Each Yom Kippur, a vestigial loneliness creeps over me. I achingly feel that my parents and family are back East; that my cousins live in Japan; that some of my dearest are dead. On this day, dispersion and alienation seeps in, and I cling to my community like fog to the shore. And this is the way it should be.
Joel Grishaver, everybody\’s favorite hip Jewish uncle, had been up half the night, schmoozing with a rabbi\’s son who was visiting from England. So when Grishaver answered the phone at 6:30 a.m., he was hardly prepared for the voice that said, \”You and I have a date for lunch in Washington on Sept. 15. You\’ve just won the Covenant Award.\”
As Rabbi Allen Freehling of University Synagogue in West Los Angeles and a bus load of bishops and rabbis left the Rome airport for their hotel near the Vatican, one of the bishops read aloud a document that would soon spark a firestorm of controversy around the world: the Vatican\’s March 16 statement on the Holocaust, released just hours before. The group had just flown in from Israel, where they had spent a week worshiping together, learning about each other\’s histories, and beginning to understand, as only true friends can, what the other believes.
As Shabbat ebbs next week, try Young Israel ofCentury City for something a little sexy — namely, a lecture on \”TheFacts of Life: How to Teach Yeshiva Students,\” led by Rabbi Baruchand Michal Finkelstein.
It\’s High Holiday speech season. Rabbis prep, call each other withideas, exchange jokes, insights, and witty stories. They ponder thegreat issues of the day and get ready for prime-time talking in therabbinical world. Synagogues may not be full throughout the year, butcome Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, there is hardly an empty pew. Thisyear, attendance will be a bit higher, as Yom Kippur falls on aweekend.
While that may sound like an old Jewish joke, it\’s an arrangement that well suits a community which feels at home in this overwhelmingly Buddhist nation but keeps a low profile.\n
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