new year's post: even more belated than you think

I almost wrote this all the way back at the Jewish new year, Rosh Hashana. I don't know why I didn't - too busy, or not ready to say it - but Emma's post (please, go read it and come back), so unlike the New Year's posts I was seeing everywhere else, reminded me. And I thought I'd try again.

The most intense prayer on Rosh Hashana is called "U'netaneh Tokef", and it talks about Gd judging you and deciding your fate for the coming year. Who will live, who will die, who will suffer, who will prosper. It doesn't exactly say that your fate depends on the good or evil you've done, but that's certainly how most religious Jews interpret it. And it also doesn't quite say that if you've done wrong but you repent, you can still change your fate - but that is also how most religious Jews interpret it.

So. That is the high point of the prayer service, and I...don't believe it.

Oh, I can accept that long ago there might have been cause and effect in the world: that Gd watched everything you did, and rewarded or punished you accordingly. But not in the world as I know it. I don't think there's any reason to believe being a good person will earn you a good life; nor do I think that if something evil happened to you, you deserved it. I not only don't believe that, I won't. I am repulsed by it. I reject it. If there is any justice, it's in the afterlife, not this one.

This is heretical to many Orthodox Jews, I know. And yet there's support for it in the classical texts too. The idea of "hester panim" - that Gd hid His face at a certain point in history - means, at minimum, that there are no longer open miracles. But some also take it to mean that He stopped interacting with the world in any revealed manner. That one is not going to see His direct hand in one's life.

So, what does a Jew like me do with this prayer? (With any prayer, really, because if you can't say "Gd, please do this for me" and expect anything to change, what are you praying for?)

I think one hint is the difference between the way the last line is often translated, and what the line actually means.

"U'teshuva u'tefilla u'tzedaka ma'avirin et ro'a ha'gezeira": repentance, prayer, and charity can remove the evil decree, that's what I was taught as a child. But it doesn't say "the evil decree." It says "the evil of the decree."

And so I don't think this prayer says anything that different about how to respond to tragedy, in the end, than an agnostic might say. If you're powerless to stop it and you can't expect anyone else to rescue you, either, what is there left to do?

You can't justify it, in the sense of being able to explain why it happened. But you can try to imbue it with some meaning after the fact. When you look back, maybe you'll be able to say: this awful thing happened to me, but this is what I did in response. This was how I tried to make what happened not a waste.

Repentance: working on yourself. That's one way. Not because you did anything to deserve this, no. Just because if life is short, and cruel, and out of your hands, one thing you can do is try to be the best person you can, in the face of it.

Prayer. That's another. Not because it's going to change what happens. But as a way of reaching for something bigger out there - at least trying to reach out for it, as hidden and impossible to understand as it is. When I was studying David's Psalms in college, one of my teachers put it this way: if you want to have a relationship with someone, you can't stop talking to them. Even when you're so angry at them you can't speak, you have to go to them and say: I'm so angry with you I can't speak.

And charity: reaching out to the rest of the world. Because if you can somehow leave a mark, if you made something better out there for someone else, maybe you'll be able to look back on your life without regrets.

I know I've been using second person, and it's too hard to go back and change it, but I hope you can tell that I'm preaching to myself, not you. I used to find this prayer so oppressive. A trap. A locked door to bang on. Me on one side of it, and Gd on the other.

I'm trying not to, these days. I'm trying to see Gd on the same side, banging on the door right next to me. I'm trying to find the way through.