LIHUE — Wednesday’s sunset ended Yom Kippur, the holiest day of the year in Judaism — the day of atonement.
Saint Michael and All Angels Episcopal Church was temporarily transformed into a Jewish synagogue Wednesday afternoon as a small congregation of the faithful gathered for a discussion of the morning’s sermon, followed by a ceremony at sunset to mark the end of the holiday.
“It’s the holiest day on our calendar,” Marty Kahn explained near the back of the room.
“It’s when we come together to examine our life in the past and ask forgiveness,” he said. “We wipe the slate clean and begin life anew with a new commitment.”
Like the Hawaiian Pu, those of the Jewish faith blow a ram’s horn trumpet, called a shofar, on special occasions.
“I could hear your shofar,” Rabbi Aryeh Azriel said to a man as he entered the “synagogue” around 4 p.m. “It sounded wonderful all the way from the car.”
The discussion was about the sermon Azriel had given earlier that morning on the topic of loving your neighbor as yourself. But the direction of the informal conversation drifted. At one point, a woman in the group complained that the sermon had been too long.
“I agree, yes,” the rabbi said. “But I get to come here just once a year. So I feel like I have to preach everything.”
Azriel said he normally relies on his wife, who wasn’t present that morning, to let him know when the sermon should be over.
“Every time my wife thought it went too long, she would send me a kiss,” he said, pressing his lips to the palm of his hand, “which means, keep it short, stupid.”
Azriel told stories and talked about the Torah to the small group seemingly unaware or unbothered by the large wooden cross behind him.
“This question of loving your neighbor as yourself seems to be so complicated,” the rabbi said, later explaining that part of the difficulty modern people have in understanding the message is that the term originally used for “neighbor,” referred to another Jew in the community.
“But today we live in mixed communities,” Azriel said. His community is particularly mixed — intentionally so.
In his hometown of Omaha, Nebraska, Azriel helped found the “Tri-Faith Initiative,” a campus with three places of worship: a Jewish synagogue, a Christian church and a Muslim mosque.
“It’s fascinating to see how having three religions on the same campus is affecting the people,” he said.
