![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
brief notes
Sep. 27th, 2001 08:59 pmI'll write more later, but maybe not until after Shabbat.
Yom Kippur was overall a positive experience, as I expected. If someone had told me, before I became observant, that I would fast for 25 hours, spend about half of those hours in synagogue, and then would come out of it feeling refreshed, I would have made inquiries about that person's current drug intake. But you know? It actually works.
Last night the senior rabbi talked about how "attachment" (holding onto things, like bad attitudes) can interfere with "commitments", and how we have to let go of the former to pursue the latter sometimes. He spoke very well, and I'm not doing it justice.
One part: he told a series of stories to illustrate this point, one of which I found amusing as well as illustrative of the point. I do not recall the source, however. (I'm going to summarize.) So, there was this man who announced to his family one day that he was dead. He was absolutely convinced of this, and would not listen to arguments. The family called a shrink, who wasn't able to handle it, and then they called their priest with the same results. Finally they called the family doctor. He asked the man "do dead men bleed?" No, of course not, the man said. So the doc proposed a little test, and he promised to immediately bandage the cut he was going to make (which the man said was unnecessary). So the doc cut the man on the arm and it bled, and the family congratulated him on his cleverness. But as he was leaving, the man spoke up: "Doc, I was wrong. Dead men do bleed."
The senior rabbi also spoke this morning; the associate rabbi did not give any sermons. I wonder what's up with that. We have an assistant rabbi; shouldn't we use him more? (I wonder if he got flack from his Rosh Hashana sermon.)
I was one of the people leading the mincha (afternoon) service this year. There's nothing quite like having a very dry mouth when you're trying to speak coherently to a large room. Whee. Maybe next year I can read in the morning service... I feel really sorry for the rabbis and cantor, who had to be "on" all day, while fasting.
Every year I've noticed that our choir consistently omits three words from the kedusha (a fairly important prayer). They're pretty important words, too: "I the Lord am your god". I asked someone about it once and was told that it was a property of the melody they were using (I would have modified the melody in that case!), but this Yom Kippur I noticed at least three different melodies and they all omitted those words. So now I am motivated to find out what the heck is going on. Is it just my congregation? Is it a Reform thing? (We don't omit those words at other times of year.)
Tomorrow night I'm leading Shabbat services at Tree of Life again. Should be neat.
Yom Kippur was overall a positive experience, as I expected. If someone had told me, before I became observant, that I would fast for 25 hours, spend about half of those hours in synagogue, and then would come out of it feeling refreshed, I would have made inquiries about that person's current drug intake. But you know? It actually works.
Last night the senior rabbi talked about how "attachment" (holding onto things, like bad attitudes) can interfere with "commitments", and how we have to let go of the former to pursue the latter sometimes. He spoke very well, and I'm not doing it justice.
One part: he told a series of stories to illustrate this point, one of which I found amusing as well as illustrative of the point. I do not recall the source, however. (I'm going to summarize.) So, there was this man who announced to his family one day that he was dead. He was absolutely convinced of this, and would not listen to arguments. The family called a shrink, who wasn't able to handle it, and then they called their priest with the same results. Finally they called the family doctor. He asked the man "do dead men bleed?" No, of course not, the man said. So the doc proposed a little test, and he promised to immediately bandage the cut he was going to make (which the man said was unnecessary). So the doc cut the man on the arm and it bled, and the family congratulated him on his cleverness. But as he was leaving, the man spoke up: "Doc, I was wrong. Dead men do bleed."
The senior rabbi also spoke this morning; the associate rabbi did not give any sermons. I wonder what's up with that. We have an assistant rabbi; shouldn't we use him more? (I wonder if he got flack from his Rosh Hashana sermon.)
I was one of the people leading the mincha (afternoon) service this year. There's nothing quite like having a very dry mouth when you're trying to speak coherently to a large room. Whee. Maybe next year I can read in the morning service... I feel really sorry for the rabbis and cantor, who had to be "on" all day, while fasting.
Every year I've noticed that our choir consistently omits three words from the kedusha (a fairly important prayer). They're pretty important words, too: "I the Lord am your god". I asked someone about it once and was told that it was a property of the melody they were using (I would have modified the melody in that case!), but this Yom Kippur I noticed at least three different melodies and they all omitted those words. So now I am motivated to find out what the heck is going on. Is it just my congregation? Is it a Reform thing? (We don't omit those words at other times of year.)
Tomorrow night I'm leading Shabbat services at Tree of Life again. Should be neat.
