• About Me
  • Other Writings
  • Interview Clips
  • All About Me: American Racism, American Narcissism, and the Conversation America Can’t Have
  • Video Clips
  • Boy @ The Window Pictures
  • Boy @ The Window Theme Music

Notes from a Boy @ The Window

~

Notes from a Boy @ The Window

Tag Archives: Yom Kippur

My Day of Atonement/Bitter Hatred

14 Saturday Sep 2013

Posted by decollins1969 in 1, Boy @ The Window, culture, Eclectic, Hebrew-Israelite, Jimme, Marriage, Mount Vernon New York, My Father, Politics, Pop Culture, race, Religion, Youth

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

Afrocentricity, Day of Atonement, Disillusionment, Family, Forgiveness, Hatred, Judah ben Israel, Judaism, Love, Maurice Eugene Washington, Self-Discovery, Ten Lost Tribes, Torah, Yom Kippur


Prayer at the Wailing Wail, Second Temple, Jerusalem, February 1, 2013. (Steve Ibrom). Released by public domain by author.

Prayer at the Wailing Wail, Second Temple, Jerusalem, February 1, 2013. (Steve Ibrom). Released by public domain by author.

“Yom Kippur ’83 opened me up to understanding why I no longer put my trust in Maurice’s God. I spent part of another September fasting and going to temple to atone for my sins. The temple was on Fifth Avenue and Second Street, just down the street from Washington Elementary School. I’d gone to temple maybe a half-dozen times since the spring of ’81, three of those times to have some rabbi with a ragged beard tell me that Yahweh had forgiven me for my wicked ways.

“And it left me thinking, ‘Well, what about Maurice? His sins are many, and we get treated the same? Does he get forgiveness even if the sin is still in progress?’ It didn’t make sense to me that I needed to starve myself for three days and ask for forgiveness in a situation where a fat, greasy SOB for a stepfather could steal from, cheat on, beat up on, and lie to Mom, get forgiveness, and keep on trying to do what he’d done before Yom Kippur. I said to whoever was a higher power, ‘What did I do to deserve this?’ I didn’t get an answer, and nothing anyone at temple said gave me any answers either. I felt empty, as if everything I thought being in this faith was about was a farce, a morbid, diabolical joke that was played on me and my family. And Maurice was the devil himself.”

That’s what I wrote in Boy @ The Window about my last Yom Kippur as a Hebrew-Israelite. That Saturday, September 17, ’83, was the last time I went to temple, the last time I looked at any aspect of our bizarre and goofy mix of Judaism and Afrocentricity with a modicum of seriousness. By the time I left, I wasn’t in a forgiving mood at all. I hated my then stepfather Maurice, and hated the people who claimed that people like Maurice were descendants of one of the Ten Lost Tribes of Ancient Israelites.

Please understand. When I said, “I hated Maurice,” it wasn’t a euphemism for me in the fall of ’83. If I had access to a gun, I would’ve blown him away and gladly served time in prison for doing so. I had stomach ulcers in the fall of ’83, because I couldn’t stand the smell, sound or sight of the obese asshole. I all but prayed to Yahweh that he get hit by a Mack truck going eighty miles an hour down East Lincoln Avenue. I wanted him dead, and I wanted to piss on his ashes to boot.

Even at thirteen, though, I also understood that this kind of anger and rage wouldn’t help me in the long run between ninth grade and college. Or with sports. Or dating. Or in finding my own path to God or to anything else worth believing. My bitterness and hatred were so deep, about as deep as any love that I’d experienced up to that point in my life. Whether my Mom, my father Jimme, my Uncle Sam or my version of Wendy, all that love was nearly drowned out by my hate for my stepfather.

Even on my irony scale, this hatred broke all records. Especially on a day of atonement, where we all but sacrificed an unblemished lamb at the temple over four hours that Saturday. But I had other reasons to be bitter on this, the holiest of holy days. No bar mitzvah, no celebrations of Hanukkah, no participation in Hebrew-Israelite life for me beyond their 613 rules and regs for nearly two and a half years. I understood and yet didn’t understand this sense of pride and Blackness that came through in a near Asian religion that allowed for reincarnation and an post-Babylonian Israelite diaspora to Sub-Saharan Africa to boot. That confusion didn’t help me deal with a man who wasn’t one, but was a teenage bully who did everything he could to keep me and Mom in submission to him, with Yahweh and Torah as his excuse.

I knew after I left temple that Yom Kipper afternoon that it would be my last. I didn’t know how, but my days of wearing a kufi or yarmulke were on their way to an end. Still, with hatred and confusion in my heart and mind, I was also lost, more lost than the other ten ancient Israelite tribes undoubtedly were in the aftermath of the Babylonian conquest.

Boy @ The Window: A Memoir

Boy @ The Window: A Memoir

Places to Buy/Download Boy @ The Window

There's a few ways in which you can read excerpts of, borrow and/or purchase and download Boy @ The Window. There's the trade paperback edition of Boy @ The Window, available for purchase via Amazon.com at http://www.amazon.com/Boy-Window-Donald-Earl-Collins/dp/0989256138/

There's also a Kindle edition on Amazon.com. The enhanced edition can be read only with Kindle Fire, an iPad or a full-color tablet. The links to the enhanced edition through Apple's iBookstore and the Barnes & Noble NOOK edition are below. The link to the Amazon Kindle version is also immediately below:

scr2555-proj697-a-kindle-logo-rgb-lg

Boy @ The Window on Amazon.com: http://www.amazon.com/Boy-The-Window-Memoir-ebook/dp/B00CD95FBU/

iBookstore-logo-300x100

Boy @ The Window on Apple's iBookstore: https://itunes.apple.com/us/book/boy-the-window/id643768275?ls=1

Barnes & Noble (bn.com) logo, June 26, 2013. (http://www.logotypes101.com).

Boy @ The Window on Barnes & Noble: http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/boy-the-window-donald-earl-collins/1115182183?ean=2940016741567

You can also add, read and review Boy @ The Window on Goodreads.com. Just click on the button below:

Boy @ The Window

Twitter Updates

  • @SJEducate Happy Birthday! 1 hour ago
  • RT @SassyMetisChick: This account is not just problematic it is outright lying and erasing the generational trauma created by forced remova… 1 hour ago
  • @truthtold8 We have talked abt Ss and these issues they faced a lot since 2020. But Ss have always had these pressu… twitter.com/i/web/status/1… 16 hours ago
  • RT @AshwiniSahaya: Iran: Couple sentenced to 10 years in prison for dancing on street, angering Muslims in Tehran They have been sentenced… 16 hours ago
  • RT @ProfKori: It's always astonishing to run into people who do foul shit and can still sleep at night. But, in all honesty, that's just… 16 hours ago
  • RSS - Posts
  • RSS - Comments

Archives

  • September 2022
  • August 2022
  • July 2022
  • June 2022
  • May 2022
  • April 2022
  • March 2022
  • January 2022
  • December 2021
  • November 2021
  • October 2021
  • September 2021
  • August 2021
  • July 2021
  • June 2021
  • April 2021
  • March 2021
  • February 2021
  • January 2021
  • December 2020
  • November 2020
  • October 2020
  • September 2020
  • August 2020
  • July 2020
  • May 2020
  • April 2020
  • March 2020
  • January 2020
  • December 2019
  • November 2019
  • August 2019
  • July 2019
  • June 2019
  • May 2019
  • April 2019
  • March 2019
  • February 2019
  • January 2019
  • December 2018
  • November 2018
  • October 2018
  • September 2018
  • August 2018
  • July 2018
  • June 2018
  • May 2018
  • March 2018
  • February 2018
  • January 2018
  • December 2017
  • November 2017
  • October 2017
  • September 2017
  • August 2017
  • July 2017
  • June 2017
  • May 2017
  • April 2017
  • March 2017
  • February 2017
  • January 2017
  • December 2016
  • November 2016
  • October 2016
  • September 2016
  • August 2016
  • July 2016
  • June 2016
  • May 2016
  • April 2016
  • March 2016
  • February 2016
  • January 2016
  • December 2015
  • November 2015
  • October 2015
  • September 2015
  • August 2015
  • July 2015
  • June 2015
  • May 2015
  • April 2015
  • March 2015
  • February 2015
  • January 2015
  • December 2014
  • November 2014
  • October 2014
  • September 2014
  • August 2014
  • July 2014
  • June 2014
  • May 2014
  • April 2014
  • March 2014
  • February 2014
  • January 2014
  • December 2013
  • November 2013
  • October 2013
  • September 2013
  • August 2013
  • July 2013
  • June 2013
  • May 2013
  • April 2013
  • March 2013
  • February 2013
  • January 2013
  • December 2012
  • November 2012
  • October 2012
  • September 2012
  • August 2012
  • July 2012
  • June 2012
  • May 2012
  • April 2012
  • March 2012
  • February 2012
  • January 2012
  • December 2011
  • November 2011
  • October 2011
  • September 2011
  • August 2011
  • July 2011
  • June 2011
  • May 2011
  • April 2011
  • March 2011
  • February 2011
  • January 2011
  • December 2010
  • November 2010
  • October 2010
  • September 2010
  • August 2010
  • July 2010
  • June 2010
  • May 2010
  • April 2010
  • March 2010
  • February 2010
  • January 2010
  • December 2009
  • November 2009
  • October 2009
  • September 2009
  • August 2009
  • July 2009
  • June 2009
  • May 2009
  • April 2009
  • March 2009
  • February 2009
  • January 2009
  • December 2008
  • November 2008
  • October 2008
  • September 2008
  • August 2008
  • July 2008
  • June 2008
  • May 2008
  • April 2008
  • March 2008
  • February 2008
  • January 2008
  • December 2007
  • November 2007
  • October 2007
  • September 2007
  • August 2007
  • July 2007
  • June 2007

Blogroll

  • Kimchi and Collard Greens
  • Thinking Queerly: Schools, politics and culture
  • Website for My First Book and Blog
  • WordPress.com

Recent Comments

Eliza Eats on The Poverty of One Toilet Bowl…
decollins1969 on The Tyranny of Salvation
Khadijah Muhammed on The Tyranny of Salvation

NetworkedBlogs on Facebook

NetworkedBlogs
Blog:
Notes From a Boy @ The Window
Topics:
My Life, Culture & Education, Politics & Goofyness
 
Follow my blog

616 616 East Lincoln Avenue A.B. Davis Middle School Abuse Academia Academy for Educational Development AED Afrocentricity American Narcissism Authenticity Bigotry Blackness Boy @ The Window Carnegie Mellon University Child Abuse Class of 1987 CMU Coping Strategies Crush #1 Crush #2 Death Disillusionment Diversity Domestic Violence Economic Inequality Education Family Friendship Friendships Graduate School Hebrew-Israelites High-Stakes Testing Higher Education History Homelessness Humanities Humanities Program Hypocrisy Internalized Racism Jealousy Joe Trotter Joe William Trotter Jr. K-12 Education Love Manhood Maurice Eugene Washington Maurice Washington Misogyny Mother-Son Relationship Mount Vernon High School Mount Vernon New York Mount Vernon public schools Multiculturalism MVHS Narcissism NFL Pitt Pittsburgh Politics of Education Poverty President Barack Obama Race Racial Stereotypes Racism Relationships Self-Awareness Self-Discovery Self-Reflection Sexism Social Justice Teaching and Learning University of Pittsburgh Violence Whiteness Writing

Top Rated

Blog at WordPress.com.

  • Follow Following
    • Notes from a Boy @ The Window
    • Join 103 other followers
    • Already have a WordPress.com account? Log in now.
    • Notes from a Boy @ The Window
    • Customize
    • Follow Following
    • Sign up
    • Log in
    • Report this content
    • View site in Reader
    • Manage subscriptions
    • Collapse this bar
 

Loading Comments...