Day of atonement

Tonight at sunset, Yom Kippur beings for Orthodox Jews. Through to tomorrow night, they are expected to refrain from work and abstain from sex, as well as fast and pray for forgiveness of our sins.

This follows on the heels last week of Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year.

With no synagogue in Prince George, a handful of Jewish residents gathered last Wednesday afternoon on the banks of the Fraser River to say a few brief prayers, including a reading from the Torah, the Hebrew Bible.

Then the shofar was sounded. In the absence of anyone with a ram’s horn, the group played the necessary trumpet sounds from YouTube through a cell phone and a wireless speaker.

This was followed by tashlikh, the act of casting away sins accumulated through the year by throwing pieces of bread and/or rocks into the nearby water.

Finally, the group shared sliced apples dipped in honey, symbolic of starting the new year off with sweetness.

For everyone gathered, regardless of their faith or heritage, the ceremony was a beautiful reminder that our families and our history are always with us, wherever we go. Holding a ceremony as it has been done for hundreds of years, even with the modern adaptations, brings the past to the present and reminds us that our desire for a life of love and peace is the same as what our ancestors sought.

Whether taking part in the ceremony is of deep personal and religious significance or simply an act of respect, all the participants are in the presence of a sacred and ancient act of celebration. In our increasingly secular society, we dismiss the value of ritual and ceremony– we take the holy out of holiday – at our peril.

This is the same emotional intersection of heated discussion at the moment over National Football League players going down on one knee during the playing of the Star Spangled Banner.

While there is no religious component to the flag or the anthem, the ritual of standing respectfully, with hats removed, is important, regardless of how much or how little patriotism one feels towards their country. Like a religious ceremony, the singing of the anthem, whether it’s played before a sporting event or on Remembrance Day, links modern participants to their ancestors and proclaims their identity as citizens.

“It’s not about the flag or the anthem,” insist the protesters and their supporters. “Taking a knee is a protest against ongoing police brutality and systemic racism by exercising our First Amendment rights to free speech.”

President Donald Trump thinks those people are unpatriotic and they should be fired. He’s wrong but so are those who think that freedom of speech is an unrestricted right, to be exercised whenever an individual decides.

It would have been horribly rude and offensive during the Rosh Hoshanah celebration on the Fraser last week to start belting out O Canada or And They’ll Know We Are Christians By Our Love.

Not standing or kneeling at the appropriate moments during a church service is equally disrespectful. Individuals are not given the opportunity to jump to their feet to debate the priest, the rabbi, the reverend or the imam during the sermon or readings from scripture.

In secular settings, an individual’s freedom of speech is not tolerated once the lights go down and the movie starts or the actors take the stage. Nor is it allowed once the proceedings get underway in a court- room.

There is no “taking a knee” to protest social injustice at a wedding or a funeral.

All Americans should be angry with the continued inequalities due to race, gender, sexuality and religion. Canadians should be equally angry. Today, Orange Shirt Day will take place at CNC in recognition of the genocide at residential schools and the devastation still felt in Canadian society and by indigenous people.

Now is the time for all residents to come together to protest this historical injustice and take steps towards reconciliation by accepting the harm that was done and the responsibility to be better than our ancestors were.

This is both where and when this work needs to be done. This is how we atone for our past sins.

But when the spirit of protest and change speaks out during the increasingly few communal moments of ritual and ceremony we have left, those individuals – regardless of their righteousness – deserve to be treated with the same disrespect they so casually extend onto others.

— Neil Godbout, Editor-in-chief