Getting Ready to Conjure My Father on Yom Kippur

With Yom Kippur looming Oct. 11-12, I brace myself for extended bouts of standing and sitting during synagogue services, plus the extra blessings and sermons (sorry, Rabbi!), drawn-out choral passages, silent meditations, fund-raising appeals and self-reflection – all while going on empty from a 25-hour fast.

Not that I would dream of tuning out on Judaism’s holiest day, especially mindful of the lives lost, damaged and hijacked since the last Yom Kippur pre-Oct 7.

I’ll certainly try my best to take stock of my misdeeds from the past year and commit to a more righteous one ahead. But atoning is still a slog, gladly left behind the moment I hear the last blast of shofar and take my traditional first bite of post-fast pretzel.

There is one moment in the long day of observance that I actually look forward to, thanks to the Lev Shalem prayer book used by our Conservative Manhattan shul. On page 291, as a sidebar insert to the memorial service, is a poem that beautifully captures the brevity of life and power of memory that are such an integral part of the highest holiday, and of being Jewish.

It’s called “Though I Stared Earnestly at My Fingernail” by an accomplished Brooklyn-born writer named Merle Feld, who, while examining the cuticle of her right forefinger as she rides a New York City bus, conjures the physical presence of her father.

“I remembered how clean and short he kept his nails,” she writes, “and suddenly there was the whole man reconstituted…standing before me, smiling broadly his face flushed with pleasure.” In that fleeting second of merely checking out her nail chugging along on a city bus route, Feld is “overtaken by a longing very close to love.”

While I dutifully recite the prayers and chants of Yom Kippur, Feld’s poem transports me to a different time and place. My father, who died aged 91 in 2010, bequeathed me many traits – a strong work ethic, devotion to routine and family. But he also “gifted” me his fingers – long, knobby and flattened at the tips, with nails that look like they’d been pounded by a mallet. Coming upon Feld’s fingernail muse on page 291 always prompts me to gaze at my own stretched-out hands, instantly summoning my dad – towering, hair-perfect, strong. And right beside me.

There we are in our Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh circa 1963, as he guides me to the proper place in the text or nudges me to stand, as I watch the red neck creases in the men around me from their starched white shirts. He slips me a mint, whispers to my mom and then davens in old-school Hebrew pronouncing “t’s” like “s.” When he straightens his pant leg after sitting down I focus on his permanently dislocated right ring finger, an injury I would repeat many years later. If he catches me looking at the crooked joint, he’ll shoot me a wink.

I stare at the lofty stained-glass windows and flip ahead in the bound siddur to check how many pages remain before we’re released. Sometimes I buzz out until my dad elbows me to attention, with an expression that says, This is where it’s at, kid. He limits my escapes to the bathroom and corridors of our temple. After service concludes, he holds my hand as we head up the carpeted aisle and exit the sanctuary, his wedding band sticking into my palm. I wouldn’t think of letting go.

I stare at the lofty stained-glass windows and flip ahead in the bound siddur to check how many pages remain before we’re released. Sometimes I buzz out until my dad elbows me to attention.

The poet Feld savors her father’s transient visit, but of course she can’t prolong it any longer than one can hold a rainbow. “Just as suddenly he was gone,” she writes, “and though I stared earnestly at my fingernail I failed to bring him back.”

I understand her frustration. No sooner than my father arrives on the wings of my aging fingers I know his hologram-like spirit will dissipate into the air. I pray I’m around when page 291 returns next year.

Allan Ripp runs a press relations firm in New York.