Welcome to the Commenting Pixie Party!
I hope you're all feeling better soon.
And I hope the coming year is sweet and happy for all of you.
Okay, now Haloscan is just messing with me.
Happy New Year! I adore fresh challah with honey. Mmmm. I could eat just that. And often do.
Also, and seriously, flagellation? You went to a different sort of service than I did. It was always about renewal, and getting a clean slate to make fresh choices. I did, however, hate the "book of life" stuff.
And since I have LONG LONG LONG wished I could live in your neck of the woods because there are such awesome congregations there -- not that I would, but I could.
Succot and Simcha Torah are more fun. I'm even thinking of going to shul for those. (I went today! I wish we had a different congregation, though, because I'm with you on the wealthy, self-assured. But it's that or orthodox, and wealthy and self-assured wins out. Slightly.)
Funny, I'm all about the holidays that call for self-flagellation. I think humanity needs *more* holidays that are about Atonement...
As an Intermittent Episcopalian, one of the things that bugs me about the congregation I've found here is that when they do Rite I (the 1920s-era service), they leave out the "we are not worthy so much as to gather up the crumbs under thy table" passages. And Ash Wednesday and Lent? I"m more likely to be at church for them than Christmas Eve or Easter morning.
Side effect of being raised by an athiest Calvinist and the child of a lapsed Catholic? I dunno.
L'Shana Tovah to everyone 
Happy New Year from me as well...sorry about the sniffles, the pajamas, and the shouting over football. But challah with honey sounds nice, too...
Happy New Year!
L'shanah Tovah to you and the whole Scribbler-Blue family! May your year be as sweet as a Weh Hox win.
Happy New Year, PS!
Hope you feel better, Phantom. And man, do I ever know what you mean about male decibel levels at touchdowns. Oy.
Oh feel better soon!
(And you can always come down to Fancypants 2 for services. We were booted out of the chapel today to make room for the services. They refuse to do tickets, and just hold them in gargantuan spaces instead.Of course, having space doesn't in any way touch all of your other issues with the day....)
Happy New Year! And hopefully no more sniffles (& sinus & bronchitis).
We have much shouting from both genders in our house during football season, it really scares one of our dogs- he spends football season in the back bedroom. Tonight is particularly bad since it's Denver vs. New England and we have one die-hard fan of each (me: Denver, the sqvirrel: New England). Those are the tough days to be a fan in our house.
Gosh, I've thought for years that having an annual reason for making amends with humans and God sounded like a good idea, probably because I grew up surrounded by so many Christians who felt like saying some magic words once covered them for everything.
Don't you have a cool, female rabbi in the vicinity? Cause I'm thinking as popular as you are with clergywomen, you'd be the rabbi's new best friend!
Anyway, hope you feel better soon.
L'Shana Tova to all the Scribbler-Blues! Wishing you a sweet and not-too-sniffly New Year.
I definitely understand about the wealthy and self-assured -- very very much not my glassele tea, or DH's. You would like the congregation we've settled on, methinks. It has tons of public service types, no displays of wealth (no listings on walls of donors, no gildings, clothes tend towards the casual -- the rabbis wear competing baseball jerseys during Sunday school, Cubs and White Sox). But there is a strong pro-Israel view you would have trouble with, but it's not necessarily agreeing with all of Israel's policies. We have two rabbis, and one is a cool female fond-of-reading good-at-answering-kid-questions rabbi. (The other is great too - he always sounds like he's figuring something out, he's excited by the different possible interpretations, he cares about the spiritual aspects - he is the opposite of a drama merchant, which was the kind of rabbi I grew up with).
I have trouble with the "it is written who shall live and who shall die" liturgy too, particularly in years when I've known good people who have died young, but I've taken it to mean something like their being good will help ease the sorrow, in the sense that there won't be regret that they should've been different, and that eventually the happy memories of them will predominate, something like that. I haven't worked it out to my satisfaction, but the rabbis have both included in their sermons the point that the liturgy doesn't mean that good people won't die or have bad things happen.
Anyway, I love the idea of pineapple pizzas for R.H. dinner! Go LG.
I bet your challah was delicious! (Better than our Whole Foods challah, which was glazed nicely but quite dense and rather tough.) We did have a pomegranate (hate seeding them but love the seeds) and said the saying I just learned, "may your merits be as many as the seeds of a pomegranate."
I'll have to give you a call to tell you about the sermon at our neighborhood synagogue on Rosh Hashanah, and how I was mortified that the whole thing was about asking for money for Israel, and none of it was about G-d or figuring out your relationship with others or anything else. I was deeply disturbed.
Commenting by HaloScan
