As we gather at the synagogue, the hour of seven p.m. arrives. There are hellos and a few hugs and a few introductions. Some of us haven't seen each other since the start of the summer. Some of us may not know each other very well. We spend a while getting organized: do we have the right number of scripts? Are they all hole-punched and filed in three-ring binders? Does everyone have a pencil? And then we set up our chairs in the sanctuary and, with almost no preamble, we begin.

We're rehearsing for Saturday night's Selichot play, "The Gates Are Closing" by poet Merle Feld. Ten congregants (well: nine congregants plus me) will be playing the ten roles. The play takes place in a synagogue over the course of Yom Kippur. There is a rabbi in the play, though I'm not playing that role; I'm playing the fifty-something middle-aged hazzan (cantor.) There is some occasional laughter as we accustom ourselves to embodying people who we are not.

There are parts of this play which give me shivers, even on our first read-through. There are other parts which had seemed a bit overblown when I read them on the page, but when I hear them given voice -- especially in a synagogue sanctuary, the very kind of "stage" where the play is set -- they reach me in a different way.

I wonder what this experience is like for the other cast members. The play interweaves the personal stories of these ten people with fragments of the traditional liturgy for Yom Kippur. There are bits of the vidui (confessional prayer) and bits of Avinu Malkeinu ("Our Father, Our King.") Just singing the short snatches of prayer required for the play is opening an emotional floodgate in me.

Both of the day's traditional Torah readings are woven in to the script -- though our shul follows Reform practice; we don't read either of those Torah passages on Yom Kippur, preferring alternative readings instead. By the same token, the script features interplay between the characters' stories and the Martyrology, and I don't think we've touched the Martyrology in a decade. I wonder whether those who come to the play will notice either of those things.

Yom Kippur is sometimes called a rehearsal for the day of our death. We wear white, like our burial shrouds. We eschew food and drink, as though our bodies didn't need them. We make teshuvah, we turn toward God and take stock of our actions, as though we were on death's door. Yom Kippur teaches us that there is no time like the present to connect with our loved ones. As Rabbi Shefa Gold has written, "On Yom Kippur, Death becomes our rebbe."

But now we are rehearsing for that cosmic rehearsal. Some congregations present this play on Yom Kippur, before Ne'ilah, before the final service of the day. I'll bet that's intense. But I love that we're presenting this play at Selichot, at the beginning of our High Holiday season. Whatever magic it works in us will have time to percolate and deepen before we reach Yom Kippur, before that wondrous day unfolds, before the gates of the season begin to swing shut.

For more information: CBI Presents "The Gates Are Closing," Selichot services, Saturday 9/8. All are welcome.