The ten days between Rosh Hashannah and Yom Kippur - the Jewish new year and Day of Atonement are called the Days of Awe. The Book of Life is opened on Rosh Hashannah and the upcoming year is noted. The Days of Awe are when the gates are open and teshuvah, tefilah and tzaddukah - return-repentance, prayer and righteousness - avert the decree (of potentially bad things we actually deserve.) The Book is closed on Yom Kippur and we head forth with a fresh start and ideally, a clean slate.
This diary is about my experiences and practises as a chassidic Jew and the insights I am discovering during these Days of Awe. The first section is about my normative practise with some explanations and details of what is involved in being a chassidic orthodox Jew from day to day. The second section is a bit more complicated.
So that does that mean though?
As a chassid - and a thoroughly modern man - it means a lot of different things.
Now as I've mentioned before, in my case the shul I seldom attend is a strictly orthodox one and the baseline level of my normative daily practise is also strict among orthodox. To give a clearer picture to people who are unaware of the day to day life - this is what is "normal" in my universe:
When I wake up and can actually function enough to remove my CPAP and sit up I sing Modeh Ani and ritually wash my hands in bed. Modeh Ani is a song of thanks for returning my soul to my body. Ritually washing my hands removes the last traces of the impurity of sleep, which is 1/60 of death. Bad angels get in through your fingertips because that's how your soul goes in and out of your body when you sleep. Think astral projection.
Now I'm actually allowed to get out of bed. There is the usual washing, dressing, etc - my tzitzit require a blessing before putting them on (a poncho type undershirt of wool with fringes) and going to the loo has ritual handwashing and a blessing after as well. (Thanks for making all that plumbing stuff work)
Now I'm ready to start thinking about food and prayer. Chassidim hold that prayer requires strength and effort, so breakfast is in order. Not all orthodox communities follow this practise. So that means making breakfast according to the rules of kashrus - but since that is how my kitchen is organised it's not complicated for me. I like eggs and hashbrowns and diet pepsi. That's two blessings before eating - one for the eggs and soda, one for the hashbrowns - (stuff you bring into being, stuff from the ground) If I add toast then in addition to another ritual handwashing - a different pattern than the awaking or loo versions) I say a blessing for the bread that covers the entire meals contents - but that requires a longer blessing (we call it bentching) afterwards.
All food requires bentching, but there are different forms. Bread has a long form because it is a Torah symbol for a lot of things. Even things you wouldn't associate with food - another diary. Skipping bread has a shorter form that covers the individual groups you ate from - there is a flour based products that are not bread category. The long form bread bentching also included supplicational blessings for Israel and the Jewish people the short form doesn't. A lot of people avoid bread at times to avoid the long form.
Ok. Breakfast is done. All in all this has taken about an hour. It's time to get to davening - prayer. The morning service is called Shacharis and takes me about 45 minutes if I don't skip any sections - including prep time.
Prep time you say? Before I can actually start I have to put on my tallis (prayer shawl) and tefillin - there isn't an equivalent for that really, though they are sometimes called phylactaries. Tefillin are small leather boxes on straps with passages in Torah in them. I have one for my left arm and one for my head.
The tallis goes on first - our custom is not the little scarfy kind, we wear the big ones. I examine the ritual fringes at the corner to make sure they are not in need of repair and then make a rather lengthy blessing while putting it on in a specific manner - wrapping it over my head while finishing the blessings. Then I can arrange it over my shoulders and out of the way to put my tefillin on.
Naturally, there are another couple of blessings - one for the arm, one for the head and another declaration while binding them in a specific pattern on my arm and hand. The box sits on the bicep, and the agreed form is 7 wraps around the forearm - but the hand section varies by community and individual. Now picture doing this with a long coat and a long sleeve dress shirt on - keeping in mind the box has to sit on your skin. So you take your left arm out of the coat, button it up with your arm hanging out and pull up your shirt sleeve and get on it. The head batim (box) sits centered above what would be considered the "third eye" - in the middle of the forehead. All while wearing a piece of cloth over it all 5 ft by 6 or so you put on first - before the bit with the jacket sleeve and the shirt. With 3 feet of fringes on each corner flapping around as your wrapping and tying. It takes practise.
So now I'm actually dressed for prayer and can begin. There are several sections of prayer and I'm not going to go into all that in this diary but the service is a personal obligation. Even if I am at a shul with other men and we have a baal koreh - a leader of prayer - I still have to say every obligated word myself - as does everyone else. The lead guy is actually there to keep us roughly all together for the communal responses to kaddish. If it's Monday or Thursday morning at a shul with ten men - add an extra twenty minutes for a Torah reading service. So morning prayer - about another hour all said and done and getting undressed.
At this point I've got free time for the rest of living - work, whatever. Food of course involves the same as breakfast with the preparation and the bentching. The next required standard orthodox convention is Mincha and Maariv - the afternoon and evening prayers. They're much shorter. Mincha is communally said late afternoon so there is about 15 minutes for study and talking before Maariv is said - then communal and prayer obligations for orthodox practise is done other than dinner bentching and blessings before sleep. Most guys spend 45 minutes at shul for Mincha Maariv and go home for dinner and family time. Some communities offer evening learning or lectures that cater to specific studies, holidays or groups - there are womens Torah study groups as well as mens, but they study separately.
In my community - there are some more obligations. In addition to the normative services I spend a minimum of an hour a day in personal contemplative prayer in nature. I also spend time saying specific passages of psalms and studying the writings of Rabbi Nachman of Breslov or other chassidic teachers.
The chassidus I follow is particularly steeped in women learning Torah lishmah - for the sake of Torah itself - a very noble and holy enterprise. Women are not bound to the structured prayer of men but most chassidic women do the same services on their own or with other women. There are even chassidic women who lay tefillin, but again, do so privately at home or with other women, not with the men. Women do not wear the ztitzit undergarment.
So that's what is normal for me. I don't always manage it perfectly, but that's the daily routine as it were.
Now I've struggled very hard with chassidus and community and my place and direction for the last year in particular. Breslev is different from other chassidic movements in that we only ever had one spiritual leader - Rebbe Nachman. There was no dynasty of sons and sons in law you see in other chassidus, we are sometimes called 'der tottenrebbe' the dead rebbe chassidim. As such, there are very few Breslev communities outside Israel itself. The shul I go to is run by the Chabad Lubavitch chassidim - a related but different court with different customs and traditions.
This has caused some problems. Add to that the uncertainly of my lifestyle of poverty and the separation from my wife and Rosh Hashannah and the Days of Awe loomed particularly heavily last week. I also have a completely different concept of why I am a chassid than a Lubavitcher born in a Lubavitcher family.
I'm not a chassid because I'm worried about bad angels crawling in my fingertips or how the chicken I bought from the kosher meat shop was processed. I'm a chassid because I seek to live an authentic spiritual life for me as a rational man with a deeply mystical side. I seek contact with the divine - and the words of Rebbe Nachman have given me the ladder to climb higher in my search.
I believe in science. I believe in Torah. Those are not impossible to have together because they are completely different tools for different purposes. Science explains the physical world I live in. Water boils at 100C and freezes at 0. Molecules and particles vibrate and dance and here we are. Torah is something else.
Torah explains the inner sense of being a Jew. Torah is the hopes, beliefs, fears, history, culture, taboos, sorrows, celebrations, lineage and victories of my ethnic forebearers. The learning, the davening, the kashrus, the rituals and items and millions of pages we have written exploring, explaining, detailing and arguing about and amongst ourselves is our cultural discussion of who we are as a family. It's not about what day did Moshe head up the mountain for me - literalism is for children. It's about what values do I learn from the actions - good and bad - that my forefathers and foremothers took - and how can I apply them to the struggles in my own life?
So what I came away from Rosh Hashannah with was a reaffirmation of myself as a Jew. I walk ahead in an unbroken line to forge a future for me and all my relatives - the whole Am Yisroel. I am not adrift in a culture of politics and philosophies - I have an anchor. I am not simply retreating into the past, or clinging to outmoded and useless ritual trappings - because I do not live in the past, I live in the now. Every mitzvah creates meaning in the act of living. To eat, drink, sleep, love, cry, long, suffer, succeed - live and die - I have a foundation to deal with being alive and surviving. I have a psychological framework that allows me healthy mental and emotional outlets for every state of being a living human.
it's not a matter of belief or disbelief - but a state of being.
I am a Jew. I am a chassid.
I wouldn't want to be anything or anyone else.
To know who I am is the greatest gift I could have been given for a new year.