It’s late August, and you just called your great aunt Shirley who lives two hours away, “just to say hello.” Around the coffee machine at work, you subtly probe your 40-something Jewish colleague to see if he belongs to a shul. Desperate, you consider calling your schmuck of an ex-boyfriend to see if he’s got the hook-up. Yes, High Holidays are a comin’, and like us, you fall into what we call “the Jewish Black Hole.” Your Bar Mitzvah is behind you, you haven’t gone forth and multiplied yet, and you’d rather spend 300 bucks on an Apple product than temple membership. If you spend half of Yom Kippur repenting for how you got your Yom Kippur tickets, then you are not alone. We, too, are High Holiday Whores.*‡
We thought this would be our big year. After years of frantic scrambling for last-minute tix, we thought for sure that our wildly successful blog would get us on The List for all of LA’s hottest ‘gogues this year. [We also thought we’d have a reality TV show by now, but that’s a story for a different blog post.] So color us surprised when, days before the holiest of days, we found ourselves ticket-less. Thankfully, Lauren’s boyfriend’s aunt came to the rescue with two Golden Tickets (thanks, Aunt Kathy!), and off to Stephen S. Wise Temple we went!
For our goyim readership who may not be well-versed in synagogue attendance patterns, here’s the reader’s digest version: Jews come crawling out of the woodwork to attend four services over a ten day period. High Holidays 101: It’s kind of like a prolonged Christmas, except instead of celebrating joy, family, and goodwill, we celebrate guilt.
Due to the high demand for inscription into the Book of Life for another year, Stephen S. Wise holds services in three locations simultaneously. We got to atone for our sins at Republican stronghold Bel Air Presbyterian Church, famous for providing former President Ronald Reagan with his spiritual sustenance. Perched in the clouds overlooking the San Fernando Valley, the altitude and the surround sound acoustics of Bel Air Presbyterian made us feel like we were floating in a celestial afterworld, well-deserved after we hiked up a big-ass hill in heels to get from the parking lot to the church.
For all four services, we strategically placed ourselves in the nosebleed section so we could avoid social contact under the auspices of focusing on deep repentance. This plan failed on multiple accounts listed below:
1. On our way in the door on Rosh Hashanah, the temple greeter hit a nerve with Lauren when she grilled her about her Irish last name. Maybe she just needed Lauren’s surname to look up our reservation, but Lauren had an unpleasant flashback to the time she had to defend her Jewish identity to Israeli security.
2. The Jewish mother to our left took the Torah procession as an opportunity to probe us about our ages and relationship statuses, not awkward at all given that her adult son was to her immediate left.
3. We felt compelled to shoot dirty looks every so often to the boisterous family behind us. We repented every time. We’re big fans of the insta-repent.
In addition to these social challenges, we faced other High Holiday hardships as well, particularly on Yom Kippur. With temperatures nearing freezing in the nosebleed section and nary a cup of coffee to be found, the physical conditions made spiritual concentration nearly impossible. Under the shadow of a 30-foot wooden cross, Jessica succumbed to hunger-induced narcolepsy while Lauren snuck out the back door to have Second Breakfast. We may be the worst Jews ever, but maybe the Presbyterians would take us?
*This message was approved by a rabbi.
‡ We’ll repent next year for using “High Holidays” and “whore” in the same sentence, but it felt so right at the time. Isn’t that how all sins begin? Oy.
Chai-lights:
1. The practical Rosh Hashanah sermon about being present
2. The mad Hebrew skills of the adolescents who read the Torah portion--way to go, kids, for making it cool to be Jewish
3. The generosity of Stephen S. Wise for taking in these wandering Jewesses on the holiest days of the year
Kvetches:
1. So hard to be present when you’re starving and freezing
2. Uphill shlepping in heels--where da shuttle at?
3. We felt like we needed a couple of extra days to atone for the sins accumulated during the services... guess we have a head start on next year.
Total Bagels:
In the spirit of Yom Kippur, this blog post will remain bagel-less.
