And have I fallen so far, and is the hour so late
That nothing remains but the cries of my hate?
The cries in the dark that nobody hears
Here where I stand at the turning of the years
- "Valjean's Soliloquy," from Les Miserables
Shabbat shalom is the greeting for Sabbath peace, but Rebecca sure wasn't feeling any of that on Friday evening. Our ( Read more... )

The last few days have felt pretty crappy. After school on Friday, I took "Briana" to the lakefront and we fed the ducks and splashed around in the fountain. That sounds like fun in theory, doesn't it? So why did she seem bored to death, yet again? Too often I feel like I'm forcing her to do stuff she doesn't want to. I need to call our caseworker ( Read more... )

Athena was in town this weekend, and on Sunday, she, Sara, and I went to see The Possession. (AKA the Jewish exorcism movie I posted about here). I was pretty disappointed. Some scenes that were supposed to be scary just felt stupid, and its treatment of Judaism was borderline offensive to me. The only highlights were the two young actresses and ( Read more... )

Just when I thought the High Holy Days were over, along comes Sukkot. Our congregation had a little hamotzi and kiddush under the sukkah on the lawn after services tonight. The weather was perfect for it -- cool and crisp and autumn-y. But everyone from the temple tried to fit under the sukkah (Mr. G said, "It's as crowded as a New York City ( Read more... )

Congratulate Rebecca! I actually managed to fast for most of Yom Kippur yesterday. I had a few bites here and there (I made the devilled eggs yesterday, and while cracking the eggs, I cracked too) but for the most part, I managed to abstain. The biggest mistake I made was running errands on my bike after I’d barely eaten all day. Very stupid of me.

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I had the strangest dream last night. I was at work, doing my job as usual, when Boss-Man summoned me to his office in his most serious voice. When I got there, he said, "Ms. C------, your rabbi tells me you haven't been a good Jew lately." I said something like, "What the hell? I am so a good Jew! Rabbi W would never say that about me!" And just ( Read more... )

As regular visitors to this blog may have already noticed, Rebecca changed her layout! This is a huge deal for me, as I've had very similar versions of the same layout ever since I joined LiveJournal back in 2007. I'd actually been wanting to change to the minimalism style for a while now, but I didn't think it allowed header images, and I'm pretty ( Read more... )

My first High Holy Days as an official Jew are still rolling on. After the Rosh Hashanah morning services, a very small group of us met at the lake for a tashlich, a Jewish ritual of going to a body of water and throwing bread to the ducks or seagulls. (That's right, the Jews have a name for that.) We couldn't stay for long before a fierce ( Read more... )

Even though I was attending temple during the High Holy Days last year, I wasn't able to go on Rosh Hashanah, so this year was my first time. It was very different from regular services. There was a lot more structure and singing (it actually reminded me of a Catholic Mass) and our temple had a guest rabbi from Dallas. I did some soul-searching, ( Read more... )

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