Yom Kippur (Thank you, frailty?)

My friend, whom I'll call Jim, was raised Catholic. He just got engaged over the summer to his girlfriend (I’ll call her Suzi), who is Jewish. Jim and I have talked about religion a lot. I don't have anybody in my circle of friends who, as an adult, is as much a disaffected Protestant as me, but Jim probably qualifies as an equally disaffected Christian -- though my upbringing taught me that as a Catholic Jim should not be considered a "real" Christian.

Jim never attends Mass anymore, I don't think, but sometimes goes with Suzi to Shabbat services with the same young and progressive crowd as my colleague who read the poem about women's voices as vowels a few weeks ago.

Suzi invited me to her pre-fast dinner for Yom Kippur this year, starting at 4:30 on Wednesday, but I was too busy to get away from my office at that time of day, and had to miss it. I brought a full dinner to work with me that day instead, and ate it quickly at my desk at about 5:30, before rushing to make Kol Nidre services by 6PM.

The Shabbat group that Suzi and my colleague attend does not put together its own High Holidays services, though many of them join with a larger, older, progressive Jewish group in town called Fabrangen.

I have an older acquaintance who is quite active with Fabrangen, and through a tangled web of connections, I've ended up at Fabrangen's Kol Nidre for the past four years in a row. Like the Shabbat group, Fabrangen does not own a building or employ a rabbi. For High Holiday services, the group appropriates the space of a willing local church, and this year had found a space called The United Church, luckily only eight easily walkable blocks from my office.

The United Church is so named because it was formed (in the 1970s) when two different Protestant denominations, who worshipped two blocks apart from each other in downtown DC, decided to merge their services. A United Church of Christ merged with a Methodist Church, and one new "United" Church was born in the building that housed the Church of Christ.

When the Church of Christ was built, in 1833, it originally was known as the German Evangelical Concordia Congregation, and it served as something of a community center for a good portion of the city's German/Christian population at that time. The combined church still advertises German language services every first and third Sunday of the month, and the first thing I noticed as I approached the church was the tall stained glass window above the entrance, which bore a cross draped in a white sash marked with an elaborate phrase of German calligraphy.

Men and women in kippot and prayer shawls mounted the steps beneath this window, and I fell in line behind them. Inside, as usual, the Christian symbols had all been draped with Jewish art -- painted or embroidered stars of David, or Hebrew messages, or depictions of the Book of Life. I was just barely on time for the service, but I did not see any of my friends or colleagues, so I took a seat by myself in the center toward the back.

The service did not start on time, and worshippers continued to stream in, to the point that I started to feel self-conscious about being a bareheaded single Gentile with a fairly good seat, while whole families were peering around for a space to sit together. I still did not see anybody I knew there, so I rose and went upstairs by myself to the fairly empty balcony.

By the time services had started, I had relocated myself twice more to an ever-worse seat, ending up in the back row of the side balcony by an open stained glass window, which turned out to be a really interesting (and surprisingly comfortable) location for the services. For one thing, worshippers continued arriving even after services had started, such that there were people sitting in the aisles and on staircases, and spilling out into the upper and lower lobbies. This meant that the church grew stiflingly hot rather quickly, increasing the value of the refreshing breeze wafting through the open window.

Secondly, my back-balcony vantage point meant that I could not see the stage at all. I know that the cantor who led most of the service was a woman, but I have no idea what she looked like, or who else might have shared the stage with her. Her disembodied instructions on when to sit or stand, or which page to locate in the prayer book, floated up to the balcony like the voice of God. (God sings in a confidant soprano!)

Two and a half hours later, the soprano God announced that we had arrived at the conclusion of the Kol Nidre service "unconscionably early," and invited everyone back for the full day tomorrow before dismissing us. It took some time for all of the worshippers to file out of the church, which gave me the opportunity to spot Jim and Suzi and a colleague of mine I'll call Rachel in the crowd below. I gestured that I'd wait outside.

On the sidewalk, we chatted about Jim and Suzi's pre-fast meal, and everyone's plans for the next day, and Rachel asked me what part of the Kol Nidre service I liked the most. I answered with some comments about the al-chet portion of the service, a recitation of 44 types of sins, for which the congregation repents and asks forgiveness.

On a previous year, I had been quite moved by a modern adaptation of the al-chet prayer written by a Febrangener, which, as I recalled it, barely mentioned God at all, and really resonated with me as capturing the meaning of the al-chet and translating into a language easily understood by a 21st century… uh, humanist? Atheist? Gentile? (Me.)

The creative, modern al-chet also seemed like a convincing motivator for right action, couched in the sensible language of moderation, rather than the fiery language of condemnation or the moaning language of remorse. (Sample couplet: "For the sin of taking ourselves too seriously, and for the sin of not taking ourselves seriously enough." Sample couplet #2: "For the sin of demanding the power to change others, and for the sin of neglecting the power to change ourselves." If I were compiling a holy book, this prayer -- written a few years ago, I believe -- would be in it for sure.)

Glancing forward in the prayer book during Kol Nidre, I had felt disappointed by this year's al-chet that I saw coming up. Its recitation of sins seemed old-fashioned to me, and not so relevant, and a little ridiculous. It called for repentance for sins that are meaningless to me, like desecrating God's holy name, or for sins that I'm pretty sure I haven't committed, like bribery or extortion or "casting off the yoke of Heaven" (whatever that means).

However, when we got to the al-chet, the cantor did not go by the book. We sang a few Hebrew verses of the prayer, and then the cantor opened it up to the worshippers to raise their hands and volunteer a sin. With each suggested phrase, the cantor would sing it back, and then the congregation would follow it with a short section of the Hebrew prayer. After each three or five sins, we would return to the book, and sing a full couplet, and then take more suggestions from the group.

"The cantor took the personal and made it liturgical and I found that very powerful," I told Rachel. "Sin is a weird concept to me, and I have a hard time coming up with what I think my sins are, but when I hear someone else throw out 'the sin of pettiness' or 'the sin of holding onto anger,' I know I'm implicated too, and there's something really close and human and supportive about everybody admitting frailty together and making a vow to do better."

Congregants offered up the sins of "not caring for our planet" (I thought of how I don't dry my clothes on a line), of "not caring for the poor" (I can't say I'm a champ in that arena either), and two people offered variations on "holding onto anger with parents" (I guess this one's pretty universal).

Rachel asked me if I was planning to return for the full day of Yom Kippur services the next morning. I had planned to take the day off from work as one of two annual "personal holidays" we are allowed, but I told Rachel that traditionally I only attend Kol Nidre, and spend the next day in personal contemplation. Rachel encouraged me to change my plans this year.

"You don't even have to follow along through the whole thing, if you don't want to," she told me. "I bring my own readings sometimes and will sort of hop in and out of the service as I feel moved. You could bring something else, if you want."

"Well, I didn't manage to finish all of my Ramadan reading last month," I told her. "I could bring my Koran, or some of the other books on Islam that I'm reading, like No God But God, or The Muslim Jesus."

Rachel treated it as a joke, but I had been serious.

Her instant reply was that bringing Muslim books probably wouldn't be a good idea, and then there was a split second where I think it wasn't clear to either of us whether my suggestion was utterly out of the question or whether a progressive Jewish congregation with no rabbi meeting in a Christian church might happily endorse an ex-Christian reading Koran in the pews on Yom Kippur.

"Well, think about it," said Rachel. "You could at least come back for Ne'ila at the very end. It should be starting around 5:45."

"Yeah, come back for Ne'ila," Suzi chimed in, breaking off a side conversation with another congregant, and looking as enthusiastic and serious and emotional as I have ever seen her. "It's at the end of the day, and the sun’s going down, and you're so empty from the fast that it's easier to be ... filled."

"I'll think about it," I said, as our sidewalk group disbanded, and I walked back to my office to retrieve my bicycle.