struggling over Yom Tov
Apr. 3rd, 2002 01:23 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
cellioToday is the seventh day of Pesach. The Torah states quite clearly that this is a festival day (like the first). Yet here I am at work, just like last year and the year before and...
I don't know why I have so much trouble with this one. (And, correspondingly, the last day of Sukkot.) There is natural resistance -- it's another vacation day, and clumps of holidays disrupt work schedules already, and there's no real ritual associated with it (unlike the seder), and -- locally, at least -- there's basically no community encouragement for it outside the Orthodox subset. (Yes, everyone has holiday services, but the presumption that of course you're observing the holiday is absent.)
But the Torah tells us it is a festival and to "do no work", just like the others, and that ought to be sufficient. And every year I feel a little more guilty and become a little more aware that I am sinning.
Maybe next year I will finally overcome this. (Once I start, I will feel bound to do it every time -- no "just when it's convenient" observances here.)
I don't know why I have so much trouble with this one. (And, correspondingly, the last day of Sukkot.) There is natural resistance -- it's another vacation day, and clumps of holidays disrupt work schedules already, and there's no real ritual associated with it (unlike the seder), and -- locally, at least -- there's basically no community encouragement for it outside the Orthodox subset. (Yes, everyone has holiday services, but the presumption that of course you're observing the holiday is absent.)
But the Torah tells us it is a festival and to "do no work", just like the others, and that ought to be sufficient. And every year I feel a little more guilty and become a little more aware that I am sinning.
Maybe next year I will finally overcome this. (Once I start, I will feel bound to do it every time -- no "just when it's convenient" observances here.)
Re: i had no idea i would write so much! :-)
Date: 2002-04-05 07:38 am (UTC)Sounds like the truly festive meal is at the end of the last day -- havdalah and bread. :-)
My kashrut path is similar to yours. I started by eliminating non-kosher species, then meat/milk mixtures. I spent a brief period trying to go either way in restaurants (i.e. I would eat meat if I was convinced there wouldn't be butter in the other dishes), but I gave that up pretty quickly as infeasible. Around the same time I separated the dishes at home (I already had multiple sets, none complete -- leftovers of a student lifestyle). Somewhere in there I said that I wouldn't buy non-kosher meat any more -- and eating in a restaurant is an extension of "buying" -- but I'll eat it in friends' and relatives' homes as long as it's a kosher species not mixed with milk. (If they offer me a vegetarian/dairy option, though, I take it.) Eventually I attacked the kitchen beyond just separating the dishes. And so it goes.