This photo is from 2012, and it’s probably the one that’s been taken of me in which I look the most obviously Jewish.
What follows is an updated version of a piece that’s nine years old as of 2022 CE, dealing with my reaction to the Jewish High Holy Days. Without wishing to belabour the point overmuch, I’ll gently note that it’s proven more difficult in the past fifteen years or so to connect to my responsibilities as a Jew than in years past – I’m sharing this piece partly in order to endeavour to awaken the Jewish part of my soul, in order to be able to walk through these days with a sense of purpose and of joy, rather than the decidedly sadder and more conflicted feelings my brain seems determined to force upon me more often than not. It is true that as far as my personal conscience is concerned, my spiritual convictions and commitments are Bahá’í (and secondarily also Inayati Sufi and Unitarian Universalist), not Jewish. But all three of those other religions enjoin their adherents to honour and respect the ancestral traditions from which they come, and besides which, the civilization of the Jews is beautiful, and I see myself as having the duty to honour my connection thereto, whether or not I qualify as a quote-unquote “real” Jew. I should also like, if God is so kind as to grant me the privilege, to gladden the hearts of the various Jewish friends I’m fortunate to have recently made. Here, then, are my thoughts on Yom Kippur. I pray that even one person who stumbles across them may find them meaningful or useful. May He inscribe us all in the Book of Life for another year, and may His joy be upon us all.
“So tonight is Kol Nidrei, and tomorrow is Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement, the holiest day of the Jewish year. And for someone who left Judaism in all but the most basic way and embraced another religion, it's a particularly thorny moment. But tonight and tomorrow I'll be putting on a good suit, donning my trusty old kippah, and returning to the Reconstructionist synagogue where I grew up to hear the lanky, Paul Robeson-voiced cantor-man and the magnificent angelic cantor-lady intone all the old prayers I'm used to, the stuff of five thousand seven hundred eighty-three years. When I found Bahá'u'lláh and the Bahá'í Faith, my heart essentially set up shop and pined for Him like a besotted lover for ten years, a Majnún, and wouldn't let me go until I declared my faith in Him and began to walk His path. But tonight is different. Tonight I am a Jew. And let me tell you why.
It's partly my father, the magnificent way he sings – you should see the rock-star treatment he gets in the synagogue, y'all! They adore him! It's amazing! – and the chance to harmonize with him on "Avinu Malkeinu" and "Eli Eli", the songs we both love so well, which are, in the lapidary phrase of my brilliant friend Sapphire, part of “the language of my spirit.” But it's not only for him. And I usually try to celebrate Diwali, Eid, and Christmas, too, along with Ridván and Naw-Rúz and the other Bahá'í holy days. But it's not just ecumenism, either.
It's because the Jews are fantastic. The faith, culture, and civilization of the Jews are responsible for some of the greatest things that have ever happened in the collective life of humankind. They gave the world Martin Buber and Mordecai Kaplan, Victor Frankl and Milton Steinberg and Abraham Joshua Heschel, the man whose “feet were praying” when he marched with his friend Dr. King. These are people who have gone out of their way to conduct their theological investigation in such a fashion that their work is a benefit to all humankind. The Sandy Sassos and Herman Wouks and I.F. Stones, the feminists and socialists and humanitarians (including Israeli humanitarians), likewise. Even the Zionist movement, about which I will say no more than this at present, has always admitted of liberal and democratic and pluralistic visions right alongside the various evils which have flourished under its aegis. The man who, with the line that ends in “All the rest is commentary”, phrased the Golden Rule so unequivocally and succinctly that it's now shorthand across the English-speaking world for the most indispensably vital idea in the history of human thought? That was a Jew.
And yes, there is much about Judaism in which I simply have no interest, and yes, sometimes I fear that a community which has endured so much bloodthirsty and wildly unmerited persecution (when it deserved the opposite, warm acceptance) can put up with a Jew who deviates or lollygags all they want – doesn't pray, doesn't practice, whatever, as long as they don't do what I've done, which is formally go somewhere else. To which I have to say I'm sorry, I was responding to something wordless and nameless and indefinable that brought me to the edge of nothingness and back out into life, and I need Bahá'u'lláh and Abdu'l-Bahá like I need water, or music, or sunshine. I am a Bahá'í whether I like it or not, and I love it. But even still.
If Bahá'u'lláh is the sunlight, then the vision of what has now been five thousand seven hundred eighty-three years is the soft light of eventide, whose gentle gossamer glow frames the sunset and makes the sunlight all the more radiant when it arrives the next morning. It's the sine qua non. It's the same Voice, singing harmonies on the same celestial song. But the song of the Jews still sounds like home.
You can feel the rhythm of time in that synagogue. The vastness of the entire human condition – not just your life but everyone else's lives – stretches before you on the Day of Atonement. God is enthroned there in that synagogue, no less than at churches or mandirs or gurdwaras or mosques or meadows or the sweet small homes where the Bahá'ís and I gather to spread the breath of life over the world. It is a tower of life.
So tonight I'm going home to see my father for Yom Kippur.”
Noah and friends, I just came across Ikar.org and it looks like what is cutting edge in US Jewish movements...
May we all explore! May we all drink from the same Source of wisdom, let none be bereft. May all rivers find their way to the vast ocean. May we all abide together in radiance and joy.
Loved your piece...