Yom tov is over. For a long time. And there was a lot of yom tov.
I feel like a lot happened over the past few weeks. One result of all this yom tov, of course, was that there was not enough weekday time, and so I had no time to blog about all of the interesting goings-on.
I guess I should begin with the high holidays. The minyan my family loved for so many years finally ended, so we had to go to a different one. It was ok but nothing special. So I went home for Rosh Hashanah to get in some good family time, but stayed in the city for Yom Kippur.
Went to my usual minyan for that, and found a bit of dissonance there between "this is different from what I am used to" and "I am so at home here - let me help keep things running." I got to hold a Torah during kol nidrei. It was heavy, and by the end, when I handed it back, I could not hold my siddur because my arms were shaking. But it was still very cool that in my (unofficially) Orthodox congregation, I could hold a Torah in front of everyone - but not in my nonegalitarian Conservative congregation back where my family is. So that was interesting.
Anyway, it was a different davening experience - but, as I said, also oddly familiar. I really did feel at home. So that was nice. Plus, I got to host my own pre-fast meal, chaotic as it was, and that was nice too.
Then Sukkot - first days at home - featuring the conveniently-timed cold (yom tov far preferable to work day on that one), the sukkah of mosquitos (well, I only got nibbled on) and humidity (weird sukkot weather) and also the case of the missing aravot. So I did not have my own lulav the first day - but our lunch guests turned out to have the aravot (my dad bought our lulavs and theirs), so I went on a mission to retrieve them before dinner, and used them the second day. So many people in our shul have lulavs that they make us march through a different room during hoshanot - and this year they had it all set up with a set course, delineated by chairs and streamers. One family member compared it to airport security.
On the cute side, my nephew held a lulav (with a little help - but he really held on). He's in that grabbing stage, and it was really adorable.
The other Sukkot adventure related to the schach, which I viewed from a different angle from a second story window partway through yom tov. That was when I noticed the sukkah was partly naked! That is, one piece of the schach had blown on top of the other schach and I could see the bare beams that held the rest of the schach up. So yeah. A naked sukkah. It was quite the discovery.
Then some chol hamoed, followed by last days in the city. Hosted a meal on Simchat Torah, breakfast for dinner. The big excitement of the evening was when I accidentally left one ritual object too close to another, and someone else bumped ino them. Yes, that's right. Shabbat candles and Challah covers do not play nicely together... I guess it's a good thing I didn't like that challah cover too much anyway... and also a good thing nothing else was damaged. But let me tell you - quite the impressive flame. Whoosh!
Excitement of another kind as well: there were some bad parties going on - the kind that give the holiday a bad name - on other floors of the building. The cops were called, and people had to really know where they were going to get into the building - because, unfortunately, some people come in just to troll for parties. They go from floor to floor and listen for the noise. Thankfully, no parties on our floor, and my meal was pretty low-key (even the fire did not generate too much chaos), so we weren't that affected. But it's really disrespectul to the holiday and to the neighbors.
And now I am excited for a different kind of holiday - I get off from work tomorrow because some guy with a boat got lost on the way to the West Indies. Hooray!
I feel like a lot happened over the past few weeks. One result of all this yom tov, of course, was that there was not enough weekday time, and so I had no time to blog about all of the interesting goings-on.
I guess I should begin with the high holidays. The minyan my family loved for so many years finally ended, so we had to go to a different one. It was ok but nothing special. So I went home for Rosh Hashanah to get in some good family time, but stayed in the city for Yom Kippur.
Went to my usual minyan for that, and found a bit of dissonance there between "this is different from what I am used to" and "I am so at home here - let me help keep things running." I got to hold a Torah during kol nidrei. It was heavy, and by the end, when I handed it back, I could not hold my siddur because my arms were shaking. But it was still very cool that in my (unofficially) Orthodox congregation, I could hold a Torah in front of everyone - but not in my nonegalitarian Conservative congregation back where my family is. So that was interesting.
Anyway, it was a different davening experience - but, as I said, also oddly familiar. I really did feel at home. So that was nice. Plus, I got to host my own pre-fast meal, chaotic as it was, and that was nice too.
Then Sukkot - first days at home - featuring the conveniently-timed cold (yom tov far preferable to work day on that one), the sukkah of mosquitos (well, I only got nibbled on) and humidity (weird sukkot weather) and also the case of the missing aravot. So I did not have my own lulav the first day - but our lunch guests turned out to have the aravot (my dad bought our lulavs and theirs), so I went on a mission to retrieve them before dinner, and used them the second day. So many people in our shul have lulavs that they make us march through a different room during hoshanot - and this year they had it all set up with a set course, delineated by chairs and streamers. One family member compared it to airport security.
On the cute side, my nephew held a lulav (with a little help - but he really held on). He's in that grabbing stage, and it was really adorable.
The other Sukkot adventure related to the schach, which I viewed from a different angle from a second story window partway through yom tov. That was when I noticed the sukkah was partly naked! That is, one piece of the schach had blown on top of the other schach and I could see the bare beams that held the rest of the schach up. So yeah. A naked sukkah. It was quite the discovery.
Then some chol hamoed, followed by last days in the city. Hosted a meal on Simchat Torah, breakfast for dinner. The big excitement of the evening was when I accidentally left one ritual object too close to another, and someone else bumped ino them. Yes, that's right. Shabbat candles and Challah covers do not play nicely together... I guess it's a good thing I didn't like that challah cover too much anyway... and also a good thing nothing else was damaged. But let me tell you - quite the impressive flame. Whoosh!
Excitement of another kind as well: there were some bad parties going on - the kind that give the holiday a bad name - on other floors of the building. The cops were called, and people had to really know where they were going to get into the building - because, unfortunately, some people come in just to troll for parties. They go from floor to floor and listen for the noise. Thankfully, no parties on our floor, and my meal was pretty low-key (even the fire did not generate too much chaos), so we weren't that affected. But it's really disrespectul to the holiday and to the neighbors.
And now I am excited for a different kind of holiday - I get off from work tomorrow because some guy with a boat got lost on the way to the West Indies. Hooray!