It just so happens that one of the things frum folks like most about Yom Kippur and Rosh Hashanah is the davening times competition. However, one of the worst things about living in a small community is that you can’t brag about how long or short your yomim noraim davening went. You can’t bitch about how much things sold for at auction, or the fact that you hate when kibudim are auctioned off and you can’t debate with anyone on who’s Rabbi had the most fiery mussar before neilah.
I felt a tinge of jealousy, when I immediately logged onto Facebook last night in search of juicy things to start my new year off with. I saw that everyone was talking about their auctions, davening times, and fiery mussar. Having ended Yom Kippur after everyone had gone to sleep, I couldn’t brag about the perfect cries of the chazzan and the fiery pre-neilah speech of the Rabbi. I couldn’t brag about our 3:30 ending of musaf and the fact that they gave me pesicha for neilah (there’s a forum on YWN about how much it sometimes gets auctioned for), which either means someone donated a lot of money in my name or the fact that I need some adrenaline to the soul to get through the next year.
There were no auctions in my shul, they hand out cards to flip a tab, make a sappy speech about needing your money, but no auction. For the record, I love when shuls auction things, it makes for good entertainment and for the record, I hate auctions – it ruins the mood. Auctions are probably a necessary evil, if you have em it makes people give tzedaka at such an important time and if you don’t have em, you just lost out on needed money’s at the beginning of the fiscal year.
Not only does our shul not auction kibudim, they don’t have reserved seats and I think you’d have to put a gun to the Rabbis head before he’d think of charging. Thank God, because I hate when people charge for seats, especially those who are very strict on it. I know so many people who wouldn’t step foot in shul if they had to pay, plus on YK most shuls don’t even have a kiddush.
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