Yom Kippur. The day of atonement. Repentance, forgiveness. A day without food. Without water.
A day so holy that there’s probably a Jew reading this going “this guy better watch it.”
It’s also the day where I would annoy my mom the most when I was a kid.
Every year during my adolescence, we would walk to the synagogue, and I would just harangue my tired mom with questions.
“Why do I need a day to remind me to apologize to people?”
“I don’t know.”
“If I needed someone to tell me to apologize, doesn’t that mean I didn’t mean it?”
“I don’t—”
“Do apologies even count if someone else is telling you to do them? It’s like annual apology day.”
The synagogue was in purview.
“And what if I don’t forgive the person for what they did to me?” I was 12 and sounded like someone took my wife and kids.
“I will never forgive him for what he did.”
We got to the front of the synagogue. Relieved, my mom turned to me and handed me a yarmulka.
“Put this on and be quiet.”
We walked inside.
She handed me a siddur. Brown leather, cracked from years of use.
“Just take this and listen to the rabbi.”
I heard the prayers before the doors even opened. I took my seat next to my mom, the divider separating the pews.
The synagogue had an antique smell, like cracked prayer books no one ever replaced mixed with the must of the crowd staring at the rabbi. I was the youngest there by, give or take, two centuries. I couldn’t tell if they were there out of obligation or belief. Maybe both.
The rabbi prayed and I did as told. I listened. And I kept listening for the next few years.
I followed the motions, repeated the words, and tried to get it. I really did.
Not out of some kind of internal understanding of faith or that I could see God, but because my mom wanted me to. And I felt that was enough. Familial obligation.
But then after a while, I thought, if I’m going for her and not for me, then the faith isn’t mine. It comes from her. “I did my time,” I thought. I went to yeshiva, I had a bar mitzvah. If God wanted to give me the answers, I’d have them by now.
Then came college. My mom got dressed.
“Turn the TV off. It’s Yom Kippur. Time to go to shul.”
“Nah, I’m not going.” I kept the TV on. Cue the close-up of my mom’s face, confusion and rage building.
“What are you talking about?”
“I just don’t need God to tell me to forgive people.”
“It’s not about you.”
I shrugged and stayed put. She left.
I think being raised in America makes you think this way. Like an individual. “How does this experience help me?” “What is this going to do for me?” “How is this benefitting my life?”
If you were to ask my mom these kinds of questions, it would be ridiculous to her.
That’s probably where the generational divide comes between immigrant parents and their Americanized children.
“How does this benefit you? Who cares? You go because it’s our duty as Jews. It’s what must be done.”
Looking back, I can’t imagine what my mom thought when I didn’t go.
“I left a former Soviet country where you can’t practice your religion. Here we are in the United States, where we can practice our religion freely, wear yarmulkas freely, walk around with siddurs freely, and instead my son is watching TV.”
My mom came here from Uzbekistan for freedom, and she got too much. Too much America. The kind of freedom where belief becomes optional, where tradition competes with convenience, where the hardest thing isn’t hiding your Judaism but deciding whether to bother with it all.
Do I believe in God? Who cares? GTA 6 is coming out soon. If he was real, he’d answer my prayers, and it would’ve come out sooner.
Years later, mistakes were made, relationships failed—apologies were given out and taken, and sometimes that still wasn’t enough.
I was thinking about how to end this story, wondering if there was some specific reason I could point out for why I’ll be going to shul this year. But nothing comes to mind. That’s life—it keeps going, and it doesn’t care. That’s Judaism too: showing up even when you don’t have the answers, even when you don’t feel like it, even when the “why” isn’t clear.
The community you hold up, and the community that holds you up in return.
Do I believe in all of it? Does anyone, really? Maybe not. But it doesn’t matter.
What matters is showing up. What’s most important is, It’s not about you.
