Yesterday was Rosh Hashana, the Jewish New Year – the year 5769, if you're keeping count.

When my mother died 12 years back I tried to go to the synagogue, but the sight of the hebrew words brought tears splashing down onto my prayerbook. I found myself sobbing uncontrollably in the bathroom, face swollen and head aching. I bolted, feeling like I was becoming a spectacle. I've gone again since, once or twice, and exactly the same thing has happened. It hasn't felt cathartic or productive, just painful and confusing.

So this Rosh Hashanah I went to the synagogue, for the first time in many years. To honour the memory of my father. To try again to reconnect with that huge part of who I am today, all the blessing and beauty and pain that brought me to this point. To pray.

I biked up to Ahavat Olam, for the Rosh Hashana service -- one of the High Holy Days of Judaism. AO is a very progressive synagogue, very environmenally and politically active. The service is in hebrew and english, lots of activists and young people and gay folks involved -- I wasn't prepared to see so many folks I know there from so many places in my life. I remembered this community of blood and spirit that I share, that I had almost managed to forget, or keep pretending to forget, that is still there for me. Has been there for much longer than 5769 years.

Of course the moment I entered the room and heard the first baruch atah adonai, I started bawling. Had to do my dash to the bathroom for wads of kleenex. The keening of the shofar, the ram's horn blown to usher in the new year, ripped me apart. But I came back, tried to breathe between the tears. Thinking how much this sucks, how bad it feels, and vowing I will never EVER put myself through this again. But by the time the service ended, with a circle and chanting co-led by the leader of the Ismaili Muslim Youth Choir, I kind of had it together. There was a nice little kiddush with hummous and crackers, cheese and fruit and cake. I dipped apple pieces in honey, and drank sweet wine.

In the afternoon I met up again with Rabbi Dave and the crew at the reclaimed quarry in Queen Elizabeth Park for Tashlich, a ceremony I've never done before. Tashlich means "casting away" -- we throw crumbs into the water, to release the year's "sins" (in the old-school interpretation), or in the more contemporary reading, to let go of what is no longer serving, to release old patterns and attachments, and make new intentions. Under the waterfall in the reclaimed quarry in the glorious sunshine, quite a sight and sound, Jews of every stripe singing, laughing, telling stories and praying, from the orthodox davenners in their shawls and tzitzit to the new-skool freestylers with their birkenstocks and bicycles, together to welcome the new day, new moment, new world dawning.

So I guess I have no choice really but to go back to Havat Olam, to sit in the back row and cry more. There is that feeling like once I start crying I will never stop, but I sit here in Turks with tears running down my face, I've become a pretty shameless weeper...and maybe at some point, I will be all cried out. It's a new year, all is possible.