After midnight

Today, Friday the 3rd of October, it the night that precedes the evening of Yom Kippur. In the Jewish  religion it is the Day of Atonement.  A fasting observance.  Sundown Friday to sundown Saturday this year (Jewish holidays follow a strict lunar calendar).  I am hoping to go to my new synagogue but in lieu of that I shall fast the entire time, reflect on the new Jewish year, and make amends to those I have hurt or offended.  Yom Kippur is the highest of the High Holy days, which begins with New Year, Rosh Hashanah, and ends ten days later with Yom Kippur.  I really will attempt to make it to KI, the synagogue in question, at the very least for the mourners' or remembrance service, as I would like to remember my aunt Martha, who passed in the last year at the ripe age of 105.  Of all my greats aunts, she was a a favorite, although I loved them all with my heart and soul.  Martha was an elementary school teacher in the days when Wayne State University was a Normal School, and if you don't know what a Normal School is, go ask an old person.

This is the time of year I shall work to forgive my cousins for being the money grubbing, self serving, self righteous people they know themselves to be.  They know who they are.  It is not all the cousins, just the most wealthy of them who took advantage of an old woman and getting the bulk of her estate, which I was lead to understand (from another cousin), was originally earmarked for me and other cousins.  But these cousins were able to  get her to change her will and to give them the favored cut.  As the say the rich get richer and the poor, well, they get children.  It is not that I need or want the monies. I just wanted Martha's true wishes acknowledge.  They can keep everything if it means that much to them.  I did,  after all, "abandon the family" when I left Detroit for MSU.  And these cousins saw to it that I got what they thought I deserved.  Now is the time to forgive and move on.  They have to live with themselves and what they have done.  I have a clear conscience, and that is worth more than anything.  I shall meditate on this during Yom Kippur.  I want to have a light soul and be a better person. than I have been this year, and be a still better person in the years to come.

Well, if I hope to be up for the day in less than four hours I best try to sleep.  Easy fast to all my Jewish friends and family, cousins included.