Yom Kippur a Go-Go by Matthue Roth

Author:Matthue Roth [MATTHUE ROTH]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Cleis Press
Published: 2012-03-20T16:00:00+00:00

8

repentance

Right now I’m in my bedroom, unwrapping condoms, I don’t know why. I only planned on unwrapping one, which is what Jews are supposed to do on Friday afternoons because, once Shabbos starts, you’re not allowed to rip open wrappers. But it’s been the shittiest day in the world, and it feels so good, like ripping the gift wrapping off a delicate and valuable toy on your birthday. Only, today, there’s a whole shitload of condoms sitting in my bedroom, spread out, Go Fish–style, on my duvet. First I peel open one, and then another, and before I know it, there are enough gauzy latex Frisbees lying open to protect a cow from being milked. Standing alone, my feet surrounded by empty wrappers, I don’t realize just how heavy I’m breathing. I feel exhilarated and ashamed. I’m hyperventilating.

This is me getting ready for Yom Kippur.

The hours leading up to sunset are always frenzied before a Jewish holiday. Once the sun goes down, we stop using electricity, answering the phone, writing, watering the garden, carrying anything outside our house—even keys—and doing anything that relates to our business or to the outside world. If you trace the world’s religious evolution before Avraham, the first Jew, everyone at the time was worshipping idols—physical statues of humans and humanoids and animals that they revered as deities. And then Avraham came along, smashing all the idols in his father’s shop, declaring that God wasn’t something you could smell or taste or hear.

Actually, he said the idols fought each other and smashed each other up.

He even put a hammer in the hand of one idol, insisting to his father that his story was the truth. When his father said, that’s impossible, it’s just a clay statue, Avra-ham said, then why do you worship them?

That was how Judaism started.

Avraham left town, married Sarah, the mother of our people, and, instead of a physical representation of God, Avraham kept Sabbath, an idea as intangible as God itself, as a symbol of the covenant between God and people: because, unlike idols, Shabbos isn’t a one-time deal. It comes around every week, and there’s no amount of stored points like tear-off tickets in Skee Ball, you start from ground zero every Friday. Like everything else in Judaism, it’s not what you did in the past that counts, it’s what you’re doing now. We keep God’s commandments and we do the best we can.

But everybody fucks up, and that’s why we have Yom Kippur. The Day of Atonement, when you apologize to God for all your sins of the past year and for the ones that you’re going to inevitably commit next year. You spend the evening before the holiday and all that day praying that God doesn’t hold your sins against you.

I do one final sweep of the house. Bathroom light on, refrigerator light off, tissues in the bathroom, my microphones and amp and CDs all packed away. I turn on the Christmas lights in my room, a single string of maroon lights that are dim enough to sleep with, but light enough to maneuver around my room in.

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