipped, left and hit the road.

Our return trip was as the sun was setting and a warm red, yellow and orange glow saturated everything in front of us as we drove east with the sun at our backs.  Bruce and I talked aimlessly about this and that, but at the back of my mind I was thinking:

How could I have expected to find a story like this one waiting for me in a small central Illinois town?  A story with kind honest people, cops with serious opinions about restaurants, a faux Native American fashion model hidden away in a canyon, wonderful murals everywhere and Abraham Lincoln in the center of town? 

A chance for me to experience kindness from numerous strangers, good food for little money when that was my only choice, natural beauty overflowing everywhere I turned and a second chance at finding Atonement and a fresh start, when I was sure I’d lost it, along with that stroller.

Hey, Ottawa, with your 18,307 Christians:

Thanks.

*******************************

Publishing News! 

Bob Katzman’s two new true Chicago books are now for sale, from him!
Vol. One: A Savage Heart and Vol. Two: Fighting Words

Gritty, violent, friendship, classic American entrepreneurship love, death, heartbreak and the real dirt about surviving in a completely corrupt major city under the Chicago Machine. More history and about one man’s life than a person may imagine.

Please visit my new website: https://www.dontgoquietlypress.com
If a person doesn’t want to use PayPaI, I also have a PO Box & I ship anywhere in America.

Send me a money order with your return and contact info.
I will get your books to you within ten days.
Here’s complete information on how to buy my books:

Vol 1: A Savage Heart and Vol. 2: Fighting Words
My books weigh almost 2 pounds each, with about 525 pages each and there are a total together of 79 stories and story/poems.

Robert M. Katzman
Don’t Go Quietly Press
PO Box 44287
Racine, Wis. 53404-9998  (262)752-3333, 8AM–7PM

Books cost $29.95 each, plus shipping

For: (1)$3.95; (2)$5.95; (3)$7.95; (4)$8.95 (5)$9.95;(6) $10.95

(7) $11.95; (8) $12.95; (9)$13.95 (10)$15.95 (15)$19.95

I am also for hire if anyone wants me to read my work and answer questions in the Chicago/Milwaukee area. Schools should call me for quantity discounts for 30 or more books. Also: businesses, bookstores, private organizations or churches and so on.

My Fighting Words Publishing Co. four original books, published between 2004 and 2007 are now out-of-print. I still have some left and will periodically offer them for sale on my new website.

9 Comments »

Comment by bruce matteson

October 3, 2012 @ 2:01 pm

whatever detail you forgot wouldn’t use all the space on a postcard,like how Lincoln was snickering on our third loop around town looking for the steakhouse in a city three blocks square,I’m a witness!

Comment by J Steve Adler

October 3, 2012 @ 2:09 pm

It is great to see that you still have the ability to write a fascinating story. Happy new year and I know that you are “renewed”.

Comment by Astri Lindberg

October 3, 2012 @ 2:24 pm

What a happy story! Many thanks. Now I feel as though I have been to Ottawa, IL.! Thank you for the trip and the introduction to both people and places. You do this so well.

Astri

Comment by A. E. Jennings

October 3, 2012 @ 5:37 pm

I am going to Ottawa instead of an island somewhere – like I could afford an island vacation! I’d rather stay home on my own isle, although no women is an island.
Loved the story Bob.

Comment by A. E. Jennings

October 3, 2012 @ 5:40 pm

Forgot to check boxes below, sorry for a rather useless comment.

Comment by Herb Berman

October 3, 2012 @ 7:33 pm

Great story, Bob, in the tradition of Shalom Aleichem, but not nearly as bitter. No satire, just finding the best in people and bringing it out. Having been to small towns all over the Midwest on business, I relate to your story.

I love the lines,

Who can you lie too?

God?

Yourself?

Good luck with that.

Comment by Herb Berman

October 3, 2012 @ 7:39 pm

Great story, Bob, in the tradition of Shalom Aleichem, but not nearly as bitter. No satire, just finding the best in people (and yourself) and bringing it out. Having been to small towns all over the Midwest on business, I relate to your story. The casual restaurant, the helpful cops, the friendliness are all very familiar.

I love the lines,

Who can you lie too?

God?

Yourself?

Good luck with that.

You and Bruce are quite a twosome: Maybe not Abbott & Costello or Laurel & Hardy, not Holmes & Watson, but a pair who surely need to star in their own movie.

Thanks,
Herb

Comment by brad dechter

October 4, 2012 @ 5:26 am

Great story- thanks for sharing. BTW- don’t feel guilty about not going to Temple- I haven’t in at least 18 years. I still take off Yom Kippur, and think about atoning for 20+ minutes or so, but the way I look at it, God is always with each of us and he knows how, overall , each of us looks at things and who is “good” and who is “bad”.
So, temple doesn’t matter- it’s organized religion that you don’t need if God is with you. And, think of the time you save not listening to some damned Cantor sing who’s trying to show us all he should have been a Las Vegas singing star!
Good perspectives on lot’s of things in this one- thanks for sharing!

Comment by NewMan from NewArk

September 19, 2015 @ 1:07 pm

5-stars, Bud

RSS feed for comments on this post. TrackBack URI

Leave a comment

XHTML: You can use these tags: <a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <cite> <code> <del datetime=""> <em> <i> <q cite=""> <s> <strike> <strong>