Yom Kippur

     Wishing everyone an easy fast and a clean slate to begin the new year. Wishing everyone a productive year. I am always so tired after Rosh Hashana and Yom Kippur that its a good thing there is Sukkot and Simchas Torah soon after to have more days off of work and they are a lot less serious than the first two holidays. Happy Tishrei.

post yom kippur thoughts

i  don't enjoy fasting, but other than that i don't really mind yom kippur. i always use an english-hebrew machzor and read the translation every so often. the prayers are really quite beautiful. i actually enjoy it more than rosh hashanah.
musaf today ended ant 3:10 and we had an almost two hour break. it was great. we even ended neilah five minutes early.
this was the first time in years that i was able to stand for all of neilah. i think this was due to the lovely fall weather .
this yom kippur as usual there has to be  a spoiler to an  idyllic holiday. the shul i attended today has benches. during minchah, a woman wanted to sit in the bench i was sitting at. i moved over so she could squeeze by, but instead she decided to sit in the two inch space between me and the end of the bench and half on me. i wanted to scream at her for being so obnoxious,  but  it was yom kippur, so i did not.  i moved instead.  i didnt want to let her ruin my yom kippur.
anyway, im glad to have made in through yom kippur and am looking forward to a peaceful sukkot and simchat torah.

purim greetings

purim will soon be upon us. i have always loved purim . i wonder if the charedim will soon be calling megillas esther  megillas mordechai because they so want to hide women . this of course would be ridiculous because the name esther already means hidden so no need to hide her  more.
one of the reasons ive liked purim , aside from shalach manos and hamantashen is because a woman is a central part of the story of purim. now that i think about it intermarriage was a part of the purim story. after all achashverosh did not convert to judaism. then again, marrying a gentile is not one of the three cardinal sins in judaism- killing, idolatry or adultery so i guess to save the jewish people its ok to marry a goy. the funny thing is as many times as i have studied the story of purim i never remember discussing the intermarriage component. if it was discussed it must not have been much because i have zero recollection of such a discussion. i am surprised that the less ritualistic branches of judaism haven't had a field day with  this one. then again maybe they have but because im frum i haven't heard them do this.