So, I made it.  And I did a full 24 hours without eating or drinking anything this year, unlike last year, where I broke the fast around sundown at 6pm, so it wasn’t a full day.  I think the “no drinking” was harder—I put away about 5 glasses of water at dinner and then another half-gallon when I got home last night.  And yes, the term is “I drank water,” not “I hydrated.” “Hydrate” a verb for chemists, not for people.

I went to a different service this year than I usually go to, and at first glance, I didn’t like it.  The rabbi started things off on a touchy-feely note, asking everyone to say hi and introduce themselves to the people sitting around them.  Not exactly the kind of thing I appreciate on what’s supposed to be the most solemn and holy day of the year on the Jewish calendar, especially when I’m awake early and haven’t had breakfast.  Throughout the course of the service, the rabbi also sidetracked a lot, telling stories about stuff she’s recently heard about the traditions of prayer, and she also used a lot of the alternate passages in the prayerbook.  One time that really got to me was when we skipped the actual “asking for forgiveness” passage where we list off a whole bunch of things in English that we’ve probably done over the year and, well, ask for forgiveness—stuff like “Lord, please forgive me for having lied and hurtful to others and having been vain”—in favor of an alternate passage that included (and I’m not kidding here) “Lord, please forgive me for not paying enough attention to and protesting the threat of nuclear arms.” What? On top of all that, the rabbi also had an annoying tendency to chant the English passages using the same sing-song melodies we use to chant the Hebrew… which really annoyed me when she started a line in Hebrew and did the second half in English, chanting the whole thing.  Okay, no—you start in Hebrew, you finish in Hebrew.

All in all, I walked out of services yesterday feeling unfulfilled, like I didn’t get as much out of the experience as I wanted to—as a friend put it, “The gas tank of sin wasn’t fully empty.” (To which I replied, “Yeah, I think I need to drive it around a little more before I return it on E to the rental car place.") And that says a lot for someone who barely keeps to the practices of Judaism… hell, I ate a bacon cheeseburger last weekend to prove a point to someone.  Then I read writersbloc’s entry on the topic this morning, and it’s actually helping me feel better about things.  I realize that in my own way, I made the effort to at least go to services and keep to the traditions and fast all day long.  And in the end, it really is about me and how I feel about myself and what I do and trying to be a good person overall, rather than whether or not I’ve met some Supreme Being’s standards to keep from being smote.

Yes, I’ll probably sin a lot this year.  I’ll swear, I’ll drink too much, I’ll blaspheme (oh, boy, will I blaspheme), I’ll insult people—and I’ll probably accomplish all that before the end of just today, let alone an entire year—but all in all, I’ve got to do what’s right by me, even if that means going a little crazy every now and then.

Seal - “Crazy” (William Orbit Mix)
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