Saturday, September 23, 2006

God: Happy Jewish New Year

Say hello to year 5767.

Amybear, Milo, and I are in Virginia celebrating Rosh Hashanah (and her dad's birthday) with Amy's parents and grandmother. It's good to see everybody and the cat did remarkably well traveling. No complaints.

Ok one complaint: temple services. I wish I could say that Rosh Hashanah services formed a deep understanding of Christianity's Jewish roots for me, but generally they were just really boring. Most synagogues are heavily liturgical and about half of the service is in Hebrew, which I can't read, speak, or understand. Having to sit through three and a half hours of services made be really appreciate the far more brief hour and a half of a normal Christmas or Easter.

UPDATE: I've done several seder's over the years. At least four or five now. Not a big deal and nowhere near as bad as Rosh Hashanah services. Seder's are generally done in homes by Jews who really want to just eat the food already. Amy's dad is more than willing to streamline his seder a bit for this reason. Even the long ones aren't that bad and I had to read the Four Questions for one of them. Besides matzoh with haroset is yummy.

Yom Kippur is worse than Rosh Hashanah though. The Jews are a people who like to eat. It's a cultural thing. I don't want to be in a synagogue full of 400-800 fasting, and therefore grumpy, Jews.

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