On the Eve of Yom Kippur
Autumn turns my thoughts to rain, to pebbled ice
To sins of late and sins of yore.
Each deed is but one brick of scarlet,
Together they make a wall of shame.
Exiled, I flee the wind
I hear not her voice drifting.
I hide within the trees
Yet my heart is wet with searching.
I want summer, quiet and still,
But the twisting road is always the better story.
They say surrender is winter white—
Like the Day of Atonement
Like Adam, on the day of his making
And later, his unmaking.
I stare at the sky, not white or grey,
The setting sun is the color of war.
"I realized that there was introspection, self-ascent, even moments of self-transcendence, but there was no fear in the thronged student body. Nor was that experience a solitary one. I have yet to find that fear present, to any significant degree. The ten-day period between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur are now Holy Days, but they are not Yamim Noraim—Days of Awe or, more accurately Days of Dread—as they have been traditionally called. What had been instilled in people from shtetlach in their earliest childhood, and which they never quite shook off, was that every person was judged on Yom Kippur, and, as the sun was setting, the final decision was being rendered (in the words of the famous prayer) 'who for life, who for death, / who for tranquility, who for unrest.' What was absent among the thronged students in their contemporary services and, lest I be thought to be exempting myself from this assessment, absent in my own religious life too—was that primal fear of Divine judgment, simple and direct." ~ Dr. Chaim Soloveitchik
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