On High Holy Days, a step back
It is jarring to miss a day of life. Yet I do, for the Jewish High Holy Days: Rosh Hashana (the Jewish New Year) and Yom Kippur (the Day of Atonement).
On those days, my comfortable everyday routine veers off course — throughout the day, my mind wanders back to it, imagining what my friends at school are doing. When I wake up, they’ll be in physics. The bell will ring for lunch just as the family service concludes.
I have to compensate for that day I’m gone, too. On the Thursday before Yom Kippur, I’ll be telling my teachers that I’ll be gone on Monday.
“Could I please have the work in advance, or extra time to make it up?”
In the past, they’ve sometimes told me they’ll post it the day of, and that I can do it then.
“I can’t do it then,” I’ve explained. “It’s a holiday.”
It frustrates me that I must be the exception to the norm in the Worcester Public Schools, missing club meetings and sports games, and setting aside extra time to make up tests or labs. I must go out of my way to celebrate the High Holy Days, pushing the hurricane of normal life away as it fights back with all its might.
Sometimes, I’ve given in, sacrificing Rosh Hashana or Yom Kippur for the sake of convenience. Because I don’t have school off and my parents didn’t have a tradition in the past of going to synagogue, it wasn’t a given that I would miss a day. And sometimes, I thought it wasn’t worth it to have to make up for my day gone. Whenever I did take the day off, I liked it. But there was a lot of hassle involved.
In ninth grade, my school was virtual due to COVID. Going to school on Rosh Hashana and Yom Kippur wouldn’t be so bad, I thought, because I was just sitting in my room the whole day. But I regretted it. As my teachers droned on through Google Meet, all I could think was that I shouldn’t have been there, that I should have spent my holiday the way I wanted to. Since then, I’ve always taken off both Yom Kippur and the first day of Rosh Hashana.
And I like it. I go to temple, take a walk and try to have a meditative day.
On Rosh Hashana, I go to the little stream near my house and do Tashlich, dropping pebbles and rocks into the water, letting go of everything from the past 12 months. I surround myself with the early fall air, which seems to ring in the new year as much as any snow in December ever could. In the afternoon, my mom and I make a round challah or rugelach (a pastry, often with chocolate in it), and it’s nice to spend time together, unburdened by homework I haven’t done or papers my mom hasn’t graded.
Yom Kippur means more time to reflect. Fasting would be difficult at school, with all my friends eating lunch, and though I could do it, it is more meaningful for me to be away from them, to not eat in the quiet of my kitchen, without the chaos and relentlessness of our overcrowded cafeteria. In the evening of Yom Kippur, though, my parents and I go to a breakfast, with a full table of kugel, bagels and other appropriate foods, surrounded by family or synagogue friends. We connect, taking comfort and happiness in knowing everyone has shared the same type of day.
The High Holy Days isolate me from my normal life, and I both resent and cherish that. But the resentment helps me cherish them even more. In order to celebrate Rosh Hashana and Yom Kippur, I am forced to take a step back from my everyday life. I am forced to miss things, forced to play catch-up, but this lets me absorb the unique and special nature of the High Holy Days. I form a more personal connection to my Jewishness, to my life, when these days are set apart from all others. Missing school gives me intentionality that deepens my love for the new year, for services and family dinners and breakfasts and apples and honey.
So, though Rosh Hashana fell on a Saturday this year, I will be glad to skip my classes on the Monday of Yom Kippur, putting my phone on “do not disturb” to cease the endless din of notifications and news from the outside world.
The holidays are not the grinding cyclone of everyday life — they’re something more.
They’re sacred.
Anya Geist is a junior at South High Community School in Worcester.