Prayer. It never fails. I take my place in the pew. I fling my tallis, my prayer shawl, over my head. It lands like a bird on my shoulders. I put on my reading glasses. I take the siddur, the prayer book, from its pocket in the back of the pew in front of me. Because I never arrive on time, I search for the place where we are in the service. My eye finds the word. However, as I say the word my mind has already flown to congregants across the sanctuary. What do I see? Guilt: I haven’t responded to her email message. Harsh judgment: his politics. Frustration: her refusal to include the matriarchs in the prayer that names the God of each of our ancestors: Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Sarah, Rebecca, Rachel, Leah. What do I see? The worst parts of myself. Maybe in ten more pages of prayer my mind will return to the words in my eyes, on my lips.

*

“In the synagogue the families praise all fruitbearing trees
and cedars   all wild beasts and cattle  I watch a woman

and her teenage daughter confer   lean into each other
They hold the mahzor between them  their mouths shape the beautiful
Hebrew I do not know how to read except in transliteration.”

                                                                        IV, “Aleinu”

That’s Robin Becker in her poem “In the Days of Awe.” In synagogue, her attention is drawn to others. What does she see? Herself, a woman who has refused to raise a child with her partner. Though not physically present in the synagogue’s sanctuary, Becker nonetheless sees “the one who took my place who said yes when I said no”.

“she who conceived of joy where I imagined the crossbar
against my chest   subjugation of family life   the double
harness   the never ending tasks   the clamp and vise”

                                                                        I, “Amidah”

Later in the poem, she sees others who aren’t physically present: her sister, no longer alive, and her parents.

“Bless my sister who could not endure   bless her failure to thrive
and bless my parents in their magnificent witness”

                                                                        IX, “Mourner’s Kaddish”

*

Yamim noraim, the Days of Awe. Ten days, bookended by Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year, and Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement, the holiest day of the Jewish year. A period during which Jewish people are commanded to practice teshuvah, return, repentance.

Becker writes,

“Turn from evil and do good   the Psalmist says

. . .

. . . turn from the old year   the old self   You are ready
to turn and be healed   only face   only begin”

                                                                        V, “Teshuvah”

*

In the sanctuary of ten days, Becker sees her shortcomings, her failures.

Of her former partner, Becker writes,

“She opened up the book of her body again and again
She would not stop trying though I mocked her   a year
ended and a year began    I had no imagination for family life
inhabiting sadly that place for years

                                                                        VI, “Amidah”

And of the woman who took her place, “whose days opened to the child”?

“O teach me to withhold judgment”
I, “Amidah”

*

Ten Days of Awe, and in the sanctuary of the poem twelve parts, each with its own subtitle: Amidah, Shofar, Tashlikh, Aleinu, Teshuvah, Amidah, Avinu Malkeinu, Kedushah, Mourner’s Kaddish, The Fast of Yom Kippur, Selihot, Amidah. The names of prayers as well as rituals specific to the High Holidays. Most sections include language from the prayers themselves.

O Lord  You do not maintain anger
but delight in forgiveness
III, “Tashlikh”

Cleanse my mind of wickedness
Teach me to attain a heart of wisdom
IV, “Aleinu”

Avinu malkeinu inscribe us in the Book of Deliverance
Avinu malkeinu inscribe us in the Book of Merit
Avinu malkeinu inscribe us in the Book of Forgiveness
VII, “Avinu Malkeinu”

Sacred language from which Becker departs and to which she returns, again and again, to guide, encourage, strengthen, and uplift her through the process of teshuvah.

*

“Like all spiritual activities,” writes the late Rabbi Alan Lew in This Is Real and You Are Completely Unprepared: The Days of Awe as a Journey of Transformation, “Jewish communal prayer has a point of focus; in this case, the words of the prayer book. We try to concentrate on these words, but inevitably our mind wanders and we lose our focus.” “When we realize,” Lew continues, that our mind has wandered, “we bring our focus back to the words of the prayer book, and as we do, we catch a glimpse of what it is that has carried us away. This is an important thing to see. The thoughts that carry our attention away are never insignificant thoughts, and they never arise at random. We lose our focus precisely because these thoughts need our attention and we refuse to give it to them.”

*

When during services my mind wanders, I struggle to bring it back to the words on the page. Rarely, if ever, do I pause to reflect, honestly and deeply, on the judgments of others and of self—here I am, failing again to sustain my attention on the prayers themselves!—that arise when my mind is drawn away from the “official” service. Might these “distractions” in fact be offering me the invitation to engage truly in the process of teshuvah—to see myself as I am seen by God?

“[W]hen we pray,” writes Lew, “we stand before God—we invoke God’s presence, we see ourselves through God’s unblinking gaze. From this point of view, it becomes rather difficult to engage in the kind of self-deception and highly selective interpretation of data we usually employ to make assessments of ourselves. God isn’t as easy to deceive as we are.” Prayer, writes Abraham Joshua Heschel, is “an endeavor to become the object of [God’s] thought.”

*

The rabbis teach that on Rosh Hashanah God opens two books. In one, the Book of Life, God inscribes the names of the righteous. In the other, the Book of Death, God inscribes the names of the evil. Most of us, however, are neither entirely righteous or evil. During the Days of Awe, we are given the opportunity to earn our place for the coming year in the Book of Life.

In the final section of Becker’s “In the Days of Awe,” she imagines another book, a book that includes her as well as others who may have felt or in fact been excluded from the community of Jews.

“Inscribe for me a childless life   O lift me
to the Book of Many Forms that I might find another way
to honor my mother and father

. . .

. . . Bind me to these friends and to this child
that I may learn my true relation to the people of this story
Sanctify difference and refusal   bless
the lesbians  the child with two mothers  Amen”

*

I won’t bring a physical copy of Becker’s “In the Days of Awe” with me to synagogue this year during the High Holidays. But I will invite my memory of its prayer for inclusivity—of childless women and men, of queers, of distractions–—to strengthen my efforts to make myself the object of God’s thought. May my clear seeing of what distracts me bring me closer to my fellow congregants and, just as important, to the Divine within each of us as well as the Divine beyond us. Amen.

Richard Chess has published four books of poetry, the most recent of which is Love Nailed to the Doorpost. Professor emeritus from UNC Asheville, where he directed the Center for Jewish Studies for 30 years, Chess serves on the boards of Yetzirah: A Hearth for Jewish Poetry and Black Mountain College Museum + Arts Center, where he co-directs its Faith in Arts project. You can find him at www.richardchess.com .