High Holy Day Divorce

I flew to New York on the morning of Rosh Hashanah, 5760.

Tuesday there was a day in court, a dreaded ugly ending to a seemingly unending divorce. But the Book of Life is always open, and there was still Monday to play with, to mold a settlement we could each call fair. So I flew with my heart a little open, and at the same time I was holding my fear close, like a mirror I breathed hot breath against to know that I was still alive.

Monday came, and by the end of the day, it seemed we had entered our darkest dreams. My husband and I had not spoken for months, and now at the end of this long, last day, our attorneys, like children, had ingested our unspoken feelings and had lost communication. The next day a judge would decide how our New Year would begin.

I slept that night in my friend’s apartment, less than a mile from the home where I raised my children, where my Duxiana bed and Charisma sheets were at that moment sheltering my husband and his girlfriend. My children’s rooms were still filled with their childhood things, the stuff they no longer needed in their new grown-up lives. And our daughter was a guest on his couch for the month. Such was our life in this odd city triangle, two opposing points in the Village angling up to our truly empty Chelsea nest.

In the morning I showered, ironed my day-in-court clothes, had coffee with my friend and wondered why I was so afraid. The phone rang. My attorney’s office. It was an hour and a half before we were due. I’m sorry, her secretary says. The judge has hurt her back. They’ve postponed for three weeks.

I was filled with relief. It was only then that I realized how cold I had been, how I had frozen my instincts. It’s a miracle, I think. An opportunity. I reached for the phone, then pull ed back. A dark, stern, baritone voice in my head said, “No. Don’t interfere. Let fate take its course.” But that voice was the voice of fear. I had heard his warnings before, and that day I asked him to step aside. I called my husband at home. This is our life, I told him. We lived it together and we can end it together. His fear was as great as mine, it seems. Yes, yes, we can do this together, the way we raised our kids together, built a business, bought a house, made a home, celebrated holidays; we did all that, we can do this, too. And we did. In a day and a half it was signed, it was over, we were free.

I flew back to L.A. Thursday morning, on the last plane out before they closed Newark Airport due to a hurricane. It was pouring on the ground, the winds were beginning to pick up, I was an hour late taking off. But once in the air I was above the weather in minutes and the flight was smooth all the way home.

I don’t, as a rule, go to synagogue. My parents were communists; religious leanings were considered an act of conservative politics and moral decrepitude, something along the lines of naming names to the House UnAmerican Activities Committee. But every year, for as long as I can remember, I have been pulled by some cord wrapped around my guts, my deepest inner places, to hear the Kol Nidre. Somewhere in my childhood, with my Grandpa Morris and my Grandma Lizzie maybe, I heard the ancient Aramaic chant, and no part of me can rest in any year I don’t hear it sung again. Once, in Louisville, Kentucky, I joined a group of born-again Jews who listened to it on a tape recorder, following along with a transliteration on typewritten pages. Two years ago, alone in L.A. before it was home, I went to a Hollywood Squares-style service where the rabbi emceed and famous Jews got up to perform their rendition of the High Holy Days.

But last year I stood barefoot while a rabbi with a thick red pony tail and a great sense of humor reminded me what the words really meant – a prayer, in advance, to renounce all those vows I was going to break. A prayer to God to help me see I’m only human.

My husband called a few days later – some business to discuss, details about the papers. And we actually laughed and were easy with each other. Some cord had been cut, and in the cutting, in the freedom, we were free to be free with each other. We had broken the most sacred of vows and ended our marriage. We had done it imperfectly, with anger and fear and the whole panoply of human emotions. But that didn’t make us evil or awful or beneath contempt. As that rabbi reminded me, it merely made us human. That year our names had been entered in the Book of Life in separate columns, but we had each been entered. And if God could provide such a simple act of grace, who were we to deny that grace to each other? Like that plane leaving Newark ahead of the hurricane, we had lifted up out of the bad weather between us, into a clear flight home.

Maia Danziger is an Emmy Award-winning actress and a poet. She lives in Los Angeles.