Different Slants

Atonement: Judaism Distilledby Robert M. Katzman © October 1, 2012

This brief speculation, below, about meaning in poetic form was derived from a much more detailed and complicated original true story about my now deceased wife Joyce, grand-daughter Emjay and myself in Ottawa, Illinois ending up involving the Ottowa Police department. I somehow realized there was a poem within it, and decided to separate it.

Atonement Among The Christians 

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Choosing to be in a small town in Central Illinois, over praying for forgiveness for my sins in a Chicago 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 tiny numbers–less than 2/10ths of 1% of Earth’s entire population of seven billion or so, why worry about God noticing you no matter what you do?

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. Are you in or are you out? Las Vegas would never take those odds, even if the Jews created that, too. 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? Yourself?  God? 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? Though on this hallowed day, everyoneis considered guilty of something?

God does.

Witness/Prosecutor/Judge and Jury, who long ago warned us:

He was a Jealous God.

Makes one nervous.

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 fresh, wiping the slate clean and allow me to summon the emotional courage necessary to accept blame, even if I felt blameless in harming others.

Because Judaism is not a top-down faith, 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 to be 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 was essential. We survive, but only just, because we adapted to the world as it was and as it 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, my inner sanctuary remains intact.

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