Yom Kippur has just passed, which is the holiday where we, as Jews, finish out the period of atonement between the new year and now. This is the day where we spend 25 hours fasting and sitting (or standing) in synagogue apologizing and asking to be written down in the book of life. These days always make me introspective – or at least more introspective than usual – and out of that, came this post.

I find myself, around this time of year, wondering if I have done enough in the past year to deserve the amazing things that have happened to me. I graduated university – something which, if you had asked me four years ago, I never thought I would achieve. I had an amazing job – learning, reading, working in a law firm and gaining invaluable experience for my future.

And, finally, I had the incredible opportunity to move to Israel, a move I never thought I’d make, but one I’m forever grateful for, and one that still feels surreal when I think about it.

It is very difficult for me to put into words how I truly feel about this time of year. I feel repentant, apologetic to all those who I have wronged (and although it might seem trivial or cowardly to say this on a blog, but I truly am sorry to anyone who I’ve offended, wronged, or been mean to. I know that an apology via a blog, and a parenthetical to boot, can’t seem like much, but I truly mean it), accepting of my fate, but most of all, I feel a sort of closure. Closure on the year past. Closure on anything I might have felt like I had done wrong. Closure on wrongs done to me.

And it’s not necessarily that I feel like these things will never come up again. It’s not like I feel like the wrongs of the past year have been erased. It’s not as though I think everything that I’ve done, or that others have done, have just automatically been excused because I went to synagogue and prayed and repented. 

But there is definitely a certain level of cleansing I feel, no matter how real, or just how personal and individualistic, that cleansing may be.

However, there is no way for me to take on the wrongs of the world, of everyone else, no matter how much I’d like to. And this is something I’ve struggled with for some time now. How can I, a simple woman fresh out of college, stand here in Jerusalem with the goal of changing the world?

My friend, Will, would say it’s easy – that changing one or two lives is enough to really have an effect on the rest of the world. And, to a certain extent, I agree with him. Perhaps this year will teach me that affecting just a few people will help the world as a whole.

But if you know me at all, you know that I can say that as much as I want, but I’ll still feel an obligation to change the whole world. It’s idealistic, and I know that, but this is a burden I carry.

Below is a poem I composed for my senior capstone this past year that I feel encompasses this responsibility I feel to the world. That there is something bigger than me here – something I am aching to be worthy of. Enjoy it, or don’t, but hopefully it reveals some sort of point that I’m reaching for in this blog post.

Yad Vashem

Smaller at the middle than at either end,
the building seems to rock and
the words I have painted on my skin countless times
echo – lo lishkoach, lo lishkoach, lo lishkoach.
We snake through the photos and newspapers
and old bedframes and learn
more about ourselves than anything else. We turn
again and again and become part
of the families that have grieved for people
we have never known, and are nothing but
faded numbers now.

In a room curved around itself, my voice
rings. Claustrophobic, I sink in the center,
and look up through half-shut eyes to see
blank shelves and blank faces and
black water shifting with sighs.

Soul after soul of the unforgotten swirls
around me and I ask for answers
they can’t give – how to heal, how to hope,
how to move on.

They rustle in a language I learned but have
never truly understood and I am
brought to my feet by an existence much
more immense than my own.
They are made of prayers – ken yehi ratzon –
swathed in those whispers that stretch over years
of promises that never came to anything
other than leftover remembrances.

I emerge into the sunlight, the stale oxygen
in my body turning crisp,
a vast view of the city that glints into the day.
I have never known what it is
to hurt until now. I have never
known happiness until now.
I have never known my own story until now.
Still, I etch my skin so that I
never forget – lo lishkoach.

 

I hope you all had an incredible fast – or just week, in general, if you’re not Jewish and have stuck through this whole blog post – and that you have an incredible rest of your week, month, and year.

!שׁלום