It is erev Yom Kippur and I am attending bootcamp instead of Kol Nidre. I was scheduled to deliver a brief sermon at our little temple during the service and I blew it off, confessing that I’d felt no connection there at Rosh Hashanah and would feel like a hypocrite trying to instruct and inspire. I had pretty much decided to skip services there all together but Spuds specifically asked to go there and I agreed to accompany him for a few hours. The four of us discussed alternative observances or gestures to capture the spirit of the day and Himself demurred working in a soup kitchen. I looked on line for services which might be appealing and that one could attend without being a member of a shul but the choices were either "prayer free non-theistic humanistic" or creepy Chabbd sponsored Ortho with men and women divided by mehitzah. I was Goldilocks and all the porridge seemed lousy. I am pissed off, mainly at myself, that I can’t seem to find the right fit to make Yom Kippur the experience it’s been in the past. I was in a big rush to get the minutes away from being 16 year old’s proof of driver’s training to take him to the DMV and my cellphone fell out of my pocket on Hollywood Blvd. A nice lady returned it but I don’t do things like that and it proved that I am atypically agitated. We got to the DMV and were informed that a photocopied birth certificate is unacceptable and I did some howling and steering wheel pounding. I suspect the not yet permitted to drive teenager riding shotgun was gratified and comforted to see that there seems to be a genetic propensity for loss of temper, despite the staggeringly bad example of safe driving. Sadly, I see bootcamp as a better anecdote towards becoming chill than the beautiful and most sacred of chants, Kol Nidre.
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