“Because Rosh Hashanah was Thursday. Because Sunday’s the Day of Atonement. Because she had ten days. All the ten days of Teshuvah. Because she had ten days of repentance before it was sealed. The Book of Life she prayed and petitioned a loving and forgiving God to inscribe her in. Who wouldn’t do it. Who heard what He heard and still wouldn’t do it. Who must have heard her. Who heard her, all right. You recall what yesterday was like, the crisp weather, Monday’s fine, clean, clear, open air. You could have heard her yourself.
“Here’s the picture:
“All Teshuvah she had, but this was the first good day, and even if the pastures weren’t all that green now — you know what the weather’s been like — still, the foliage was fine, and the still waters. And she must have been feeling pretty good — what was there to fear? it was a clear day; you could see forever — and may even have brought a bit of picnic to nosh — say an apple, a hunk of cheese, say, say a heel of bread — to restore her soul, to dull her appetite if she became peckish.
“So she put forth her argument, laid out her reasons, her bill of particulars, covering the ground like a Philadelphia lawyer, pulling out the stops, actually appealing to His sense, if He had one, of shame:
“ ‘But I’m not even married, O Lord our God. I want to settle down, I do. I want to settle down and make a good Jewish home. I’m still waiting for Mr. Right. Too many marriages end in divorce nowadays, O Baruch-Ataw-Adonoi. I want mine to work. And I’d make a swell mom. As I’ve tried to be a good daughter.
“ ‘And what about my parents? It would kill my pop, and that would kill my mom. They’re great people, they never hurt anybody. Why drag two innocent people into this? For what? What for, O Blessed-Art-Thou? What could possibly be in it for You? What would You be getting? A woman without children? An unmarried woman who, except for her parents, leaves no survivors? No sisters or brothers? Not an uncle, not an aunt? A distant cousin even? With no mishpocheh to speak of save the general, at-large, human family we all of us are? What do you need it?
“ ‘Oh, and I have a nice voice, Thou-Art-God, and know many songs, and this year resolve to learn more.
“ ‘Oh, oh, and I keep myself kempt, and am still in my prime, so how about it, Holy-Holy-Holy, inscribe me in the Book of Life for another year. How about it, what do You say, Lord-Is-My-Shepherd?’
“He said ‘BOOM!’ And ‘BOOM!’ And ‘BOOM!’ again, and Joan Cohen dropped where she stood like a load too heavy to bear any longer.
“We spoke of keeping God honest? Honest? Because don’t think this is like your car breaking down the minute the warranty runs out. This isn’t like that. This was yesterday she died. New Year’s was Thursday. Today’s Tuesday. The Book of Life isn’t sealed until Yom Kippur. Yom Kippur is Sunday. So what did she have? Until Sunday. Counting from Rosh Hashanah, He’d already given her five days. He’d split the difference. She was midway. In a sort of time warp. The warranty hadn’t even started yet. She hadn’t even driven it off the lot!
“So honest? My God, my friends, He’s positively fussy!”
Shull had stopped weeping. Elaine Iglauer, Fanny Tupperman. Even the Cohens. In their absolute grief these five had been a beat or so behind the rest of the congregation all morning, vaguely aged and weighted, like actors unsure of their blocking, or as if they moved chest deep in water. As for the rest, they weren’t just interested now, they were fascinated and couldn’t wait to hear what I would say next. Except for Shelley, except for Connie. And me. Except for me. The Rabbi of Lud. I was weeping. I was. Not fascinated, not even interested. Only penitent, only asking for my atonement, and began to recite bits of prayer I remembered from the Yom Kippur service.
“We have trespassed,” I prayed, “we have been faithless … we have spoken basely … we have done violence … we have forged lies … we have counseled evil.
“For the sin which we have committed before Thee under compulsion, or of our own will.
“And for the sin which we have committed before Thee in hardening of the heart.
“For the sin which we have committed before Thee with utterance of the lips and the folly of the mouth.
“For all these, O God of Forgiveness, forgive us, pardon us, grant us remission.”
I’d forgotten a lot, but spoke the fragments I remembered as best I could. So, I thought, here I am, a rabbi myself now, and still pull — my sculpted, fashioned, modified Yom Kippur — the shortest haphtarah passage of the year. And went on with my tally.
I prayed to be pardoned for open sins and secret sins, for sinful meditations of the heart, for sins of evil inclination.
They stared at me.
And prayed to be forgiven for contentiousness and envy, for being stiff-necked, for tale-bearing, for vain oaths, for ensnaring my neighbor, for breach of trust, calling them off indiscriminately, guilty of some but not of others. Apologizing for slander sins and sins in business. (I remembered all I’d been told of Lud’s contraband dead.) And prayed to be let off for sins of scoffing, for wanton looks, for causeless hatred.
Some were irritated, stirring, grumbling. Charney and Klein were whispering together. Sal, God forbid something should happen in Lud and he not be in on it, moved closer to them. A few of the mourners looked around for their things.
“Hey,” I urged, “wait. We’re not finished,” and specially, suddenly, pled:
“For the sins we have committed against Thee by grandstanding,” I tried. “And the sins we have committed against Thee by seeking to lie low and maintain a low profile,” I told them, and had a vision of Rabbi Petch cowering behind the furniture jammed together in the southwest corner of his living room in Anchorage. And looked about, excited now, my sins as much in the public domain as if my fly were open. “And the sins we have committed against Thee by the hanky panky of the heart and flesh,” I rushed on, though even this didn’t cut into their murmuring. I wasn’t drunk, or crazy, or even much of a crank, but try telling them that.
“For the sins which we have committed against Thee by living in the wrong communities,” I said.
That wasn’t it. It wasn’t even more like it.
“In which we raised our children,” I amended.
“Our daughters,” I revised.
“My daughter,” I atoned, not quite grieving but getting warmer and aware of the immense, twisted tonnage of complex grief in the world at any given time, in any given place, some tight amalgam of woe and rue and complicity and fear. Grief like a land mass, like the seas, complicated as weather seen from high space or the veiled, tie-dye smudge of the alloy earth itself.
But why couldn’t I let them go? What was I up to, the offshore yeshiva bucher with the tiny haphtarah passage? What was I up to with my spilt-milk penitentials and public-domain regrets and all my deplored, gnashed-teeth, learned-my-lessons? With my sullied sympathy, giving out quarter like a drunken sailor? Pushing off my easy, condolent affections on them, laying on all my outstretched formulas of finessed sensibility and participatory grief, plea bargaining the world, fending God off with my sorrys and sorry-fors — sorry for Shelley, for Connie, the Cohens, for Shull and for Tober, for Charney, for Klein? What was I up to who had enough on my own plate, more than enough, all I could handle with just my own grievances, forget my swooping, all-embracing, crash-course sympathetics?
Several were standing now, edging toward the exits. I couldn’t let it bother me. There wasn’t anything I could do about it.