Yom Kippur in a Gym

The gym is filling up with people in their finest, fanciest clothes. No, they have not come to work out in their suits, ties, and dresses. They’re here for Yom Kippur. They seat themselves gingerly on uncomfortable folding chairs and glance up warily at the basketball hoops hanging over their heads like swords of Damocles on this Day of Judgment. Higher yet, at the space just below the ceiling (where the Women’s Section might be in one of those old shuls), a running track silently encircles the room. Down on the floor, there are the squares, circles, and parabolas of a basketball court, markings that define the parameters of players’ movements, the way Jewish law does for Jewish lives.

Most people here look chastened, weary, and pale – some faces are as dead white as the concrete walls of this gym – since they’ve been fasting for twenty-four hours. Others betray themselves as non-fasters by their rosy cheeks, bouncy gait, and the absence of any visible exhaustion or strain. But faster or non-faster (or faster or slower), all the individuals in this stifling room – eight hundred souls packed like sardines, a random catch of the Jewish people – are together in the same boat. According to tradition, shortly after sundown tonight, in just one and a half hours, the gates of heaven will close for another year and the fates of everyone here will be sealed. Some will live, some will die. Some will prosper, some will fail. There will be successes...