Brookwrite

A new confession

by Doug Brook
Deep South Jewish Voice Columnist

It is timely that our scholars have recently completed their recovery of a special Yom Kippur confessional contained in the sacred, long-lost text of the Mishnah tractate Baba Gump.

Here for the first time, unless you are rereading this column, you can find a translation of the original Baba Gump text. In the tradition of most modern prayer books, this translation bears little resemblance to the original literal Hebrew, but it generally captures the mood in an overly poeticized verse that is sure to make the eyes roll back in the skulls of our youth.

We have sinned against you by running red lights.

We have sinned against you by having late nights.

We have sinned against you by double lane changes.

We have sinned against you at firing ranges.

We have sinned against you by not signaling.

We have sinned against you by calling our little brother a dingaling.

We have sinned against you with rolling stops.

We have sinned against you while using laptops.

We have sinned against you though that's not why it happened.

We have sinned against you by letting it happen.

We have sinned against you by not automatically knowing what "it" is.

We have sinned against you by wanting to do too much to prevent its recurrence.

We have sinned against you by thinking we can stop it with silence.

We have sinned against you by, well, you remember, but I really don't want to say here in case someone near me actually understands Hebrew.

We have sinned against you by letting our kids actually behave like that.

We have sinned against you by letting our kids behave like that again.

We have sinned against you by behaving like that ourselves, in front of our kids.

We have sinned against you by sheltering our kids too much.

We have sinned against you by not seeing them enough.

We have sinned against you by letting them wear shorts to services.

We have sinned against you by letting them wear shorts to services today.

We have sinned against you by wearing less today than we do to the beach.

We have sinned against you by... wait, I didn't do that one. But I think that guy two pews over did.

We have sinned against you by tattling on the guy two pews over.

We have sinned against you by not striking back fast enough.

We have sinned against you by not waiting long enough.

We have sinned against you by leaving our cell phone on during Kol Nidre.

We have sinned against you by thinking this was our fault.

We have sinned against you by taking no blame.

We have sinned against you by answering our cell phone during Kol Nidre (yea, you in the pink skirt... you know who you are, and so does half the congregation).

We have sinned against you with mayonnaise.

We have sinned against you in so many ways.

We have sinned against you when stuck in a traffic jam.

We have sinned against you with green eggs and ham.

We have sinned against you by not reading this column all the way through each month.

We have sinned against you by leaving our cell phone on so it could ring again ten minutes later during Avinu Malkeinu.

We have sinned against you by starting dot.coms.

We have sinned against you by investing in dot.coms (but that was punishment enough, don't you think?).

We have sinned against you, but less so than some.

We have sinned against you, but moreso than some.

We have sinned against you by letting our kids play hockey with action figures in the aisle during the amidah on Rosh Hashanah.

We have sinned against you by not going for two.

We have sinned against you by going for it on fourth down.

We have sinned against you by not thrashing people who have cell phones during services.

We have sinned against you by not catching all the subtle jokes in this column every month.

We have sinned against you by only thinking we're addressing you now, without thought to the others who were also affected by us.

We have sinned against you by thinking that understanding why is as simple as understanding a llama.

We have sinned against you by not understanding some of the jokes in this column that play on words from Hebrew.

V'al koolam, eloah s'lichot. S'lach lanu, M'chal lanu, Kaper lanu.

(It's on us, Big G. Forgive us, heal us, give us copper.)

Doug Brook is a technical writer in Silicon Valley who was asleep when it happened. His play Retrograde is in the 8 Tens @ 8 Festival anthology, available everywhere. For more information, online ordering, and an archive of past columns and other writings, visit his website at http://brookwrite.com/.