Upon observing Yom Kippur for the first time

[rachelmanija]

Yesterday I observed Yom Kippur for the first time, with a (slightly fudged via a little black coffee) fast and six hours in the temple

Comments

[etrangere]

That's a beautiful post, thank you for it.

[badnoodles]

I've always admired the Jewish approach to theology. The way you describe it, makes it sound like something I should perhaps investigate a little deeper, even if I am about the biggest WASP ever.

[spectralbovine]

I decided that whenever the liturgy said any name of God, I would take “God” to mean “all that exists and is good, including all that is good in humanity and all that is good in myself.” When I thought of it that way, I found that I actually did believe in virtually the entire service.Huh, I like that

[rachelmanija]

I hope you noticed this post's tag. ;)

[spectralbovine]

I did! Hey, wait, that's a new tag! And it's totally a me reference. Aw.

Also, for the record, I didn't think your post was tl;dr, and I'm glad it wasn't cut when I saw it, as it made me more likely to read the whole thing since I could see it wasn't all that long.

[rachelmanija]

Hmmm. In that case, I have uncut!

[copperwise]

Thank you for this post.

[chomiji]

Mazel tov!

>hugs!<

I went again to my new congregation, which is meeting in a local elementary school at this point (an improvement over the Catholic Church social hall we used last year, which has a serious mold problem). For Kol Nidrei (Sunday night) and Ne'ilah (the closing service yesterday evening), we had our choir and a three-piece combo (bass, drums, and flute) in addition to the cantor with his Spanish/folk guitar. When I told my sister about this, she said "You go to a hippie synagogue."

[rachelmanija]

We don't have hippie instruments, but the cantor has a gorgeous voice.