When he saw the instructions in the prayer book to ‘strike the chest at the mention of each term’ for sinful behaviors, he thought it meant doing what he always does.
Jerusalem, October 10 – Staffers to Israel’s Minister for Public Security had to apprise him today, in advance of the Day of Atonement this Friday evening and Saturday, that the repeated liturgical ritual of the day involves a gesture of symbolically striking the heart with the fist to denote remorse, as one recites a litany of shortcomings and trespasses, and not smacking one’s ribcage while thrusting it out, as one boasts of the accomplishments.
Several of Itamar Ben-G’vir’s aides disclosed Thursday, with some chagrin, that their boss required a reorienting when one of the team realized that the controversial, far-right figure views the chest-beating element in the Viduy, or confession, portion of the prayers – recited eleven times, in various forms, from the afternoon before Yom Kippur until nighttime the following day – as an occasion to chest-thump, which would convey the opposite of the intended prayers.
“He’s familiar enough with chest-thumping,” acknowledged an aide who spoke on condition of anonymity. “The bombast and taking undue credit, while falling short in other essential areas, is basically his wheelhouse. All politicians do it, of course; he just uses blunter language. So when the minister saw the instructions in the mahzor [holiday prayer book] to ‘strike the chest at the mention of each term’ for various sinful attitudes, or at each line of a litany of sinful behaviors, he thought it meant doing what he always does. We had to disabuse him of that misunderstanding.”
The discovery of Ben-G’vir’s misinterpretation of the penitential ritual occurred when the minister made a grand display of attending the S’lihot, a daily penitential liturgy that Jewish communities that evolved in the Middle East and North Africa begin reciting a month before Rosh HaShanah and continue until Yom Kippur; the communities that developed in most of Europe begin a few days before Rosh HaShanah. During the recitation of the Viduy that occurs in the S’lihot, an aide observed Ben-G’vir reciting the passage in a boastful, rather than contrite, manner, and diagnosed the problem.
“The people around him in previous years must have just thought him devout and enthusiastic,” surmised the aide. “The thing is, his behavior on the way toward, and during, adulthood, should have clued the rest of the community in, as far as those being taken as things to brag about, and aspire to achieve.”
Observers remain unsure whether the minster’s attitude toward those sinful behaviors or character traits can be shifted. Several, however, did note they they prefer Ben-G’vir’s honesty about them to the sanctimony of most of the other politicians who recite the Viduy.
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