Religion is a funny thing. I don’t want to start some sort of long-winded post about the meaning of life and religious communities and who’s right and who’s wrong, but tonight is Rosh Hashanah, and every year right about now, I tend to get introspective and unordinarily gung-ho about “recommitting” myself to Judaism, or whatever you want to call efforts I should be making year-round to not be considered the horrible Jew I am.
I don’t think you have to follow all the rules and believe every story to be part of a religion, to be part of a faith. In fact, one of the things I love about Judaism, in extremely simple terms, is that it’s so much more than a religion. In fact, religion is just a small part of what’s involved in being a Jew—but then again, anyone who’s ever seen an episode of Seinfeld or been to a Channukah party knows that.
Rosh Hashanah, for my gentile friends not in the know, is the Jewish new year. It’s a two-night holiday that starts a ten-day period of introspection (that’s actually supposed to go on the entire month leading up to Rosh Hashannah) which is capped off by Yom Kippur, or the Day of Atonement, which you may know as the day we sit schvitzing in temple while we say “I’m sorry” all day and promise to be better Jews, all the while bitching about our growling stomachs and how it’s totally not fair that we can’t even chew gum to hold us over.
Now, I openly admit that I’m a bad Jew. I don’t go to synagogue, I don’t keep kosher, I wear polyester… But every year at Rosh Hashanah, I get nostalgic for Hebrew school and retreats and baking challah and singing and, believe it or not, sitting in temple. Of course, I’m sitting at my desk as I write this, having awkwardly dodged my boss’s question of why I wasn’t in temple today, but it says something that it’s at least on my mind, right?
Somewhere in that crazy brain of mine is a piece reserved for religion, and during the first ten days of the year, it gets overstimulated, then craps out at Christmas parties where they serve delicious things like bacon-wrapped dates. Still, I take the meaning of the holiday to heart, and am generally a nicer person in September and October, trying to make up for broken promises and severed ties, and generally, anything else I might have done to just piss someone off.
The moral of this story? I don’t know. The holiday makes me feel Jewish, like I’m part of the community, like I have a home somewhere, but it also reminds me just how bad I am about participating in it, and how far away I’ve strayed. Is that a bad thing? I’m not sure. I don’t consider myself a worse person because I don’t go to temple. Overall, I think I’m pretty OK. Sometimes nicer than others, like in the fall.
So, the real moral of this story? If you want anything from me, now would be the time to ask.
