Seidemann: The Yom Kippur blues

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From the other side of the bench

by David Seidemann
Issue of September 22, 14 Tishrei 5771
I am assuming that most of you are like me and that the Yom Kippur tunes swirl and dance around in your head for days after the chag. It makes going to work a bit difficult in the days between Yom Kippur and Sukkot when I find myself humming the liturgical chants more audibly than is socially acceptable. One year I actually had a criminal case the day after Yom Kippur titled “People versus King.” The irony of the name of the case aside, I think I reflexively made a fist with my right hand and began beating my chest while mumbling the “Avinu Malkeinu.” It was a trying 10 days of repentance for me this year. I spent a total of 11 hours over three days in a dentist’s chair and and underwent 13 Novocaine shots, undergoing a still-uncompleted root canal. It made “Viduy bipeh,” “confession with one’s mouth,” as required by Maimonides, a bit challenging. An emotional prelude to Yom Kippur every year is the Shabbos Shuva Drosha that is given by my rabbi, Rabbi Dovid Weinberger. I have never missed one of these speeches in all the years I lived here. I had every intention of attending this year’s lecture and instructed my body to wake me up after what was scheduled to be a half-hour nap after Shabbos lunch. My wife had gone for a walk and three of my four daughters had gone to friends. One of my daughters stayed at home with me and curled up on the opposite side of the couch with a book that could have been titled “Saturday Afternoon the Rabbi Didn’t Sleep Late but his Congregant Did.” As planned, my wife returned from her walk 30 minutes before the start of the rabbi’s lecture. She began the arduous process of waking me up. It was then that we realized that the daughter that been at the other end of the couch was gone. She is too small to go anywhere off the block by herself and we checked all of the neighbors’ houses first. She was nowhere to be found and we began to panic. It was an unspoken panic. Neither my wife nor I said a word to each other, preferring not to say what we were thinking. I don’t know why but we checked our backyard last, after searching all of the neighbors’ homes. We were convinced we would find her there, after all other searches proved futile. Panic turned to hysteria when we found her little shoes and the book she had been reading, under the swing set in the backyard. Unmentionable thoughts entered our minds as we expanded our search off the block. We walked to our daughter’s friend’s house some 10 minutes away, assuring ourselves that we would find our daughter and her friend there. Everything would be okay. Our daughter was not there. The search party expanded to include some of the neighbors. Thankfully, a half hour later, we found our daughter at another friend’s house some 20 minutes away. She had walked there with the older sister of the friend who came to escort her. My daughter was adamant that she informed me that she was leaving. Between snores, she told me, I muttered “okay.” Thrilled that we had found her, I was disappointed that I had missed my rabbi’s lecture. Perhaps I would enter Yom Kippur lacking. It was then that I realized, while I did not hear a Shabbos Shuva lecture, I had lived one. All year long we are seeking G-d. We scour the neighborhood looking for Him in all the familiar places. We fall, we get up, and we fall again. We fall so many times that we sense that G-d has abandoned us. Tisha b’Av arrives in the heat of the summer, climaxing in the ultimate perceived desertion: the destruction of our two holy temples in Jerusalem. It is as if G-d had gone to sleep on the living room couch. But then the month of Elul surprises us immediately after Tisha b’Av and we begin to blow the shofar. We wake G-d up and He realizes that we are no longer home, that we have strayed, that someone or something else has taken us for a walk. G-d comes looking for us. He looks in all the familiar places and some not-so-familiar places and He does not give up until He finds us. And we end Yom Kippur with one final blast of the shofar to impress upon G-d to not take another nap; to not close his eyes again even though the High Holidays are now over. And so we usher in Sukkot, the Festival of Booths, when we leave the security of our homes and search for spirituality outside in the real world. That is how man grows: when he wakes up from his nap, together with family and friends, he scours the neighborhood searching for G-d. And we keep searching for another 11 months until the calendar turns.  Until once again, no matter how far we have strayed, G-d comes looking for us. David Seidemann is a partner with the law firm of Seidemann & Mermelstein. He can be reached at (718) 692-1013 and at ds@lawofficesm.com