Monday 2 October 2006

Shock and Awe

Today, as I was sipping my diet Coke and thinking about how hungry I was (diet – not of the liquid variety – begun today), an e-mail arrived from my father. Last week I’d reminded him that Yom Kippur was coming up, and that he should buy Yahrzeit candles – candles that burn for 24 hours, lit in memory of immediate family members who have died.

He wrote that he’d bought some candles and planned to meet his girlfriend later to break the fast, except he’d already cheated, so he wouldn’t technically be breaking the fast.

I stopped in mid-cherry-flavored-diet-Coke gulp. I’d thought Yom Kippur -- the Day of Atonement, and one of the Days of Awe -- started tonight and went until sundown tomorrow, as opposed to starting Sunday night and going through sundown tonight. Which meant at the point that I should have begun fasting last night, I was eating a cheeseburger. Yes, mixing milk and meat, which is against Jewish dietary laws. On an evening I was supposed to be fasting. Urgh.

Never mind that I eat pork and I often mix milk and meat (though never, ever have I had a glass of milk with meat – ugh). And never mind that a few years ago – the first time I got treatment for binge eating – I was told not to fast, and haven’t since. And that I didn’t plan to go to synagogue – only not to go to work (my mother always used to say she didn’t care if my sister and I didn’t go to synagogue, but we shouldn’t be at work either) and to light the Yahrzeit candle my grandmother gave me earlier this year (the candles are incredibly difficult to find here, unlike in the U.S., where any supermarket in a major metropolitan area will have them).

I still felt – and feel – horribly guilty.

I also felt – and feel – homesick. In the U.S., this never would have – or even could have – happened. The date is on all the calendars there. And – at least in the cities where I’ve lived – the concentration of Jews (and ones who observe the High Holy Days) is significant enough that I imagine my colleagues would have been surprised if I’d turned up at work. Which of course I wouldn’t have because chances are I’d be going to synagogue – an option I don’t feel is open to me here because there are only two types of Jews in England: Those who have never been to a Passover seder, let alone to synagogue, and those who are there every weekend and whose entire life revolves around being Jewish. The services I went to here a couple of years ago were for Jews far more observant than I am, and I felt worse than ever for not understanding a word of them. The few prayers I recognized were chanted in unfamiliar cadences. I left the synagogue yearning for Alexy, my official Jewish holiday friend back in DC, and to be home, where taking the day off from work for a Jewish holiday would not require an explanation. I put away the special prayerbook I'd had to buy and went and met a (totally non-observant) English Jewish friend for a drink. How non-observant was he? He didn’t know it was Yom Kippur.

Wanting to make sure I was home before sundown, I left work shortly after five today, something I have only done when sick. I looked up the words to the mourner’s kaddish on the Internet and lit the candle. I made myself wait until after sundown to eat again.

I don't feel any better, but it will have to do.

1 comment: