1) Last night I went to davvening ("services"), prayed heartily, and stayed over an hour afterwards to chat with a friend and learn some stuff about the Yom Kippur ritual in the Temple back in the olden days.
2) This morning I was in the Beit Midrash at 6:30am for the beginning of davvening, and did all the introductory stuff. Somewhere early in the official service, I began to get frustrated, feel distanced from all the hundreds of pages of words laid out before me. This feeling was exacerbated by some comment I read in the prayer book about righteous people knowing they have the truth, some overbearing notion that being aligned with God's Will brings with it an acceptable cockiness towards those who don't (heaven forfend).
I began pacing in and out of the room, spending time in a little side room that is being used as a storage closet a few families, and reading a book called Seeing God, hoping to rediscover an understanding of Deity that isn't focused on sneering at other people, obeying commands or obsequiously praising without end. I also read a bit in Kosher Sex.
I made sure to take care of all my gabbai duties, like assigning people to open the ark at specific moments, and running the Torah service section, calling people up for honors and giving them blessings. That's the core of my job, and because I have that role, I had to be in the vicinity of the prayers, although I felt more and more distant from them as the hours rolled by.
3) At around 1:30, having dispensed of all my clerical obligations, I abandoned the davvening for good. I had been there for 7 hours, and was not getting anywhere. I spent the rest of the time (the past 5 hours) in my bed, alternatively reading Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix and sleeping. It has now passed the 12-hour mark, and they are just getting to the end of the day's prayers down there. Not bad, considering the place has a record of sometimes going on until after 9pm
_____________
This was definitely one of the lamest Yom Kippur experiences I've had. This used to be one of my favorite days of the year, even way back, before I had any real connection with Judaism. In 1996, quite memorably, Craig and I fasted while camping in the Badlands on Yom Kippur.
Today, I hardly felt connected with any of the elements of the day- repentance, purification, holiness, unity of the People, or spiritual/emotional realignment. I have been cultivating mundane fantasies of being a substitute teacher in Broward County. I have three weeks of wide-open vacation in front of me, and no idea what I should do.
Happy New Year.
2) This morning I was in the Beit Midrash at 6:30am for the beginning of davvening, and did all the introductory stuff. Somewhere early in the official service, I began to get frustrated, feel distanced from all the hundreds of pages of words laid out before me. This feeling was exacerbated by some comment I read in the prayer book about righteous people knowing they have the truth, some overbearing notion that being aligned with God's Will brings with it an acceptable cockiness towards those who don't (heaven forfend).
I began pacing in and out of the room, spending time in a little side room that is being used as a storage closet a few families, and reading a book called Seeing God, hoping to rediscover an understanding of Deity that isn't focused on sneering at other people, obeying commands or obsequiously praising without end. I also read a bit in Kosher Sex.
I made sure to take care of all my gabbai duties, like assigning people to open the ark at specific moments, and running the Torah service section, calling people up for honors and giving them blessings. That's the core of my job, and because I have that role, I had to be in the vicinity of the prayers, although I felt more and more distant from them as the hours rolled by.
3) At around 1:30, having dispensed of all my clerical obligations, I abandoned the davvening for good. I had been there for 7 hours, and was not getting anywhere. I spent the rest of the time (the past 5 hours) in my bed, alternatively reading Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix and sleeping. It has now passed the 12-hour mark, and they are just getting to the end of the day's prayers down there. Not bad, considering the place has a record of sometimes going on until after 9pm
_____________
This was definitely one of the lamest Yom Kippur experiences I've had. This used to be one of my favorite days of the year, even way back, before I had any real connection with Judaism. In 1996, quite memorably, Craig and I fasted while camping in the Badlands on Yom Kippur.
Today, I hardly felt connected with any of the elements of the day- repentance, purification, holiness, unity of the People, or spiritual/emotional realignment. I have been cultivating mundane fantasies of being a substitute teacher in Broward County. I have three weeks of wide-open vacation in front of me, and no idea what I should do.
Happy New Year.
6 comments:
hey bro... amazing how the tables turn on us in this spiritual roulette of daily practice...
on off on off.. also the pains of being part of a community that while wonderful, is not necessarily the way we would all engage our rituals in our own way...
anyhoo.. i love ya,, if you wanna give a ring to chill in town the next few days, please doo...
i was WONdering where you went. i took off in the middle of mincha to read 'The Yom Kippur War' and nap, and when i came back at 2:20, you were gone. which made that back corner much more roomy, and i scored the ergonomic chair-back, which greatly improved my ergonomics.
of course the davening has too many words. this is judaism we're talking about, don't you know? after the beginning of mincha i pretty much just stuck to the english translation or singing, and didn't stand much even when the aron was open. and took one more break to finish reading my history book. good book.
good to learn with you brother... later-matthew
Hey man - i love you too and we promised to talk before Rosh Hashena - if you so feel inclined the break is a good time to do this talk.
Otherwise =- take my good love and let it help anyway it can. Raz
i'm w/you stu. i started feeling really disconnected half-way through mussaf and went home for a nap... tried to muster up some soul during neilah, but it was really hard. i just wasn't feeling it this time around.
Must be the sign of the times. We all somehow missed out on our own bit of seeing the Divine this Yom Kippur. To be honest, I've had a bit of a crisis of spirituality for the past year and change. Probably because I am so not feeling the New England Jewish bit. They just seem too snobby for me. I've tried three different Temples and it always feels like a borrowed jacket. Baggy in some places, tight in others. Theo other side of it is that I don't see paying the kind of membership dues they ask for when I barely have the strength Friday evening to get cleaned up, start dinner, go to Temple, and come back for a late dinner.
As far as teaching: Stu, pop over to my blog for what it's like to teach. That will make you think. Hard.
Simon in D'mouth
'twas a tough YK on my side as well...
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