The rabbinic sages... never intended for Yom Kippur to be the only day of atonement, just the most important one. The Jewish tradition provides for a daily prayer of contrition, called tachanun. But with the spread of Reform and Conservative Judaism, few of whose adherents pray daily, its recitation has become scarce.
Because praying the magic penitential prayer would actually make Jews better, right? Is that the insinuation here?
In this fall away from regular contrition, Jews are hardly alone, for tachanun's slide into desuetude has mirrored a similar trend among Christians. The Christian faithful, too, used to steadily make confession. But the Reformation nearly killed off the practice among Protestants, and in the 40 years since Vatican II, Catholics have also dropped the practice en masse. On this Yom Kippur, Jews and Christians may wonder if a return to old rituals of accountability might do us some good.
Ok, first of all, Mark. "desuetude"? There's no real reason to use that word over, say, "dis-use", unless to make yourself feel smart at your reader's expense. That's what we in the biz call an "asshole move."
And you seem to be displaying the same arrogance problems you did in your other column. Yeah Jews and Catholics, get your asses in gear! You lazy bastards! Get back in the booth or in shul and feel guilty, say that tachanun, regardless of whether it means a damn thing to you or not. It's just like Amos would have wanted. It's not like Judaism really cares about sincerity anyway.
Reform Jews do not pray tachanun. But for Orthodox and even Conservative Jews—a majority of American Jews, that is—its recitation is supposed to be daily, with the exception of the Sabbath, festivals, and other joyous occasions, like the day of a wedding.
Actually, Mark, a Conservative friend of mine tells me that everybody hates doing tachanun and people use any excuse they can to avoid it- "any mildly festive occasion; the entire month of Nissan; the rebbe's son's half-birthday, or the alternate Tuesday after a full godamn moon".
Btw, Reform has been the largest American denomination for a while. Check it out: Orthos + Conservatives = 36% at most. Majority of Jews? That's some awesome math there.
I guess what I'm trying to say, Mark, is, "What the hell are you talking about?" Do you know?
The prayer generally begins by repeating David's cry in Samuel II, "Let us fall, I pray thee, into the hand of the Lord, for His mercies are many, but let me not fall into the hand of men." Worshipers used to enact this "falling" by lying completely prostrate on the floor. Today, one sits and buries one's head in the crook of an arm instead. David's invocation is followed by Psalm 6 (for Ashkenazi Jews) or Psalm 25 (for Sephardic Jews), and the prayer ends with a pleading for mercy.
Except, my friend says, on Mondays and Thursdays, when they read Torah and add tons of other prayers and apparently making tachanun about eight times longer, but hey, 3 out of 5 ain't bad.
It's impossible to know how many Jews think contrite thoughts while praying tachanun. Only a minority, even of the Orthodox, are fluent in Hebrew, so while the words are deeply moving, their urgency may not be apparent to most worshipers.
Because we all know that knowing the language your prayers is written in always translates to sincerity. Just look at Protestants.
And most weekday services I have seen are conducted at such breakneck speed that real meditation on the words' import would be an unlikely feat.
Hey Mark, such is the dilemma of morning prayer- folks have jobs to go to. They aren't going to wake up even earlier to go to shul and have a meditative experience; it's just not going to happen. (More likely they'd fall asleep.) Right now you have to bribe folks with schnapps just to get them to show up.
Finally, tachanun has purposes other than begging for forgiveness; it's a general prayer of unburdening, not just of one's sins but also of one's worries and fears.
And that's great, but again, where are you going with this?
Nonetheless, putting your head down in your arm somehow reminds you that prayer is meant to be humbling, a gesture of one's own weakness. The first time I saw this embodied contrition, it was almost embarrassing to watch. It seemed to render the worshipers so vulnerable.
Mark, not to interrupt your love-fest or whatever, but I don't see the connection between using your arm as a pillow and vulnerability. If that works for you, fine, but don't make this out to be some universal thing. And my Conservative informant tells me that there's a whole bunch of laws you have to go through which dictate exactly where you put your head (in your arm, on your forearm, if there's a Torah scroll, if you're not wearing teffilin, etc). So even in the moment of nude Jewish humbleness, there's still fun rabbinical legalism. Sorry to harsh your mystic buzz.
That, I would guess, is what the Catholic rite of confession is like: naked, unprotected, scary.
Mark, please stop talking to yourself. Seriously. You are an awful religion correpondant. Why don't you freaking ASK a Catholic dude?
And just as tachanun has declined among Jews, confession (once officially known as penance, now as reconciliation) has become far less routine among Catholics, many of whom no longer know that it's required.
Hey, let's SHOOT them! Damn Catholics. This is great- now Mark is Pope of two religions. Let's get some Muslims and guilt-trip them, too.
Its decline has numerous causes. In the United States, fewer Catholic neighborhoods exist to reinforce religious observance. Vatican II's emphasis on empowering the laity led many to question their rituals for the first time, and millions decided that rote recitations of sins were unnecessary. Then, too, the status of priests has been falling for decades, and the recent pedophilia scandals make them seem the most unlikely of confessors to many.
Or maybe they just stopped wanting to do it, and so they did. I mean, the weird humiliation factor doesn't seem like it would have helped keep it a fun priority on the list.
It would be naive to think that more people performing more regular rites of contrition would instantly change the world. Regular Catholic confession did not prevent the Crusades. And I doubt that Jews were better people when they occasionally practiced now-archaic contrition rites like malkot, in which a Jew would lie on his face in synagogue the day before Yom Kippur while another lashed him 39 times with a leather strap. There's no evidence that Episcopalians who do penance are more humane than Pentecostals, who have abandoned priestly atonement rites.
Damn straight. Now where's the but, Mark?
But theologically speaking, the hope is not that my act of atonement will enact improvement on a broad scale—it's that the observance will help improve me.
But if religion is self-directed, then you should be able to reformulate whatever rituals you want.
If there's one area in which ancient religions and modern secularism are in accord, it's that our thoughts can influence our actions.
Thanks, Oprah.
Paying close attention to our failings can help us overcome them—this is why Alcoholics Anonymous works, after all, and why many people benefit from psychotherapy.
No comment.
Tachanun provides a routinized opportunity to take stock of the promises we make to ourselves. Saving up a year's worth of sins for Yom Kippur, on the other hand, can make them seem either impossible to recollect or too great to surmount. The goal is the same, to hold oneself to account, but it can elude us on the day that we feel most required to find it. Tachanun, like confession, offers chances throughout the year to find help along the way.
So are you saying people who aren't doing tachanun should? Or that this is another thing to take a look at? WHAT'S THE POINT?
Ugh. Once again, Mark, do whatever you want- but stop talking up tachanun- do YOU do tachanun, btw, Mark? You never quite clarified that- as if it's the end-all-and-be-all of Judaism. Jeez. Get the hell off your high horse and stop guilt-tripping people for, God forbid, deciding what parts of their religion they actually want to follow.
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