rear pew mirror • doug brook
Yom Zom Kippocalypse Put away your Jewish space lasers. Shut down the secret conspiracy to control global finance, Hollywood, and the bagel industry. The ultimate Jewish conspiracy, the only one we ever needed, has been hiding in plain bagels — I mean plain sight — all along. In every service, every day (morning, afternoon, or night), in the first page of the Amidah, we commune (Yiddish for “communally pray”) for zombies to rise. It’s true. Look it up. The second blessing of the Amidah ends with praising the Almighty Big G for “mechayei hameitim,” literally “giving life to the dead.” Granted, as with many things, it depends on where you’re from. In this case, it also depends on how much you clear your throat while talking. In China and other parts of Asia, they say “me-chai-ei hameitim,” literally “giving tea to the dead.” These two pronunciations lead some bar and bat istas to put something in the tea that can raise the dead. There’s one thing which all scholars can agree on. Not a single scholar, or a married one, agrees with the following origin story for this prayer about giving life to the dead. On Shabbat mornings, the Torah Service is followed by a sermon and then the Musaf service which almost immediately goes into the Amidah. When is it more necessary to pray for waking the dead than right after a sermon? However, the prayer to wake the dead was added to every Amidah in every service because the rabbis didn’t want to make rabbis look bad by having it only come after the sermon. Of course, every rabbi thought they were being magnanimous because they all thought it was about someone else. The Zom Kippocalypse raises two important questions. First, if one kills a zombie, does one have to say Why does the prayer kaddish for them for another 11 months? The complicated answer: for resurrecting the it depends. The simple answer is dead happen just much longer. Second, is a golem just a Jewish after the sermon? zombie? No. There are numerous differences. For one thing, the spelling. For another, golems know that brains aren’t kosher. Of course, there have been numerous famous golems through the centuries: The Golem of Chelm, the Golem of Prague, and the Green Goblem of Gotham. The plural of golem in Hebrew is golim, which could also be the Hebrew plural of goalie. This phraseology would explain a soccer strategy intended to scare the other team’s forwards from approaching near the goal, but it resulted in too many dead ball fouls. Golems aren’t necessarily as malevolent as zombies. Perhaps the most recent, famous golem incident was during the Apollo 13 mishap. The astronauts were forced to power up the Lunar Excursion Module and abandon the Service Module for several days. In short, they had to go LEM-ward to survive. Speaking of atonement, which you were thinking about after reading that, on Yom Tzom Kippur — the slow fast day of Yom Kippur — we seek to be sealed in The Book of Life for the next year. Anyone who isn’t, sadly becomes a victim of the Yom Zom Kippocalypse. When trying to escape the zombie apocalypse on Yom Kippur, one must mind their headwear or risk a Yom Kippahcalypse. Unless it’s well secured to one’s head by a clip, railroad spike, or hair in need of a good continued on previous page 46
September 2023 • Southern Jewish Life