Tuesday, October 03, 2006

Yom Kippur Post Mortum (And what time did you finish?)

We started at 8 a.m Our first break was at 12:30, and the second was at 4:15. We finished a little late, but big deal: No one starved.

Do those of you who've reached your thirties and forites find yourselves mourning, on Yom Kippur, for the shuls where you grew up? It's very strange, but now that I'm into my thirties, I miss the old songs more than ever. For reasons I can't fathom, the shul I attended from ages 7 to 11 is more valuable in my eyes than the shul I've used for the last 10 years. The songs I sang as a child mean more to me than the songs I learned as an adult. How come?

On the walk home from Kol Nidrei I found myself next to an old, old man, a refugee from Vienna. I asked him: "Were the songs we sang tonight anything like the songs you sang in Europe."

"No. No." he said. "In Vienna we went always to a big shul, a big shul with a chior and still those songs sometimes come back to me."

We're all haunted, I guess.

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