Upon the New Year, which this year, this last year as a year, falls upon the Shabbos, today, everything will become changed. We will atone, and our vows will be nullified in the eyes that are not eyes per se, only anthropomorphic evocations of a sense that remains far, far scarier, we fear, and yet still unknown. All over, throughout the city’s darkness, waiting in the shadow of the newest moon: Die has undercover, plainclothes (gabardine to yarmulke) menschs staked outside every synagogue, every shul, and their associated shtibls, then inside, too, they’re pewed and shtendered standing at the ready at every conceivable place of congregation, waiting for Him to make His entrance, any prayer now, surely He would, we’ve brought Him up so well, everyone has and should, mostly does, Amen. B’s always the exception, though, has to be. And so, a noshow. Maybe next year — in Jerusalem, say. Do me a favor and save me a seat. Hold my place, what page. From the beginning as from the end, turned white and blank and over — the New Year’s weather thick, a clumping cover, the sky’s lump settled heavily where the air once flipped and skimmed: pure pile up against every berm and curb, firn, and sidewalk slabs of hoar, livestock scuttling escape wildly across the lanes, slipping then righting themselves. The city’s float a glacier and its Park, a bergschrund, as if a scar slit at its stomach. Stores are shut through Yom Kipper’s fast (crumbs have been picked from sidewalk cracks, breads crusted forbidden: manna’s theological mold — O pity the mensch whose mouth opens onto a flood of even mixed precipitate while going amongst his brethren this day!), ten days of abnegation wasting from the New Year, days withering of privation, of abjuration and abstinence, with only denial fulfilled: a holy week then a Shabbos more of businesses closed, with nothing transacted until after the annulment of vows then the closing of the book, the ledger, the final pages the heavens of the sky — most concerns to be opened only holiday hours following, to allow their owners and employees ample time in which to contract their sukkahs: strung maize, decorative squash like goiters, burnt carbuncles, blinking colored lights…then, there’s that holiday celebrating a new cycle of Torah, nachas shepped around, all that dancing and singing in observation of the beginning of a new cycle of Law and life, and an ordering of the final preparations for what should be total conversion, what will be: old plates and silverware cleaned out to the pareve trash if not miserly kashered, decreed contraband after a period of grace, the very selfsame, selfreflective ten days, possession of which objects after the Day of Atonement is to be made punishable by stoning, they’re still debating that, at least a modest fine.
