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.)
(no subject)
Date: 2002-04-05 07:58 am (UTC)I also believe that Torah is a living document, to be interpreted in each generation. (I do not believe it is the precise word of God, though I believe it is the result of an encounter with God at Sinai.) There are certainly things in the Torah that I don't do, either.
I do, however, strive for consistency. If I'm going to observe the Torah-mandated holidays, I should either do all of them or have a well-thought-out explanation for why I skip some. I shouldn't "just not get around to it", and that's what I've been doing with the last day of Pesach. Now that it has bubbled up to the conscious layer, I have to think about it and make a decision.
This has worked for me in the other direction once, but I'm going to make a separate journal entry.