My Yom Kippur Shoes

My Yom Kippur shoes come from JC Penney.

Simple, white canvas, with a rubber sole - Liz Claiborne, I think -

an uncool brand from a dying small-town department store.

Which really is quite appropriate for shoes of humility,

(which is what Yom Kippur shoes are)

canvas and rubber and plastic in place of leather, the material of the ancient elite.

On Yom Kippur, we’re all equalized;

equally mortal, our futures equally unknown -

no amount of privilege can protect any of us from “who shall live and who shall die,

who by fire and who by water.”

My Yom Kippur shoes transport me to a different time,

a different me,

a multitude of different mes.

They were new,

once,

and unblemished, pure.

I swore to wear them only once a year, only on Yom Kippur, this day of days,

to protect them from the inevitable scuffs and scrapes and swipes of dirt.

And so for a while, they lived in static time.

In their first year,

they held me in a raw space of grief in the wake of failed, ended relationship.

They held me in sadness, and pain, and a little relief.

They inspired possibility and potential in their newness; their plain, simply clean newness.

Next year, they were comfort; familiarity in a sea of change and chaos.

On the precipice of the unknown - an impending career, a whole new life phase -

they held steady.

In year three, they came onto the bima with me

this unfamiliar place of formality, of holy sacred drama and pomp.

In all my single, 30-year-old female baby-rabbi glory and uncertainty,

donned in my fancy new white robe, in full makeup, armed with my notes and a sneaking suspicion that these

shoulder pads

were bigger than I needed them to be,

these plain old canvas shoes, worn only twice before, grounded me in my authenticity.

I may be wearing lipstick, but I’m still me,

and I have Liz Claiborne canvas shoes to prove it.

And then I got comfortable, and lax.

I began to feel like these shoes made sense with other outfits.

I began to wear them on less holy days.

They got less crisp, less clean.

And one day, eight years later,

the left shoe ended up in the mouth of Bailey.

And I forgave her, because isn’t that the point of Yom Kippur,

and anyway she’s a cocker spaniel and have you SEEN those huge round eyes and floppy ears??

But I took it as a sign

that maybe it was time for

new

Yom Kippur shoes.

Because they’re no longer white, not really, especially the back half of that left shoe

which is decidedly dyed dog-slobber yellow-brown.

And yet here we are in year nine.

And I wore them again this year for the holy day.

Even though I don’t wear them out in public otherwise anymore.

Because maybe I don’t deserve new shoes.

(What makes a person deserving of new shoes anyway?)

Or maybe there’s something just as meaningful about wearing shoes with all of the scuffs and scrapes of life plainly etched on them.

For now.

Until that pure clean white of a new canvas shoe feels right again.