Mon., Oct. 9, '89/9:30 p.m.
Kibbutz Sdot Yam
Today was Yom Kippur, so I begin to write on a "clean slate," beginning with synagogue services (2 1/2 hrs.) last night to usher in this holiest of Jewish days.
I mainly went for the experience, as well as spiritual solidarity with my people (G-d's Church & the Jews) around the world. I read & sang only about a tithe of the service - amazed that I could keep up in Hebrew I'd never read before.
With me were other ulpanistim [Hebrew students] who elected to fast - mainly, I believe, for the experience or test or show-off of will-power. G-d alone knows. I scanned the faces of all those assembled in the make-shift synagogue with mixed emotions and an alien distance.
Tradition - even empty, hollow, shallow - has assisted Jewry to preserve this Day, however imperfectly; yet I also couldn't help but think of G-d & Kahane who might dismiss such "worship" as vain and such "devotions" as void. Liberal, Hellenist, humanists who have nothing to do with G-d and are ignorant of or deny His Word as a general rule, as hypocritical & unacceptable as professing Christianity on the pagan days of Christmas and Easter - temporarily becoming "religious" or sickly kind...Nevertheless, may we all ultimately worship the One True G-d... G'mar hateemah tovah! [Be inscribed for good in the Book]....
Yom Kippur at Sdot Yam