think it’s hard—to the point of being impossible,” he says, “to do what rabbis often say in High Holy sermons: ‘We should live all the time with the realization that we might be killed in an hour.’ You know what? I’ll speak for myself: I would never get out of bed again. I mean that seriously. And by the way, if I thought that way about my children, I would lock my son and daughter in my apartment and they would never go outside. But, if we ignore that idea all the time, we do so at our own peril. And in some ways, Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur are about that: at least sometimes, we have to stop and realize we might not live until tonight. And what happens then? That’s the tension, right? You can’t live like that all the time. But you’ve got to live like that some of the time.”
Live like you might die some of the time. That’s my new Yom Kippur.
I already have practice because, without subjecting readers to all my demons, suffice it to say that I win the prize for Worst-Case-Scenario Catastrophic Thinking. I don’t know if that’s because I grew up with a mother who warned me not to walk under building scaffolding (it might collapse) and to avoid rock concerts (I could get trampled). She believed in the Ayin Hara (the evil eye), the idea that if things are too good, it will tempt the evil eye and something bad will be visited upon me. Mom would shoo that eye away with a spitting sound, “Tuh, tuh, tuh!” every time a misfortune was mentioned, as if to say, “God forbid that should happen to you.”
Maybe some Jews are born to believe tragedy looms. Either way, this new Yom Kippur mind-set—you could die, so live better—keeps blessings in high relief.
Before we get too maudlin about this holiday, the rabbis tell us there’s a happy coda: this rehearsal for death ends in resuscitation.
“Jews re-enact their own death,” Yitz Greenberg writes, “only to be restored to life in the resolution of the day.” It feels quintessentially Jewish to me: we collapse and then revive. We beat ourselves up and then get back in the ring. And Greenberg goes a step further on cleansing, offering a practical application: the mikveh (a bath, or a collection of water). Soul-refreshment, he writes, is sometimes reenacted literally by immersing one’s self in the ritual tank. “The removal of ritual impurity,” Greenberg writes, “is a symbolic statement of removing the stain of sin (death).”
The mikveh appears often in observant Jewish practice. Every Jewish conversion includes a body-dunking. Jewish funeral homes have a mikveh to purify the dead body. Orthodox women return to the bath after every menstruation or childbirth, though there has been feminist opposition to this ritual, because of its suggestion that women are unclean or impure. But in recent years, the mikveh has been reimagined by feminists as a powerful purge for any Jew at any time.
I make an appointment with ImmerseNYC—a pluralistic mikveh on the Upper West Side, which several people have recommended. Since renewal is epitomized by children, I invite my teenage daughter, Molly, and my niece, Maya (via text message, of course), to join me, explaining the bath’s symbolism. They text me back instantly: “I’m there!” “Let’s take the plunge.”
ImmerseNYC was founded by Rabbi Sara Luria, who was spurred by her transformative experience at Mayyim Hayyim in Boston, a mikveh created by Anita Diamant, author of the best-selling book The Red Tent. “The mikveh is for you, just as you are,” Luria tells me on the phone in calming tones before my appointment. “When you’re naked, you are just as you are. There’s nothing between you and the water. It’s like the moment you were born. There are no barriers, no pretension. We tell you to bring yourself.”
“Bringing myself” means bringing my reticence because I’m not big on nudity. I’m relieved to learn that I won’t be naked in front of anyone else. When Sara outlines the three options—the girls and I can enter the bath chamber all together and watch each other, or we can turn our backs but be in the same room, or we can submerge separately—we agree to each go it alone.
The brownstone that holds the mikveh is hard to find. It looks like any nondescript ground-floor entrance of a walk-up in New York—not well lit, no signage. That’s on purpose. There has historically been discretion-bordering-on-secrecy surrounding the mikveh: Orthodox women, who attend monthly, don’t necessarily want to call attention to their cycles or personal hygiene.
The greeter at the desk is brusque but friendly, in that no-nonsense voice that sounds like my late aunt Helen. Her unceremonial approach reminds me that, for most people, this is not a spa, but a regular, practical stop in their routine.
We’re led downstairs to a narrow hall with immaculate bathrooms sparkling with pearly-white tile and marble, each equipped with soap, toothpaste, mouthwash, shampoo, Q-Tips, cotton balls, comb, fresh towels, a white robe. We’re instructed to remove all jewelry, nail polish, perfume, body lotion—anything that could come between us and the fresh rainwater. After using every cleanser in sight, I feel as if I’ve never been so scrubbed, so consciously stripped bare. Removing anything artificial from the body is an out-of-body experience: I feel lighter, childlike, distilled.
The ritualist—also named Sarah—has another soothing voice, and she offers me and the girls a choice of printed blessings to be recited while we sink. We sit side by side on a bench, reading through the options. I pick a passage from the Yom Kippur offerings:
“May I be open to the possibility of forgiveness. . . . May my entry into these waters mark my intention to forgive myself, forgive others, and ask others to forgive me.”
It’s finally my turn to go into the closed-off wet area with Sarah and disrobe. She holds a towel up between us so I can enter the tub unwatched. The small room looks like a mix between a hotel Jacuzzi and a physical-therapy whirlpool. As I descend the steps (seven of them, for the days of creation), I note the perfect temperature of the water and wonder if the womb felt like this.
Once enfolded by clear liquid, it’s affecting to float without touching the bottom, feeling nothing but suspension, hearing nothing but the blessing I’ve selected as it’s read aloud—though admittedly I don’t hear it all when I go under. (The water is supposed to cover one’s head.)
The three successive dunks don’t take long, and I walk up the steps to retrieve my robe. When I reunite with the girls, their faces are rosy. Maya announces, “I felt seriously cleansed.” Molly adds, “It went too quickly. I should have stayed in it longer.”
It all went unexpectedly fast. Though the guide didn’t rush me, I can see that this ritual is efficient for the women who go monthly: you’re basically in and out. I half-expected cymbals, or a certificate of some kind.
As I put on my clothes, I think about how I’ll describe the whole thing to my husband when I get home. It will be hard to sum it up. I felt both inhibited and relieved. Alienated and alert. I was moved by the murmured blessings, but couldn’t hear them all. I was hit hard by the tangible symbolism of a fresh start, but aware that, when it comes to the toil of atonement, this was a drop in the proverbial bucket (or bathtub). I felt recharged, not quite reborn.
V’al kulam, Eloha s’lichot, slach lanu, m’chal lanu, kapeir lanu. . . .
For all these sins, O God of forgiveness, forgive us, pardon us, grant us atonement.
Death spurs atonement. We rehearse our death on Yom Kippur. Then we get to come back to life.
Rabbi Elie Kaunfer
ON YOM KIPPUR
I remember the first time I saw people dancing on Yom Kippur. The fast had ended, the final shofar blast sounded, but instead of running for the exits, everyone broke out into spirited dancing. They were communicating with their feet: “The break-fast can wait.” It was time to feel the joy. This was quite different from how I had previously experienced Yom Kippur: as a solemn day filled with apologies, existential questions, and acute experiences of mortality. The only joy, in fact, was in making it to the breakfast.
Yom Kippur as a day of joy dates back