Some post Yom Kippur thoughts

Yesterday, at some point during services my husband, out of deep seated kindness, suggested that I shouldn't set up the meal we eat after the fast until we get home from synagogue. He said that he thought that cutting up vegetables and preparing food platters in the middle of the fast when we are not allowed to eat sounded like torture to him.

I thought about what he was suggesting.I also know that setting out a meal for a group of ravenously hungry people as they wait for me to slice and platter cucumbers, and peppers, and tomatoes  and smoked salmon and Cholesterol Death kugel while everyone is waiting to be fed seemed like an entirely stressful operation to be doing while I am dying to eat myself.

I assured my husband that dealing with food while I am fasting is actually not torture. I mentioned this conversation to a wise friend. She said that she always felt that setting up for that post Yom Kippur meal felt like  doing the work of the priests in the temple. 

My husband stopped in the kitchen to say goodby to me as he was returning to synagogue for Mincha, the afternoon prayer and Neila, the closing prayer of the holiday. I was thinly slicing beefsteak tomatoes to top bagels. My husband mentioned that he normally doesn't much notice the smell of tomatoes or actually even like it but deep into his fast the tomatoes smelled heavenly.

I realized that as I do the work preparing the food--it is for me, not-food until the end of the holiday. I am not tempted to taste it, perhaps it is so many years of prepping this meal before I return to synagogue. it is part of my own avodah, a Hebrew word that is both worship and labor.  So I spent a couple of hours prepping and plattering until we came home after the end of Yom Kippur and ate it all together. 

I want to mention a  Yom Kippur custom that women in my community participate in. It isn't like this is an official sort of a custom like eating particular foods as  a kind of prayer for a good year. This is a deeply meaningful custom that I have seen evolving in my synagogue. 

 Yom Kippur is a day of simplicity in dress. You don't wear makeup. Many people don't wear leather.

 Despite there being a strong sense that one doesn't wear flashy jewelry--you wouldn't put on your newest most fashionable piece of bling-- I have noticed over the years that many women in my community wear jewelry that belonged to a beloved family member on Yom Kippur. Often the brooch or the necklace is completely out of the wearer's usual style. I always ask what the piece is and it is so often something that belonged to a beloved grandmother or mother or childless aunt. The women in my community are bringing along their beloveds who are no longer living to synagogue.   I brought along my friend Vivian's mom in the form of a Mexican sterling pierced bangle. I also brought along my mother in the form of a 1930s  sterling brooch showing a mama bird feeding her three nestlings. ( My mother's Hebrew name means bird and my mother gave birth to three daughters.) I bought the pin for my mother in the early 1990s.  My mother loved the pin and wanted to be sure that I got it after she died. My mother owned jewelry that was more valuable but she loved this pin and what it represented.

 

My friend Lori whose jewelry taste tends to the funky and  and hand crafted wore a giant ornate gold pendant  with a tiny watch hidden inside that had been her grandmothers along with a big hinged gold bracelet.  Judith wore her mother's ring paved with seed pearls and earrings she had made from her mother-in-law's ring. One woman wore a wonderful art-deco panel bracelet that had belonged to a great aunt who had been killed at Auschwitz. She calls it the Yom Kippur bracelet. 

 

 

I love when the answer to "who are you wearing?" isn't about this or that designer but is about this or that loved one.

What are we eating tonight??? pretty much what we ate last night.