Yom Kippur

It took on a different meaning for me this year. I did not understand what this holiday meant to me until I was seventeen when I desperately searched for forgiveness for my tragic car accident. After reciting the prayers and geniunely praying for the first time in my life, I felt renewed, forgiven, and reassured that life will go on.

This year, I felt something else. 95% of my attention was on the Hebrew side of my prayer book. Perhaps a deeper connection with the Torah because I finally understood the language? I used to believe that Hebrew was a dead language and it meant nothing. Now sitting and standing there with my prayer book, the Hebrew script seem so much prevalent to my eyes as if it was suddenly magnified, leaving the English side completely blurred and ignored. To me, it was "Wow! I'm actually reading this and understanding it as if this was a gateway to the Torah and the stories." It's obvious, I know. But you must understand the trauma that I went through as a child. I also paid deep attention to the vocabulary and grammar even though I know it's mostly Biblical Hebrew.

Yom Kippur this year meant forgiveness from Adonai for rejecting Hebrew because I finally explored and studied it and Adonai's offer to me to use the Hebrew version of the prayer book to gain His forgiveness. Israel was my guardian in seeing this because if I wanted to study there, I had to study Hebrew without complaint.

Nevertheless, the heavy immersion in Hebrew in the past two days ripped a couple of stitches off my deep psychological scar that I received from Israel because I missed Israel and its intensity so much. I also had to write a couple of essays for a fellowship about my experience in Israel and that also pulled off a few more. Who knows, maybe I'm depressed. It could explain why I've been so tired ever since I came back and not always waking up refreshed.