EREV YOM KIPPUR

I participated in several Yom Kippur services via Zoom. I started off with TBZ, the synagogue next door. Then I switched to the W + S Minyan in Cambridge, affiliated with Harvard Hillel. Now I am listening to a conservative service on JBS TV. Kol Nidrei was not the Sandler minhag. I remember sitting in Bubbe's house waiting for Zaidy to come home from shul. We women did not go. So the Sandler minhag was to attend Kol Nidrei and then come home and eat. 

The next day Shirley and I walked to the Woodrow Avenue shul where we met up with Bubbe who was sitting in the women's section, the first row of the balcony.  There we chanted the Yom Kippur service which is the longest of the year. It takes a lot of time asking for forgiveness for the myriad number of sins listed in the prayerbook. After that we walked over to Bubbe's house and fasted until around 6:00 including me. 

Change is hard. Ken and I exchanged emails today and recently. It's been good being in touch during these strange, isolating, pandemic times. I heard from Ellen too and her recent move. Ellen took the time to send me some photos of Ken during the upheaval of moving and I am grateful for that. I hope things are going better with the new house and the old one ! 

The photo below shows Bubbe, the young and when I knew her. Roby sent me that photo of Bubbe with the lute. I thought I would never see it again. But we began corresponding while I was living in Berkeley and I wrote about it. He was so excited to tell me he had it and he had negatives and prints made that he sent to me. That meant a lot to me. I have Roby's baseball and Zaidy's glasses and also a watch.

I could not resist putting 'Yom Kippur and Bob Dylan' in the search box. This came up from an excerpt in Dylan & Me – 50 Years of Adventures, Louie Kemp chronicles how two Jewish boys from rural Minnesota met at Jewish summer camp in 1953.

"In one amusing story, Kemp recalls the time he and Dylan attended Yom Kippur services in Santa Monica, California:

We had been there before, and the rabbi recognized Bobby right away. But few if any of his fellow worshippers – all somberly dressed – realized he was standing at the back of the room. Having, as usual, missed the memo regarding the dress code, Bobby was wearing cowboy boots, torn jeans, a hoodie, a black leather jacket, and what looked like a long-lost pair of Jackie Kennedy's sunglasses.

Specifically, he was attending the closing service of the day, Neilah... The Ark housing the holy scrolls of the Torah remains open for the entire service, and it is considered a great honor to be chosen by the rabbi to open it. This carries with it many blessings for the new year. The honor customarily goes to the temple's most generous donor – but not this time.

With his ancient eyes, Rabbi Levitansky scoured the congregation. At last, his gaze came to rest upon a solitary figure standing in the back of the room. He motioned the casually dressed fellow up to the pulpit, and up he came. Bob Dylan opened the Ark on Yom Kippur. "