For 19 years I prayed on Yom Kippur in the large yeshivot, Hebron, Givat Mordechai, and Aterat Yisrael. 9 on the first, 10 on the second. 19 years with the text of Rabbi Shalom, zt"l, with the 'vayat' of the thousands of cadets, and the 'natana toke' of the avrechim.
Not anymore.
This year I found myself eating the intercessory meal in the dining room of Kibbutz Geva of the TAKAM, accompanied by ten of my friends - volunteers from the Ayelet Hashachar organization of the wonderful Rabbi Shlomo Raanan. We arrived to organize the holiday prayers for people whose last time they saw a synagogue was exactly 365 days ago, on Yom Kippur. Sitting next to us was a group of kibbutzniks who were also dining, and they explained to us that this meal was intended for those who fasted on Yom Kippur. The rest of the friends will arrive at the dining room tomorrow morning as usual.
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From there we headed to the synagogue, equipped with dozens of mazhzorim, white kippahs, and a Torah scroll. My friend, Rabbi Reich, explained in simple terms what the Kol Nidrei prayer is, and why we recite the blessing "Shehayinnu," and Rabbi Raanan explained to the people, some of whom cannot even pronounce the text of the mazhzorim correctly, why Yom Kippur is the happiest day of the year.
How could you leave the 'power of a yeshiva', and the 'Hebron' yeshiva with all its graduates, and arrive at a kibbutz that is the most deprived of all the Torah's filth, a settlement whose most famous graduates are the band Gevatron? Was the common reaction of those who first heard about my unusual experience.
So Yom Kippur and kibbutz? Did they both go together? Yes.
To see the non-religious woman on the other side of the table, who never stopped crying during all the prayers, and then happily embraced her friend in "Next Year in the Built Jerusalem," to play Givatron's "Vatana Tokech" to the famous tune of Yair Rosenblum [after the members fell in the Yom Kippur War], and to see all the tough men of the place singing with holy fear - twice - in the Mosaf, and again in the middle of the closing prayer - for those who missed the morning prayer, as well as to sit with Rabbi Reich and Rabbi Raanan on Yom Kippur night and try to understand together with the agronomist and the security guard of the moshav how Yona managed to fall asleep in the stern of the ship when an apocalypse was raging outside, and to hear the confused "Abinu Malkenu" of some of the members at the end of the closing prayer
These are plays that will stay with me.
From this Yom Kippur, until the next Yom Kippur, may it be good for us.
