Simchat Torah

Simchat Torah, the end of the Yom Tov season, and usually a massive let down!
You see as kids Simchat Torah is the best day of the year, because you get to run around, and then you get to eat sweets, the sweets then make you run around more and eat more sweets, and this cycle continues ad nauseum climaxing with "mummy, i dont feel too good!"
so this idea of Simchat Torah being the best day of your life is projected onto every ST thereafter which is a problem when you are too old to run around and scramble on the floor for sweets, so you exchange it for booze and birds. but thats not as much fun, getting hold of booze can be tricky and girls are stupid. (throw stones at them) so every year you hope for a rocking ST and it never matches your expectations and you turn into an old man in shul, who wants hakafot to finish quickly, who wants there to be a decent single malt knocking around and wants to go home and sleep out the last yom tov for a few months.
ST became that for me, and then i started going to a Kiruv minyan, it is at one of the big names in Kiruv and its rocking. Alcohol is not flowing freely, there is a l'chaim to be had, but its all abuot the dancing. and the dancing is nuts. why, because you are with people who gave their lives for torah, looking around the room you see rabbis who have devoted their lives to spreading the good word and you see people who have literally given up the good life, to become an orthodox jew and when these people get a chance to dance, celebrating the one thing that defines their life, there is nothing else in the world that can match that.
there are other places which have a name of being "good" on ST, but they dont match it, they are good because there is a decent amount of people to shmooze with and there are good whiskeys, but that is't ST, it is what ST becomes when you miss the point.
and this year there was hakafot shniyot at the aforementioned kiruv minyan, and i went. admittedly i had danced for 24 hours straight and couldnt feel my feet but when the music came on, and the sifrei torah came out, we danced the night away.
next year look for a place where the people there prioritise torah and i guarantee that it will surpass all your childhood memories of running, jumping and sweet snatching!

Fasting

I know i am a bit behind, its was just something funny i noticed last night. I was sitting there and someone was eating some food next to me, and all i could think of was how that person could consume anymore food after two days of non stop eating. forget the four meals yuo had as standard, if you walked into anyone elses house they shoved food right infront of you and obviously, not wanting to offend you ate. so im sitting there yesterday, the smell of microwave pizza wafting towards me, and all i could think of, was never eating again! and i was thinking how exactly a week earlier i was sitting in shul at kol nidrei, thinking how i couldnt wait to eat. and then i realised something funny, something that i do every fast, i noticed how i always focus on what i could have eaten prior to the fast. i sit there thinking, "oh man, i should have had that slice of melon or that burger, it was just sitting there, nobody was having it....." but im sure loads of people do that.
what i want to know is, how far back do people go when dreaming about food, because this yom kippur i was thinking about food i should have eaten over the summer. i was thinking back to when i was in teaneck and how i should have bought the nachos, or how when i was in the local supermarket i should have bought some celery. i have wierd cravings.
it amused me slightly about how i was craving food from months earlier, which would have had zero effect on my fasting experience a long while later!

Yom Kippur

I'm aware I am a day late to be talking about Yom Kippur, this is more of a reflection.
So I am sitting in shul on Kol Nidrei, and just couldn't be bothered. Which is wierd because I was looking forward to Yom Kippur, I always do. But this year the early mornings, the mess my schedule had become trying to fit in an ealry night to accomodate those early mornings, had both taken their toll. And I just couldn't be bothered.
Then the rabbi spoke, he isn't the best orator but is a massive scholar, a tremendous fountain of knowledge and he mentioned how teshuva is a gift. That was not the focus of his talk but merely an aside. That got me thinking, I had been getting up before the crack of dawn for a long time, I was shattered but there was a point to it, i was able to claim a free gift. People will do crazy things, like queue up for hours to get a free gift, the nicer the gift, the longer the queue, and there I was, I was going to let a month of introspection and working on myself amount to nothing because i was tired. Its wierd, when i decided i was going to put more effort into it this year than i had done in the past, time FLEW, before i knew it i was at the gates, Neilah was upon us, and it was as amazing as it always is for me.
And now this morning, with the extra half hour i allowed myself in bed, its a shame. we no longer have the free gift of teshuva, The King is no longer in the field, our tephillot have to have the extra effort to get through, we dont have the V.I.P. passes any longer. and now its a fight, to keep that inspiration going, to make sure our new resolutions keep, through succot and the long winter ahead.

J-Blogosphere

I've really got into my blogging this time around. As i mentioned in my first post this is probably my 4th attempt at a blog and this one is going very well. I guess I have got to thank Google reader, I have linked all the sites I frequent and it also has a handy tool for keeping upto date with blogs I follow. So in the past when I would have seen a blog I was interested in I would just keep the webpage open and then lose it when I had to reboot the computer. But now I keep upto date with all the blogs I am into.
I am currently reading about ten or so, some right pearls out there! It is just so interesting to see how other people relate to Judaism and G-d, to read of their struggles and their inspirations. Its amazing to read about an Australian Jews travails and then to read of a Brooklynites anticipation of the New Year!
There is one segment of the J-Blogosphere which I pay much attention to, that of those Jews who have, well, gone off the derech. Those, brought up in the fold who have now left. for whatever reason.
I must read several of these blogs now, for one reason, I don't want to start having a go at them for the reasons they don't believe or the reasons they were put off Orthodoxy, rather I read what they have to say, and I answer them for myself. They raise some tremendously valid questions and I keep asking myself, "how do I answer that?" be it questions on Evolution to enquiries on the validity of torah! I constantly reaffirm my beliefs and knowledge through this.
I don't know if this will annoy the various atheist J-Bloggers but i hope not, for they came to their conclusions by questioning again and again, and I remain a believer in my convictions not through some blind leap of faith but rather because I question and question and get the answers.

Time Passing Me By

My pops mentioned to me we would have to build the succah soon. Now succah building is quite the get together in our house. We have been using the same succah for about 6 years and every year we forget how to assemble it. This results in a lot of shouting and banging!
But I was not worried about the building of the succah, it was the fact that I only put it away, what seemed like yesterday. Quite the harrowing thought, this year has FLOWN by. Its nuts and very scary, because as I take stock of the past year there are some aspects where I've really advanced and grown, and some parts where I've just let things go unchanged.
Wow. This has really snuck up on me. Kinda taken my breath away.
Gotta make sure next year, I use time a little better.
Oh well, more tossing and turning.
Sent from my BlackBerry® wireless device

The Beautiful Struggle

Rosh Hashanah is approaching, and as a sefardi waking up at 6 am for selichot is taken its toll, Thank the Good Lord for caffeine!
Not blogged since July 1st, been out the country, been busy, been tired. excuses, its how i roll.

I think i have found what i am going to focus on this year, something that has kind of rounded off my philosophical advances in 5769.

I listened to shiur by Rabbi Yitzchak Berkowitz, of The Jerusalem Kollel, seriously he speaks to my soul, and i just felt he would be the right person to get me in the mood.

He mentioned how we ask for life on Rosh Hashanah, but are we asking for life i.e. breathing and eating and being healthy. Yeah, sure but we ask for more. We ask for the oppotunity to live life, not as an organism but as a man/woman, not as an animal but as a creature imbued with a neshamah, a creature able to make free will choices and to grow, to refine ourselves. Over Rosh Hashanah we ask G-d to let us choose, not like a cow chooses which patch of grass to eat or like a dog chooses who to bark at but to choose between life and death. When we ask G-d to inscribe us in the book of life we want to make choices, we want to fight, we want to struggle so we can grow as humans, we can grow as Jews, we can grow close.

My focus this year will be to push myself, to do things that are slightly over my head, things that i would have shyed away from last year. Because it is though the fighting that we realise who we are, the qualities that we possess and scarily, those that we don't. It is when we come out of the crisis, that we buzz, we have gotten to know ourselves and what we can accomplish. Hey, it may not be fun, but it matters. I can have fun when im older.

And a last note, why do we dip the apple in the honey? Because when we ask the Lord for a push, for a kick up the backside, we dont want it to be sad, to come through misfortune, we want it to be sweet, that at all times during the fight we know where we are going that we can be happy through it.

Hopefully, whilst it will be a struggle, it will be a beautiful struggle.