How Is Your Financial Health?
The Beholder’s Eye by Doug Brook
Kol Nidre the 13th, Part 13 The last time Kol Nidre fell on Friday the 13th was October, 1967. The next time will be October, 2062. 2013 is the first Kol Nidre on Friday the 13th in September since 1861 — which doesn’t happen again for at least another thousand years, if ever.
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46
September 2013
Southern Jewish Life
Since the founding of the United States, and for at least the next millennium, Kol Nidre on Friday the 13th has never, and will never, occur during a “13” year… Except now… It began as a Yom Kippur like any other Yom Kippur. Jews everywhere were almost done deciding which indiscretions they’d admit to by atoning for them. They then made themselves feel better by counting the ones for which they thought other people should atone. But on this dark and stormy Friday night, one group of Jews gathered Kol Nidre on for Kol Nidre at Camp Kippur Lake — but they forgot about one particuFriday the 13th? lar prohibition. How can one be inOh, the horror… scribed in the Book of Life if writing is prohibited on Shabbat? Of course, writing is prohibited on Yom Kippur, as well, but there are still a few Jews in the world so Somebody must have decided to let that one slide. But compounding the writing prohibition for Yom Kippur with Shabbat’s? Camp Kippur Lake’s reclusive, masked Messenger of Judgment, Jason Viduis, thought it too much to ignore. So he set out to do his own inscribing, but it wasn’t in the Book of Life. And what he used for a pen, was mightier than any sword. Not since Rebbe Kruger doled out his own brand of judgment via his Nightmare on Chelm Street have the fruits of indiscretion slashed through a community so. But Jason Viduis, a prospective moyel until his tools of choice were deemed too cutting-edge, offered even less concession to each person’s confession. It was the second time through the Kol Nidre prayer, when one seemingly plainspoken mensch standing in the back heard a whisper, “I know what you did last Sukkot.” And then he never again heard anything at all. During the third time through the Kol Nidre prayer, an exceptionally terrestrial blonde coed heard a whisper, “What’s your favorite scary vidui?” But all anyone else heard was her blood-curdling Schrei. Then Schrei 2. Then Schrei 3. And then — needlessly, according to most critics — Schrei 4. Her mortal mistake? Answering her phone… during services. By now, everyone at Camp Kippur Lake wished that Yom Kippur did not require people to wear white. The body count was rising to a level not seen at a Jewish ritual gathering since the mass Passover culinary catastrophe, the Texas Chrain Slaw Massacre. At this point, the question on everyone’s minds — the only way to save their lives — was, what does the Talmud say about how much
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