For many years, I enjoyed praying in shul. The songs were a familiar hymn that spoke to my soul. It was meditative, and I always left feeling pure and free of sin. Especially on Yom Kippur.
Which is why it was so shocking to be totally uninvolved my first year as a mother, when I had a seven-week-old baby. “Nursing while fasting is very draining,” I was warned by experienced moms. “Save your energy.” And so I came up with a plan that I’d take the baby with me to Kol Nidre, stand in the back in case she cried, and then stay home for all of the following day and try my hardest to not get off of the couch for anything. I set up a buffet of activities on a table around the couch: a machzor, Yom Kippur–appropriate reading materials, diapers, wipes, a juice box with a small shot glass in case I was about to die and was to drink “shiurim,” spare change of baby clothes, the bassinet and a pillow and blanket.
The Kol Nidre experience was a bust. After a few minutes of standing in the back nearest to the door, I had to nurse the baby, and with nowhere to do that, I found myself in the women’s bathroom, standing in the stall (as perching on the toilet seemed too treacherous), leaning against the door for balance. I felt very bad for myself, that this was the beginning of the holiest day of the year; me propped up in a stall, with my shirt up, balancing a baby on my thigh, with one foot up on the toilet. Hurriedly, I packed up the baby and went home, near tears.
While the next day was less devastating, it was as I expected. Quiet. Lonely. And the fasting part was definitely not hard, even though I was strictly nursing. I did much of my praying while lying down and only got up once or twice to use the bathroom. My baby was easy—she rarely cried, and would eat, then nap, and I had a lot of free time to ponder when I’d see the inside of a shul again, when I’d feel like I was a part of the congregation. There was no shofar for me to hear, signifying the closing of the legendary Books of Life and Death, and as I stared at the LED clock on our cable box, I strained to hear an errant shofar blasting from a shul nearby, because I didn’t know how the day would close without hearing my fate being sealed. Without getting in my last licks of prayers and declarations of true faith.
When the fast was over, my husband came home exhausted from the arduous day, sweating from the Florida heat (as we lived there back then), and I sat bolt upright, both energized and relaxed, with enough stamina to fast for another two days. Our realities just weren’t the same.
Over the next 11 years, I had a myriad of Yom Kippur experiences in different states, with varying numbers of children, and I was always vying for a way to maximize my opportunity to be in shul. For several years, we hosted Sephardic minyanim in our home, and I’d selfishly relish the sounds of Kol Nidre while rocking an infant to sleep in his room, the melodic voices reverberating through the walls, a spiritual lullaby. I had found a way to have it all; to be there for my children, and to be a part of the minyan. During the day, my kids would play upstairs, and I’d slip down for stolen moments of uninterrupted prayer while they napped. I felt truly lucky.
Now, my children are older and are mostly more independent, and all of them beg and plead to go to shul. I have had access to some babysitters in the past, and I have taken advantage of this; however, this year, I knew my youngest would be disappointed if he was left at home. None of my children wanted to go to groups, and although I didn’t attend services for the entire time, for the most part of the day, they sat and participated, or took quiet breaks outside.
In the Sephardic culture, Neilah prayers are particularly powerful and wrought with emotion, especially as the symbolic Gates of Heaven begin to swing shut, the Chazzan (who happens to be my husband), starts to pray with the utmost fervor and desperation, literally crying and shouting, and the rest of the congregation joins in. There are also sharp blasts of the shofar during the last few closing segments, and all of the sounds blend together in a fiery passion.
I was in and out of Neilah this year, as one of my fasting children had not been feeling so well, and my youngest child needed to use the bathroom towards the end, but it seemed to be a false alarm, and I rushed him back into shul, relieved that I’d make it for the final hurrah. The fast was slated to end a couple of minutes after seven, and as the clock neared the final few minutes, it was then that there was a tap on my leg, and my son announced he again needed to use the bathroom.
I briefly wondered if he could wait, but then remembered an accident earlier that week because he had stalled to get a book before heading to the bathroom, and I nixed that idea. I asked another one of my children to take him, but it didn’t end well, and he was back by my side, whining for the bathroom a minute later. There didn’t seem to be another option, and so we ran to the bathroom again. I tried to hurry him along, but some things can’t quite be hurried. Moments before flushing his toilet, I heard the sounds of the shofar from another minyan through the stall of the bathroom, and thought “We’re Sephardic. Maybe there’s a chance we’re running late…” and as we rushed back to the minyan, people were exiting and I had missed it all. I wasn’t there for the closing of the Books.
I had missed out. Those powerful climactic moments I crave each year; and this time I wasn’t splayed on a hardwood floor as I’d been in the past, utterly drained from nursing a child, listening to the prayers as they rose through the ceiling, dreaming of a sip of water, and willing the clock to move faster. Those years were behind me. I was in shul, but I also wasn’t. I hoped that God saw me as the Book was sealed, even though I wasn’t crying out with the rest of the group, but I was just doing the sometimes dirty work of a parent, hidden again in that bathroom stall, the least holy place to be, at the holiest moment of all.
“I was there, too!” I wanted to call out to God. “Don’t forget about me!” My machzor sat open on the chair, a few pages before the end, while everyone else’s has already been kissed and tucked away for the following year. A few minutes too late, another sacrifice of parenthood, Yom Kippur from a bathroom stall.
By Sarah Abenaim
Sarah Abenaim is a writer living in Teaneck. She can be reached for comments or discussion at [email protected].
