taylweaver (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
taylweaver) wrote2005-10-15 07:34 pm
taylweaver) wrote2005-10-15 07:34 pm
Entry tags:
Drowning my sins
So this past Thursday was Yom Kippur, the Jewish day of atonement. It is also a fast day.
The fasting part went fine for me - it was the headache I woke up with in the morning that caused all the problems - it stayed with me all day, though it varied in its intensity.
It was not a particularly meaningful Yom Kippur as Yom Kippur's go for me (yes, I know, it should probably be pluralized as Yemei Kippur, but I am anglicizing the pluralization), partly due to the cantor we had, who did not know our tunes, and partly due to the weather. The liturgy has the potential to be so powerful with its combination of poetry and starkness. There is one prayer in particular that, if done properly, can bring a congregation to tears - or at least get everyone thinking and focused on the power of God and the idea of judgement. But that doesn't work when the tune so jarringly different than what you are used to. For those of you more familiar with the liturgy, you know that I am referring to the Unetane Tokef prayer.
For those of you not familiar with the liturgy, this particular prayer is at the heart of high holiday services. It describes God as a shepherd, counting his flock of sheep one by one as they pass before him and deciding the fate of each one. Then it goes on to list many of those fates: who will be born and who will die, who will die at their time and who will die before their time. Then it lists all sorts of ways people can die: "who by fire and who by water," and so on. I am forgetting the order off the top of my head, but it lists famine and thirst, earthquakes and plagues, and then more human-caused deaths like stoning. Point being, it keeps asking: who will die this way, and who will die that way. When led by the right person, those words can be so powerful. In my head, I can still hear the voice of the rabbi who usually leads high holiday services where my family goes - but alas, he was unavailable this year, so we had that other cantor.
So yeah, not such a meaningful year.
The weather also messed with things a bit. On Wednesday, as I traveled between my two schools in the middle of the morning, carrying not only my two school bags - one on each shoulder until I find the time to finally buy a backpack - but also a bag with my stuff to take home for Yom Kippur, I got rather soaked. Umbrellas don't do much when it's raining so hard that the water is bouncing up from the puddles on the pavement, when some paths are covered with a uniform layer of water that splashes up onto my ankles and into my sneakers with each new step I take. True, the top half of me stayed dry, but as I walked the five blocks or so from the subway to the school, my sneakers went from dry, to just a bit damp, to damp enough inside to wet my socks, to positively swampy. Even worse, my bags got wet - both outside and inside - so that even the extra pair of socks I carry with me - for precisely such occasions - was no longer dry when I pulled it out. Not to mention, dry socks + wet sneakers = wet socks. So my feet had to suffer through that for five hours.
It was a rather impressive rain - the kind that can soak you in the two seconds it takes to get from the covered subway platform onto the subway train itself - because this is all above-ground and outdoors where I work. The kind that is blown in at you by the air that is forced aside as the subway train pulls in. The kind that leaks in the window on the subway train and drips on the seats. The kind that turns streets to rivers - the puddles at the corners of the street were so big that I had to make detours to cross each street - and even then, the flow of water on the sides of the street was as wide as the parked cars on either side. I did a lot of jumping.
And then the weather continued into Thursday. Which meant that I had to bend the rules of Yom Kippur a bit - they say no leather shoes - but when I only have one pair of non-leather shoes, and they are by no means waterproof, there is no way I am going to risk getting them soaked on the way to the synagogue just so I can sit there for hours with wet feet. So I wore my (still damp) sneakers for the walk, and changed when I got there.
So that was my Yom Kippur.
Shabbat was sunnier - at last. It was nice to finally see a blue sky. We hadn't had one for over a week.
The fasting part went fine for me - it was the headache I woke up with in the morning that caused all the problems - it stayed with me all day, though it varied in its intensity.
It was not a particularly meaningful Yom Kippur as Yom Kippur's go for me (yes, I know, it should probably be pluralized as Yemei Kippur, but I am anglicizing the pluralization), partly due to the cantor we had, who did not know our tunes, and partly due to the weather. The liturgy has the potential to be so powerful with its combination of poetry and starkness. There is one prayer in particular that, if done properly, can bring a congregation to tears - or at least get everyone thinking and focused on the power of God and the idea of judgement. But that doesn't work when the tune so jarringly different than what you are used to. For those of you more familiar with the liturgy, you know that I am referring to the Unetane Tokef prayer.
For those of you not familiar with the liturgy, this particular prayer is at the heart of high holiday services. It describes God as a shepherd, counting his flock of sheep one by one as they pass before him and deciding the fate of each one. Then it goes on to list many of those fates: who will be born and who will die, who will die at their time and who will die before their time. Then it lists all sorts of ways people can die: "who by fire and who by water," and so on. I am forgetting the order off the top of my head, but it lists famine and thirst, earthquakes and plagues, and then more human-caused deaths like stoning. Point being, it keeps asking: who will die this way, and who will die that way. When led by the right person, those words can be so powerful. In my head, I can still hear the voice of the rabbi who usually leads high holiday services where my family goes - but alas, he was unavailable this year, so we had that other cantor.
So yeah, not such a meaningful year.
The weather also messed with things a bit. On Wednesday, as I traveled between my two schools in the middle of the morning, carrying not only my two school bags - one on each shoulder until I find the time to finally buy a backpack - but also a bag with my stuff to take home for Yom Kippur, I got rather soaked. Umbrellas don't do much when it's raining so hard that the water is bouncing up from the puddles on the pavement, when some paths are covered with a uniform layer of water that splashes up onto my ankles and into my sneakers with each new step I take. True, the top half of me stayed dry, but as I walked the five blocks or so from the subway to the school, my sneakers went from dry, to just a bit damp, to damp enough inside to wet my socks, to positively swampy. Even worse, my bags got wet - both outside and inside - so that even the extra pair of socks I carry with me - for precisely such occasions - was no longer dry when I pulled it out. Not to mention, dry socks + wet sneakers = wet socks. So my feet had to suffer through that for five hours.
It was a rather impressive rain - the kind that can soak you in the two seconds it takes to get from the covered subway platform onto the subway train itself - because this is all above-ground and outdoors where I work. The kind that is blown in at you by the air that is forced aside as the subway train pulls in. The kind that leaks in the window on the subway train and drips on the seats. The kind that turns streets to rivers - the puddles at the corners of the street were so big that I had to make detours to cross each street - and even then, the flow of water on the sides of the street was as wide as the parked cars on either side. I did a lot of jumping.
And then the weather continued into Thursday. Which meant that I had to bend the rules of Yom Kippur a bit - they say no leather shoes - but when I only have one pair of non-leather shoes, and they are by no means waterproof, there is no way I am going to risk getting them soaked on the way to the synagogue just so I can sit there for hours with wet feet. So I wore my (still damp) sneakers for the walk, and changed when I got there.
So that was my Yom Kippur.
Shabbat was sunnier - at last. It was nice to finally see a blue sky. We hadn't had one for over a week.
no subject
Why didn't you have the same leader for your service this year?
2) Go to EMS and buy their hiking socks (or whatever they call them). Not so cheap, but your feet will feel soooooo much better, especially when it's rainy out!!!
3) With our luck, we'll get another downpour (40 days and 40 nights) around 3 shabboses from now in conjunction with Parshat Noach!
no subject
I agree with you on the need for translation, but for me, the translation loses the beautiful poetry of the Hebrew. I would instead support a synagogue providing congregants with Machzorim (high holiday prayer books) that have a literal (rather than rhyming or truncated) English translation on the opposite side of the page. That way, each individual can decide when to access the English, and when to enjoy the Hebrew.
no subject
Theology
I'm not necessarily saying that I agree with such a theology, but I don't see what you find problematic about it, or what makes it impossible for you to "deal with" it.
Would you prefer a theology in which God made His (/Her/Whatever)decision of who would live or die only two minutes before the earthquake, rather than at the beginning of the year? Or would you prefer a theology in which the earthquake was totally independent from God?
Mar Gavriel (http://margavriel.blogspot.com)
Re: Theology
Let me rephrase. I accept that I, being mortal, have very little chance of understanding God's plan, but I wish I did understand it. At the moment, my total incomprehension seems to be getting in the way of my praying. It's a personal flaw of my own, and I prayed to be forgiven for it.
Re: Theology
Or, if you're talking about asking for forgiveness for thinking about these things while you're supposed to be praying, if you're not going to be thinking about these things when you're praying, what should you think about when you're praying?
Just use that painful frustration of incomprehension and channel it into your prayer. Prayer is talking to God, after all, and you can say whatever you want. "I don't understand You, and I hate what you're making happen in the world!" is fine. Any strong emotion, be it positive or negative, makes prayer better.
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In terms of the broader question, that is one that was the focus of the sermon - how to explain evil in the world. The rabbi pointed out that there are two types of evil - man-made (things like war and crime) and God-made (things like earthquakes, hurricanes and genetic diseases). Within a monotheistic theology, the first is easier to explain - that is, God gave people free will, and this is a consequence of that. "God-made evil", however, is a very difficult thing to explain. He went through a bunch of possibilities, and his conclusion was, he just doesn't know. He did, however, note that one side-effect of "God-made evil" is that it makes mankind a bit more humble. I can't recall whether he said or implied that it's a reminder that we can't control nature. (This was not offered as a reason for it, but just as a consequence of it.)
As an aside, however, in the cases of both the recent earthquake and hurricanes, there is some manmade evil involved as well that probably made things worse. This comes in the form of neglect. For example, if people in the right places had listened, the levees in New Orleans would have been repaired and improved, and perhaps there would have been less flooding. Yes, there would have been damage, but it might have been less severe. Same goes for evacuation plans. In terms of the earthquake in Pakistan, I don't know for certain, but I am guessing that most of the buildings there are not build nearly as well as the buildings we are used to. From what I understand, most of the people affected by the earthquake were living in extreme poverty before the earthquake, which means their homes were not as well built, and they had less access to resources both before the earthquake and now.
None of that was said in the sermon, but I think that may have been at least slightly implied - that we can't control for "God-made evil", but that we can control for "man-made evil" - and that taking care of our fellow human beings can very much lessen the impact of the "God-made evil".
no subject
See http://godolhador.blogspot.com/2005/09/we-learn-from-katrina_05.html.
My friend Talmudic Karaite (you know whom I mean?) once said that he believes that at the moment of creation, God had power over every single event, but now that there are other sentient beings around, the situation is far more complex, and we don't have the right to attribute anything to God (even though he may still be responsible for a lot).
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