Yom Kippur

[cellio]

Kol Nidre: good sermon about Israel. The cello rendition of "Kol Nidre" was long at 10 minutes. The rest of the service was pretty much normal, what I expected.

In the morning I felt physically fine, better than I expected to. I felt like all the water I had drunk at T minus 5 minutes was paying off. Alas, the feeling did not last.

Morning service: the sermon was fantastic. I hope he publishes it on the web site. He talked about ethics and integrity in a way that really worked for me. (The only other comment I've heard thus far was negative, so you can't please everyone.) He even gave "homework": he publishes the "eilu devarim" bit from the Talmud (also part of the shacharit liturgy) in the service handout and told people to take it home and study it. Oh, and to choose three things from the list of mitzvot that you can never do enough of and work on them between now and next Yom Kippur.

I had a seat on the bimah for the morning service. Lots of people did, so chairs were in places that don't usually get chairs. I couldn't see the ark from mine (because of the curve of the room). Oops. Hearing wasn't a problem, though. Our set of seats was shorted a book, which caused problems for a few minutes until someone figured out where to get another one quietly. (Walking down off the bimah and asking someone in the first row for a book seemed tacky, though I briefly considered it.)

There is a part of the Yom Kippur liturgy where you basically say "I forgive those who have wronged me; let no one be judged harsely on my account". (It then goes on to say something like "just as I forgive them, may they forgive me...".) I've always had trouble with unrequested forgiveness. I'm also not ready to say that I would always grant it if asked. I mean, if, chas v'shalom, someone were to murder a family member in cold blood, I don't think I could forgive him no matter how nicely he asked unless I saw real evidence of repentance. But this year I came a stop closer to accepting this part of the liturgy, by realizing that at the very least I could grant forgiveness to any Jew who might have wronged me and who was saying these same words (i.e. was taking the Day of Atonement seriously).

The haftarah reading for the Yom Kippur mincha (afternoon) service is the book of Jonah. I just don't get this story. Ok, the plain meaning is mostly straightforward: (1) don't run away from God when he tells you to do something and (2) repentance is possible. But deeper meanings, and any reasonable explanation of the part at the end with the gourd, elude me.

The Reform machzor fills the afternoon service with all sorts of readings that aren't traditional. A lot of them dwelled on the martyrs of our people, including those who died in the Shoah (Holocaust). At times I wondered if I had time-warped to a Yom Ha-Shoah service. I remember this from past years, of course, and was even one of the readers last year, but I still don't care for it. It also makes me wonder what the content of a more traditional YK mincha service is.

After mincha was a study session for adults (and something for families with younger kids). The guy who frequently dominates Shabbat-morning Torah study with long-winded, frequently-off-topic (or missing-the-point) stories was there and in his usual form, alas, but the session was otherwise interesting. My brain was getting fuzzy by then, though, so no details here.

After that was Yizkor (memorial service). I was pretty tired by then, and apparently fell asleep during what I suspect was a pretty good sermon. Oops. Yizkor always makes me feel a little strange, because I'm never sure if I should be mourning non-Jewish relatives in a Jewish way. (My compromise is that I do so for those who have died in the last several years, but not the ones whose deaths predate my Judaism.) Then it was on to Ne'ilah, the concluding prayers, which didn't move me quite as much this year as last but were still effective. And then a slow walk home and a half-hour wait for sunset.

This was not a good year, fast-wise. I'm not sure what was different. All the preparation was ok as far as I could tell (I ate and drank the right things at the right times), but I was much more parched and light-headed late in the day than I should have been. And then I made matters worse by taking some ibuprofin to kill a nasty headache around hour 20 of the fast. It diminished but did not dispel the headache, and it made me queasy. Realization after the fact: Ibuprofin isn't supposed to be taken on an empty stomach. Oops.

Comments

[fiannaharpar.livejournal.com]

Cross-religion question here, in the Lord's Prayer, Christians say "forgive us our tresspasses, as we forgive those who tresspass against us", which is treated in spirit as pretty much the same as "just as I forgive them, may they forgive me..."..

Can you forgive/accept forgiveness from Gentiles who speak these words with the same intensity of belief as a Jew?

More of an interesting theological point to me than anything else.

Mincha, etc

[magid.livejournal.com]

Yizkor is after mincha (afternoon service)? In my services it's always after Torah reading in the morning.

I always find mincha and neilah (um, concluding service?) to be sort of cojoined twins: technically they're separate services, but between the two of them, they share a lot of the mincha characteristics. Mincha gets the (Shabbat-regular) Torah reading, while neilah gets ashrei (from Psalms) and u-va l'tzion, the prayer after that, though they have separate amidahs (individual prayers, said standing).

The mincha amida we do is a fairly concise, not-so-many piyutim (poems) added into the repetition, mostly themed around the Patriarchs and their great qualities. When you mentioned the victims of the Shoah, I thought more of the text of the musaf (additional service; versions said on holidays, shabbat) amidah, which reenacts the service of the cohen gadol (high priest), then includes a section about the 10 martyrs (in Roman times).

Oh, and I've never heard of a neilah service ending before the fast does. I think I wouldn't do well with that (I can imagine restless waiting, waiting, waiting).

Jonah

[goljerp]

But deeper meanings, and any reasonable explanation of the part at the end with the gourd, elude me.

I like Jonah. There was a good d'var on it this year, which I'll try to reproduce (at least the high points. I was pretty out of it by then, so any flaws are with me, not the d'var.)

The woman giving the d'var started by saying, what does the book of Jonah have to teach us this year. Which is a cool way of reminding us that our relationship to the text changes as we change.

On Shabbat Shuvah, our rabbi gave a d'var about the "13 attributes" which we say over and over on Yom Kippur. They're taken from Exodus 34:6, sort of. Why "sort of"? Because the Rabbis do something totally outrageous: they insert a period in the middle of a verse, totally changing the meaning. It's as if I wrote "I feel that President Bush has put forth very compelling reasons to attack Iraq at the present time, but I don't think that he's thought out the devistating consequences an attack would have to the greater Middle East" and then you quoted me as saying "I feel that President Bush has put forth very compelling reasons to attack Iraq."

So, what does this have to do with Jonah? Well, when talking to God about how upset he is that God saved Nineveh, he quotes a shortened version of the 13 attributes -- leaving out "truth". This is strange, since Jonah is "ben Ammetai" (which could be translated "son of truth" if you're willing to stretch a bit). Jonah wants a harsh, unforgiving God of "din" or unyielding judgement, but in the book of Jonah, God is constantly giving people (including Jonah) second chances. Of course, on Yom Kippur, we all want second chances.

There was more, but I don't recall it... sorry...

I also like the absurd streak in Jonah. For example: Here he is, on a boat in a horrible storm. Everyone is pleading and crying out to their god. What does he do? Goes into the hold and falls alseep. The gourd is another absurd moment. Jonah's waiting for fire and brimstone to wipe out 120,000 people, and so builds a Sukkah (subtle reminder of the next holiday here). Then he gets worked up about a shady plant?

Another interesting thought: it takes Jonah 3 days to cry out to God. What did he do before then? (There's a Midrash by Larry Gerstenhaber (published in Living Text, No. 3) which posed the question for me.)

Also, why did the people of Nineveh believe Jonah, if they were so wicked? Why didn't Jonah want them to repent? What would you do if someone told you that in 3 days Pittsburgh (or New York, or whatever) would be destroyed unless everyone changed their ways? Why does God mention the cattle in Nineveh, as opposed to the sheep?

[figmo.livejournal.com]

IIRC, we're supposed to do yahrzeit for parents, children, siblings, and grandchildren.

I never understood why we don't do them for grandparents or great-grandparents if they died when we were sentient or "adults."