A Look On The Lighter Side: Getting ready for the Day of Atonement

Judy Epstein

This week marks the start of the Jewish New Year, soon to be followed by the Day of Atonement.

My problem is, I wish I had more things to atone for!

Sure, I burned dinner the other night by leaving it cooking on the stove while playing Spider Solitaire on the computer in the den, with the sound turned up to what, in perfect hindsight, might have been just a tinge too loud…but I don’t feel sorry about that. I needed the break!

Besides, nothing really burned, it just turned a very dark brown and tasted a little bitter. Which is not the same as “burnt”! And I cleaned up the pot…and the stove…and the floor that all the liquid boiled over onto … so really when you think about it, no harm, no foul!

Also, I must point out — no firefighters were involved. This time. Okay, so a few months ago I was just reheating leftover steak in a pan on the stove, and absolutely nothing caught fire, so I don’t know why the darned smoke alarms had to go and set themselves off, but once that happens, it’s a foregone conclusion that four police cars and two fire trucks will show up at your door, demanding to make sure that the mistake is as stupid as you say it is. And I am indeed sorry I wasted their time. At last! Something to atone for! — but at least it did make me feel very well protected, so there’s that.

Then there’s that time I scolded my son for wasting time, lounging around the living room and texting with friends when I had asked, and asked, and asked him to take out the trash! Such languor and sloth is completely maddening to an overburdened, hardworking parent, and it really shouldn’t matter that, as things turned out, it wasn’t actually trash night.

“So, mom, do you apologize for yelling at me? When you had no reason?”

“Well, I wouldn’t say “no” reason,” I replied. “I’m sure you deserved it for something, if not for this.” But yes, I am sorry. Sorry I was wrong!

Then there’s the time I honked at the driver in front of me, for staying stock still when the traffic light had turned green absolute ages ago.

“Come on! Let’s go already! Are you blind?” Of course, being the good person that I am, I only shouted these things inside my head; I didn’t say them out loud. Well, maybe I did, but all the car windows were up so nobody else could have heard them.

Which is a good thing, since it turned out that the car was stopped for some school-children crossing the street in front of it — a fact I couldn’t possibly have known, even if I’d been paying better attention to the sidewalks on either side of the car.

As I said before — no harm, no foul!

If I atone for this, then what must I do for all the times I ranted at people — in my head — when it turned out that the one who was mistaken was me? Like about the coupon that the online shoe store refused to honor, just because it was a year out of date? Or the refund that some numbskull at Amazon denied me for a phone charger that didn’t work — small technicality, turns out I’d bought it somewhere else.

My son — he of the mistaken trash night — insists that I should atone for all the times I unfairly lost my temper, even the times nobody else knows about.

“Since when are you a Rabbi, anyway?”

“It’s not about the Rabbi, Mom. This is between you and those people, or between you and God.”

Yeesh! Turns out the kid was listening, all those years, when we dragged him to services! I should have known that no good deed goes unpunished!

I guess I’d better add that to the list of things for which I atone.

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