I AM A THOUSAND STORIES

--By Lia

The tradition and the liturgy give us mixed messages on Rosh haShannah and Yom Kippur. Davening through the siddur, I read encouraging words, and ask God to remember: ‘It was you, God, who made me this way – imperfect, sinful, weak, but inherently lovable.’ It’s a comforting thought amidst this otherwise grueling self-reflection. So I keep davening and then I read the list of my sins. I read on finding myself begging God to forgive me even though I don’t deserve it. The most pathetic request. I’m nothing, and I’m worthless, but I still yearn for closeness with God, and all I can do is beg for God to stay with me. But then I am comforted... and then I am chastised... and then I am nothing again... and then I am God’s beloved... and then....

It’s a lot of mixed messages. Most of the year that’s something I love. Most of the year it means that life does not have to fit neatly into a particular box, and there is always another way to look at the world around me and the God above me. Wildly different perspectives on everything from God and humanity to rainstorms and apples are open to me, and I can try them on as I please. Jewish tradition seems designed for just such a hyperactive intellectual as myself.

But on Rosh haShannah and Yom Kippur, it’s not God – and it’s certainly not apples –that I’m wondering about. It’s me. How is my God – that ever-imaginary and elusive yet ever-comforting and strengthening and real figure in my life – looking down on me from the throne of Heaven today? Or (dare I admit it), how shall I evaluate myself? But honestly. When it’s just between me and... “God.” I’m looking for a final answer, a grade at the top of the paper, and a check mark next to “Good” or “Bad” (though I wouldn’t mind simply “needs improvement”). But for better or for worse, the multivocality and multivalence of Judaism still hold on the High Holy Days, and it sometimes makes my head spin (especially by the end of the fast).

Part of the lesson for me, which stubborn as I am I have to relearn each and every year, using the machzor as my learning practicum, is just that fact: I – like you and him and her and them and us – am just as complex as anything else. For all the imagery of a book with our names clearly written out in grandiose script letters in one column or another in clear black ink on shiny new parchment, there’s no book.

No – there are endless books. I am not one story. I am a thousand stories. And I have to read them all, and present them all to God in this season, and they don’t have to fit together or come to one conclusion. And some of them need a lot of fixing, and grant me a stern gaze down from above (or devastatingly worse – a turn away from my sad and disappointed God). And some of them grant me a warm embrace from the Ruler of the universe, and a humble joy that cannot be measured or explained to another.

There are multiple stories to review and evaluate, and multiple responses from God to digest in this period. The head-spinning nature of these days in shul, and these passages of Talmud that don’t ever come to a concrete conclusion, and the mixed feelings that any honest self-evaluation should yield... that’s the point. It’s not one day; it’s a season – the High Holy Days – with some rainy days, and some gorgeous autumn breezes, and some crazy stuff caused by global warming – and there’s not going to be a final grade. That’s just the way God made us.

Lia is currently a PhD candidate in Talmud.