Shanah Tovah,
Sep. 20th, 2007 09:55 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ellenkushnerwhich is Hebrew for "[Have a] Good [New] Year."
We celebrated Rosh Hashanah last week with a small and very heterodox congregation in the city of Kobe, Japan - a mostly Sephardic service run by an Orthodox Lubavitcher rabbi. It was a hassle to get there, but I feel it's important to observe the holidays in community. To me, Judaism is not just about personal spirituality. I have yet to find a congregation I really feel a part of, but "community" is not just about the warm cuddlies. I'm glad we're back home for Yom Kippur, and sorry I haven't had the days in between to do what I traditionally do: get in touch with friends, pay off debts (emotional as well as financial), and take stock of my life in general . . . the days between Rosh & YK are meant to give you the chance to do all that - it's like a door being opened between sacred spaces, an opportunity to stand back from daily life and find your way out of the old year and into a new one. If you want to know more about it, please listen to my one-hour radio program, "A Door is Opened," which is available for online listening here (it's alphabetical, under Door - then click on Listen). It's a personal meditation on the holiday & what it can mean, interwoven with music by Laurie Anderson, Philip Glass, Richard Thompson & others, and additional commentary by Rabbi Harold Kushner (no relation), Joel Rosenberg, & Rabbi Barbara Penzner. It is, to my mind, some of the truest and most important work I've ever done; certainly one of the things I am most proud of. It grew out of my own profound experiences of the holidays (acquired as an adult, after some pretty alienating childhood ones in our suburban synagogue), and the comment by a friend on Yom Kippur that she didn't see why she "should have a special day to feel guilty." As I say in the show, it's not about guilt; it's about release from guilt.
Shanah Tovah.
We celebrated Rosh Hashanah last week with a small and very heterodox congregation in the city of Kobe, Japan - a mostly Sephardic service run by an Orthodox Lubavitcher rabbi. It was a hassle to get there, but I feel it's important to observe the holidays in community. To me, Judaism is not just about personal spirituality. I have yet to find a congregation I really feel a part of, but "community" is not just about the warm cuddlies. I'm glad we're back home for Yom Kippur, and sorry I haven't had the days in between to do what I traditionally do: get in touch with friends, pay off debts (emotional as well as financial), and take stock of my life in general . . . the days between Rosh & YK are meant to give you the chance to do all that - it's like a door being opened between sacred spaces, an opportunity to stand back from daily life and find your way out of the old year and into a new one. If you want to know more about it, please listen to my one-hour radio program, "A Door is Opened," which is available for online listening here (it's alphabetical, under Door - then click on Listen). It's a personal meditation on the holiday & what it can mean, interwoven with music by Laurie Anderson, Philip Glass, Richard Thompson & others, and additional commentary by Rabbi Harold Kushner (no relation), Joel Rosenberg, & Rabbi Barbara Penzner. It is, to my mind, some of the truest and most important work I've ever done; certainly one of the things I am most proud of. It grew out of my own profound experiences of the holidays (acquired as an adult, after some pretty alienating childhood ones in our suburban synagogue), and the comment by a friend on Yom Kippur that she didn't see why she "should have a special day to feel guilty." As I say in the show, it's not about guilt; it's about release from guilt.
Shanah Tovah.