THE GUEST OF A DAY
Kiedansky Extends Greetings to the Yom Kippur Jew
"WELL, he will soon be here," said Keidansky. "Make room for him."
"Who is it?" asked Mr. Zweifel, "another Prince from Germany?"
"It is the Yom Kippur Jew," announced the first speaker.
"And what is there to say about him?" queried Reb Zalman, wishing to dismiss the subject as one unworthy of discussion by the Lend-a-Word Club.
"There is everything to say about him and a great deal for him," quoth Keidansky, taking his accustomed seat at the table occupied by our group. "And I am going to say it right here and now, whether you listen or not. I am not addressing any of you people, anyway; I am only speaking so as to elucidate the idea for myself. 'The song is to the singer, the oration is to the orator,' etc., but after all it is a bit more cheerful to have some people overhear you while you are practising either the art of singing or of speaking. Make room for the Yom Kippur Jew, I say. Bid him welcome! He is a rare guest. He comes but once a year, and he may never come again. You may never have another chance to receive him in the synagogue for you may join his ranks. Don't hit him over the head with a cane (the cane which he brings to the synagogue) and call him vile names and make him pay double prices for an ordinary portion of the Law.
"And be satisfied that he comes but once. 'Once a Jew always a Jew,' they say, but the Yom Kippur Jew thinks that that is once too often. So be considerate of his feelings and ideas, and all the more so—since he has no ideas. He only thinks he has them and so he is besides everything else a victim of illusions. It is not of his own free will that he comes to the synagogue. Something pulls
him there—rachmona l'zlan—and he does not even know what it is. If he understands why he comes, he finds it is a social reason, and it is very hard on a man to change his accustomed impious ways for the inscrutable demands of society. Consider the feelings of the man and remember his state of perplexity. It is hard to come to the synagogue and harder still to stay away—and that's why he comes. It is hard to fast when one is accustomed to eat every day of the year, and it is harder still to eat on the Day of Atonement. 'May all the bad Jews have such zoros,' says my grandmother, and all the bad Jews really have them. To be neither altogether here nor there, is, to my mind, the greatest curse of the world; and it is to a large extent the curse of nearly all the Jews in the Diaspora— that's a nice word, for some of my friends are angry when I speak of the golus. The curse has stricken the Yom Kippur Jew harder than anyone else. His case has reached the point of either remaining here or going over there. He is a passing apparition, and to me he sometimes becomes transfigured by the approaching touch of death. He is a tragic figure, and he stirs my interest and rouses my feelings because he is flesh of my flesh and bone of my bone. The great drama is that of life and death playing hide and seek. It is painful to contemplate this tragic figure, yet I would fain behold him. I confess that I somewhat like the Yom Kippur Jew—at least on Atonement Day."
Keidansky stopped and meditated for a moment, then he went on:
"A strange savage creature is found in a deep forest, sitting calming under a tree, eating its own heart. 'And why do you eat your own heart?' the creature is asked. 'I like it,' is the answer. 'I like it because it is