In the last week or so I started questioning my own sanity. It felt like wherever I was looking, or whatever I was doing, there were bicycles all around. Children bicycles, adult ones, mountain bikes and race bikes, large and small, cheap and expensive. On the highway, next to my house, on TV. On the side of the roads, in department stores, people were trying them on, buying them for others, fixing them. They were riding them or hauling them. Small children with little helmets, young adults, fat ladies, I could swear I saw a baby too. Two wheels, connected by some frame were all around me. I thought I was going mad. And then it clicked. Yom Kippur was around the corner.
Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement, comes once a year. Every year, in late September or early October, on the tenth day of the new Jewish year, comes the day that brings up the anxiety level in many Jews around the world. The anxieties are many and different. For some it spells the big question. Will they survive twenty five hours without food and drink. For others it spells a reflection on the previous year, and whether the judgment will be in their favor.
But for most, Yom Kippur spells riding. The carefree riding of bicycles everywhere. Large groups of cyclists from all around the country gather and leave before dawn, on what could only mean a riding mission from God. Simply stated, what other possible explanation is there for people who use the holiest day of the Jewish year to ride their bicycles? Children from all walks of life start calling one another a week before, coordinating launching grounds, routes, equipment, and team members. The popular kids are in courted into the cool teams, the goofy kids into the geeky ones. But all, except of course those who don’t own bicycles, or the ones made by their parents to do other things – like attend the excruciatingly long and boring all day prayers – all go cycling.
When I was young, the “bad” children, from the wrong side of the tracks, rode their bicycles on Yom Kippur. Back then, people went to the neighborhood synagogue and spent the day reciting prayers they couldn’t understand in an archaic language they couldn’t speak. These people spent the day thinking about exotic food, fine wines, and sweets. Sometime around noon, they would usually settle for pizza and water.
Those who didn’t do that, stacked up on gourmet food, invited good friends, closed the shutters hermetically, and tried hard not to make noise with the utensils. Needless to say, growing up, my family belonged to the dreamers. The ones who dreamed about food, We were the fasting kind.
When I look around today, I realize the harms of not separating church and state. The average Israeli comes from a traditional home. A home where the father was most likely, and the grandfather most certainly, was a practicing Jew. Today, the growing disrespect to the organized religion is so common, that most non-orthodox Israelis choose to avoid all contact with the religious administration, unless they absolutely must. A growing number of people use civil wedding ceremonies, civil funerals. Most non-orthodox children ride bicycles on Yom Kippur.
But there’s a painful point. Judaism is an old religion. The Jewish people is a really old people. We are forced, figuratively speaking, to make a choice. Either you fast and spend the day reciting prayers you don’t relate to, or you ride a bicycle. To that I say no way Jose. I was not part of the bicycle madness from before. My family didn’t attend the prayers either. We were not fasting, we never do. But we did discuss the holiday, its origins, its meaning and its importance. We, as a family, decided to be a non practicing Jewish family. As a Jewish guy I can also state: bicycles are simply too damn dangerous…
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