holiday

[cellio]

I'm really glad that the Reform movement follows the Israeli calendar for the festivals. This means that tonight and tomorrow we will combine Sh'mini Atzeret and Simchat Torah, while others in the disapora will have this on two days.

Why do I care in this case? Because I just don't get Sh'mini Atzeret. I mean, it's a torah-mandated holiday so

Comments

[xiphias]

Shmini Atzerit is the "Eighth Bit." Simchat Torah is fun, yes, but so is Sukkot. And I see Shimi Atzerit as an excuse to stretch Sukkot out for just one more day, just one more day of fun and partying. That's all. But to me, that works.

[peacheater77]

You say that your congregation is extremely staid when it comes to the dancing and singing and having fun.

I have heard that certain Hasidic congregations are much more centered around the joy of the event and, therefore, are probably not so staid at all

[cellio]

They're actually pretty good about singing (we've been working on that), but they aren't ready to dance in the aisles just yet. :-)

I've heard the same thing about Chassidic congregations. I've been hesitant to go alone, being a woman. (Did that once for Shabbat and had unfortunate results -- was the only person in the women's section.) I just realized that I actually have a connection there now, but it's probably too late to try to make arrangements for this year. (I'd want to go Thursday night and they won't be answering the phone from a few hours from now until it's over. I should have thought of this a couple days ago.) Well, there's always next year.

[goljerp]

Nah, what you really need to do is get to NY or the Boston area. For the latter, the Tremont Street Shul was always great (although I haven't been there in years). In NY, you could do the tour d'Simchat Torah on the Upper West Side, starting with JTS, going down to Ansche Chesed, hopping over to Sha'are Tzedek, and finishing with a bang at BJ. Yes, that's four Conservative Egalatarian shuls in one evening. If you still want more, Carlebach goes on for ever...

Alas, we haven't been outside since '01 (they used to close off an avenue and there would be blocks of people dancing outside...) but it's still a lot of fun!

[magid]

Tremont St. still has the street closed off :-).

Monica, if you decide to come (likely next year, at this point ;-), you're invited to stay; I'm about a half mile from Tremont St.

[ellipticcurve]

>It's sort of a naked holiday

Man, Jews really do have more fun.

[cellio]

Ah, the real story of Moadim l'Simcha (the season of our rejoicing) is out. :-)

[jducoeur]

Because I just don't get Sh'mini Atzeret.

Ah, yes -- the favorite holiday of the secular students at Brandeis. The first year I got there, I'd been there scarcely a month before we got a day off for Sh'mini Atzeret, and not one of my friends had the slightest clue *what* the heck Sh'mini Atzeret was. But for a college student, a day off from classes is cause for celebration all by itself...

[cellio]

But for a college student, a day off from classes is cause for celebration all by itself...

Well, that depends on whether you're going to have to make up the work. If everyone gets the day off (like it sounds like you did), that's a win. If you get the day off, but are still responsible for the material, that's less fun.

By the time you got the day off for Sh'mini Atzeret, you should have been through days off for Rosh Hashsna (3 weeks earlier) and Sukkot (1 week earlier), perhaps leading you to conclude that Jews just get most Thursdays off (or whatever). :-) (And Yom Kippur would have been in there too, but on a different day of the week.)

[jducoeur]

perhaps leading you to conclude that Jews just get most Thursdays off (or whatever).

Yep. The day of the week varies, but it's normal for Brandeis to miss scads of some particular day of the week in the fall most years. They wind up declaring one or two other days to be, eg, "Brandeis Mondays", where everyone does their Monday classes on a Wednesday, to even it out a bit.

(It's a delightfully weird school -- officially secular, but very much secular-Jewish in practice, so pretty much every Jewish holiday worth noting is an official school holiday...)

[cellio]

Does this also mean no Saturday exams, which happens sometimes at other schools?

It's gotta be pretty unusual (except in Israel) for Jews to be a significant-enough demographic that it's not necessary to make all sorts of special arrangements with professors, food service, employers, and whatnot. (My manager doesn't even ask any more. "It's a random Jewish holiday you've probably never heard of; see you the day after tomorrow" works fine.)

I'm just glad that we're done with this now until Pesach; while I enjoy the holidays, they can be pretty disruptive, especially with the clumping in the fall. Gotta talk to the author of the spec about that usability issue. :-)

interesting...

[chaos_wrangler]

A(n Orthodox convert) friend of mine was saying on the shabbat right after Simchat Torah that while in general she'd be happy to do away with the second day of Yom Tov (and thus the 3-day sequences of Yom Tov, Yom Tov, Shabbat), she wouldn't want to combine Shmini Atzeret & Simchat Torah 'cause all the "extra" things specific to each day would add together to be too much: Shmini Atzeret has Hallel, the prayer for rain, and Yizkor, Simchat Torah has Hallel*, Hakafot, and all the additional Aliyot so every adult male can have one, and if that day fell on Shabbat then there would be megilat Kohelet as well...

*granted we'd only do Hallel once if both days were combined

Re: interesting...

[cellio]

I wonder how this tends to play out in Israel, where all that can end up piled up on one day. I hadn't considered the addition of Kohelet to the mix; somehow that seems even more out of place with the dancing than Yizkor does. (Maybe that's because we say mourners' kaddish every service, so Yizkor isn't thematically too strange.)