Having Two “Gods”:Reflections on the Jewish New Year from a Queer Lens
I am writing this on the second day of Rosh Hashanah, which in Hebrew means “the head of the year,” as my beautiful boyfriend sleeps in the other room and as I prepare for an impromptu week-long trip to the complicated country of Israel on Wednesday.
A Picture of Doug (Center) with his “Bronx Jew Fro” with the NYC, Multi-Cultural Exchange Group Circa 1977. And, yes, that’s Golda in the center. I met her!
The biblical name for the Jewish High Holy Days is Yom Terrah. This means a “day of shouting and blasting.” That sounds more fun than the holiday actually is, which entails sitting in shul for endless hours listening to the people “Daven” (mutter the prayers to themselves with a hundred people doing the same) and eating so much chicken soup and flanken for the big dinners that one can barely get up and walk to shul (the Yiddish word for the neighborhood synagogue).
Well, then again, there is a particular “fun” if your idea of fun involves tripping on ancient streams of knowledge and creating the healing fiction that something of the “numen” of being Jewish resides in your DNA? Collective Unconscious? Heart? Buber says it’s in the “blood,” but he’s too much of an existentialist to really believe that?
Oh, by the way, not unlike James Hillman, I am going to suggest a more polytheistic approach (not to be confused with being “poly,” but that is the subject of another post).
Back to the story: The extensive “blasting” involves blowing the Shofar, a hollowed-out ram’s horn that is so phallic you can’t make this shit up. This sonorous sound will send chills up the spine in even the most ardent non-believer. The Shofar is sounded 100 times during a traditional Rosh Hashanah service. And a long and loud shofar blast marks the end of Yom Kippur. I guess this is the main focus of Rosh Hashanah and Judaism: “We must turn inwards to fix ourselves so we can then burst out and contribute to the world.”
When I went to synagogue Thursday night, a woman was the one blowing the Shofar. how refreshing!g
There are four types of shofar sounds, which the Rabbi announces before the Shofar blower blows. They are “TEKIAH,” a single blow that brings everyone to attention. Then there is “SHEVARIM,” which is three broken blows, referencing our tears of sadness or joy at another year’s passing. Then there is “TRUAH,” which involves nine more rapid-fire or staccato blows, a wake-up call for the New Year. And finally, there is “TEKIAH GEDOLAH,” the great blast to wrap up. I will link to listen to these sounds in the comments below.
If Passover marks the beginning of the Jewish exodus from Egypt, Rosh Hashanah is the beginning of the civil year. It initiates humanity’s role in the grand divine cycle of infinite time.
So before one gathers the “fruits” of one’s labor, one should reflect on the hard work done, mistakes made, and what the New Year will bring, no?
In the Talmud tractate on Rosh Hashanah, we learn that God has opened a book where he jots down the fate of the wicked, the righteous, and those of the intermediate class. Those of us in the intermediate course have the ten days between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur to reflect and atone for the misdeeds of the past to be inscribed in the Book of Life.
And, in the life of a quasi-observant Jewish psyche, Yom Kippur is the day when everything stops, and so does the anger, the arguing, and passive-aggressive moaning. My father, Lenny, the Letter Carrier, a Willy Loman character if there ever were one, and who took after his Irish Jewish mother with his smoking and drinking, even he adopted a somber attitude on Yom Kipper. That man, who was more addicted to nicotine than Humphrey Bogart in any of his movies, fasted the whole day. Not a puff from his Lucky Strike or a sip from the secret Seagram Seven’s bottle he kept in a cupboard that was hardly a secret to anyone. Even he abstained from unholy thoughts on Yom Kippur. He was too shy to go with me too synagogue, but he did engage in his own form of silent reflection (although not nearly enough to stop drinking and stop projecting his own unresolved trauma on his gay-to-be-son). My mother, who spoke her brand of Yiddish and had a very close relationship with her very pious parents, had very mixed feelings about Temple and I think, like so many children of immigrants, preferred looking like Sophia Loren and smoking cigarettes like Jackie O, then going to Shul. But don’t get me wrong, this petite “lady” spoke the Queen’s Yiddish and always got high marks as a “Balaboosta,” the woman who keeps the house, shops, cooks, pays the bills, attends the PTA, and watches her children like a hawk, and would not let her eldest go to the kitchen to get a glass of water if she has two arms and two legs (nor come out as gay, but that too is the subject of another essay).
So these holidays, which have been around for thousands of years, if you are raised with them, they impact you, even if you have made peace with the idea that the old concept of God, as depicted in the “Five Books of Moses,” may not conform to the God-Image that has evolved throughout one’s individuation process, or one’s alienation, or one’s skepticism, or one’s concern that religion does not answer deep psychological questions in the way psychotherapy (or other forms of tripping with the unconscious) might.
Some fond memories of early childhood are going to the shul with my grandparents in the Central Bronx in the 1960s. We’d walk as it was prohibited to drive. The air would be crisp, a touch of fall auguring the end of summer. Even though I was dressed in a tight-fitting suit that made my 11-year-old body feel too stiff, there was something dignified about getting dolled up (as my father would say) and walking with the parents, the grandparents, and the cousins down Gerard Avenue. You’d pass by many people passing by and waving and saying, GUT YONTIF (Good Holiday). The whole thing felt awe-inspiring, boring, and tiring but also very sacred. I also remember feeling sad, lonely, and alienated from everyone, too, as I had a strong sense at that time of my queerness as a virtually mystical presence I confused perhaps rightly or perhaps wrongly confused with the holiday.
I remember arriving at the shul of my grandparents, where the men sat on one side and the women on the other in a crowded small shul. This was not a quiet scene. Yiddish-speaking people shouted at a time, between the most ardent prayers, gossiping during the service, and kvetching and davening. So much passion, so much excitement, so much soul. Until then, I had never been to a Reform Jewish synagogue, such as the gay synagogues we have here, which are much less irascible. I had confused religious faith with yelling for many years. And also homo-eroticism, I kid you not.
Occasionally, if one were sly, one could catch the image of a rebellious teenager among the exit with his pals. Yes, they wore knitted Yarmulkes and the fringe garments called Tzitzit. But you could see through their tight-fitting suits that they preferred to play basketball than pray to the God of their grandparents. I once saw one—sacrilege—secretly flip off a person as old as Methuselah, telling them “SHAH,” which is a very shaming way to say, “Shut Up.” I noticed, during breaks, that they smoked cigarettes and hung on each other, very affectionate. That’s when I realized there were two gods in my imagination: Yahweh and those guys over there. Hey, I was not actually conscious of this. This awareness was semi-conscious, and I recognized it through retrospection. Imagine the ways our identities grow inside of us without our being aware!
Some friends, and family members of Israel friends, invited me to Israel – a place I had not been since I went on an exchange program in 1977 with a multicultural group. I know this is a contested place, and I am alarmed by the rightward move in the government and the treatment of oppressed people. But I’d like to see for myself. So I will keep you all posted. I will be there on Yom Kippur. Scared, excited. If you know some interesting people I should meet, let me know. More to come…
L’Shana Tova