No I didn’t break my fast, but as any person who can’t concentrate on davening will tell you, you think about the most insane things during davening. I also needed a catchy headline to take advantage of the constantly updated blogger blogrolls which feature the title of the post from the newest bloggers to update.
This post should really be called “Yom Kippor thoughts” or “posts I thought about during chazaras hashas”, but all is well my friends because prior to having a blog all I the thoughts that entered my mind were about sex and anything else that I was clopping my chest about and would undoubtedly partake in soon after neillah.
But this Yom Kippor my thoughts centered around several themes, most importantly how the decline of the popularity of Crocs as the leading Yom Kippor shoe has lead to individualism and leadership in the Jewish community. Not one person where I davened wore Crocs, I wore my Tevas as always and there were a smattering of folks in cheap Canvas Converse imitations. The Rabbi wore ugly white shoes of course, because I think it is in the Rabbis interest to wear the ugliest shoes to make a point, and to make sure he keeps people interested in the service and not his style of shoe. Imagine if the Rabbi wore orange Crocs, everyone would be talking about it- so he sticks to the traditional ugly white canvas shoes.
Then my mind wandered to the annoyances of Ark openings and how all could be solved if they hired an official ark opener or possibly had an automatic ark opener that could be set on some sort of shabbos clock- although what would happen if Yizkor took longer then expected and the ark opened at unwanted times.
My mind also thought about how much of peoples conversations on the high holidays center around time. What time did you start? What time did you finish? What was the spread? Did I win in that online bet of finishing Musaf before 2pm? Actually I do wonder if finishing time pools are going around amongst people betting on finishing times.
What about a pool on how many people will stay in for Yizkor- I have been saying Yizkor for 20 years and I feel the same way every time. Everyone is outside partying while me and a bunch of old people talk to the dead. Then when I am finished I have to sneak outside and blend in pretending that I wasn’t in Yizkor and was only not outside because I was finishing up. In shul today there were three men and two women- small I know.
On Tuesday night I decided to come to Albany for Yom Kippor. I wanted to something low key and chilled and knew regular shul would have drove me nuts. I attended the services at the UAlbany campus as I have the last few years and it was very low key. Something very interesting happened this year however which may be a first for anyone reading this blog. The Hillel director who is a Lesbian Rabbi spoke at the services which were orthodox, she spoke before and after shul which made it OK, but it was definitely interesting to see a Lesbian Rabbi speaking in front of an audience divided by a floor to ceiling mechitza with a bunch of frum people present. I know that some people would have walked out in protest but I thought it was funny.
Also entering my mind was the thought that I have never met someone who grew up religious who didn’t fast on Yom Kippor. Even the kids I have met who call themselves Atheists still fast on Yom Kippor- what is up with that? Is that the pintele yid coming out? Is there anyone that eats on Yom Kippor?
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