Gog and Magog

This is the feast of Sukkot in the Jewish calendar—a time to celebrate that the harvest is in, and to remind ourselves of the ephemeral nature of all things by building a rickety structure outside and sitting in it for a bit. (And eating, always eating.)

I’m not Jewish, and Numenius and I rarely go to services, but the local congregation has just moved into a new and wonderful space from intimate but somewhat cramped quarters. This whole weekend is full of events celebrating this move, which started before the high holidays. We chose to go this morning on what we thought would be the lowest-key event of the weekend.

It WAS low-key, if three hours of hebrew (gosh I’m rusty) can be so described. Lots of things happened that made me wish we went more often. In no particular order:

The Brooklyn accents; the beauty of Virginia’s voice; the feeling of rassling with a language that goes back farther than anything else I know, to the dawn of what makes us a people; our invitation to display and bind the Torah, even though the rabbi and cantor both knew I wasn’t Jewish; the tears shed by those called in aliyah to the Torah, many of whom have waited for years to be in a space like this; the fact that there were no guitars (I have a horror of guitar music mixed with religion), that all the singing (and there was a lot of it) was a capella; a pleasant surprise at how many of the melodies and words I remembered; the conversation afterwards with someone who describes himself as Buddhist and realizing that his own tradition really is all about love after all, if you just READ the stuff; the reminder that much of Catholic (and Christian) ritual comes directly from Judaism, proof of how connected we really are; the awareness that the transcendant really IS here, nearby, and that it just takes ears to hear; hearing the story of Gog and Magog in hebrew, chanted, and realizing that “protection” is both more of a metaphor and a reality than George W. Bush would have us believe; the reminder that in Jewish tradition the WORD has its own mysticism and power, something we’d do well to remember outside; and, well, that life is ephemeral and best to live it well and to the full.

Numenius’ last name is the same as that of a rabbi here in Davis in the 1950s, and it prompted a heartfelt recollection by one of the old timers of those days, when he was cynically against religion in all its forms. Look where we are now, he said.

Amen, say I. Look.