Tonight begins the Jewish holiday Rosh Hashanah. I wanted to wish anyone celebrating or observing it a happy and healthy and peaceful New Year.
שנה טובה ומתוקה
At the same time I wanted to use this as an opportunity to share my own views of and experiences with it.
Even with all the crazy awful health care experiences I’ve been having the last few years, I have still found a way to attend at least parts of the services (virtually) for both Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur.
(I should clarify that none of my barriers or symptoms have been connected to my brain grape. That has caused me ZERO symptoms. Pretty much ALL my health issues have been connected to my mental health, and the last few years my issues have been primarily due to my medications making me worse instead of better!! 😡 I am taking care of the brain grape now so that it does not cause me problems in the future.)
Even though my mental health is finally significantly better, I was initially planning to completely skip attending any virtual services this year. (In the last few days I decided maybe I’d try one more time.)
I’ve been feeling extremely disconnected from Judaism this year.
Reasons:
1) The abominable behavior of the state of Israel has made me feel really alienated. Most Jews seem to view it as their homeland and have a strong connection to it… It seems like there is always a prayer for the state of Israel in the services. I just can’t.
I’m going to try a new synagogue this year (virtually).
I also found a non-Zionist Jewish group based in Northern California that offers some of their services online. So I was going to try them… (they say “whether anti-Zionist, non-Zionist, or questioning Zionism,” so I’m not sure how that will be enacted. My hope is a break from talking about Israel. Prayers for the people of Gaza would be great. But it would be nice to not live in a place of anger during the service.)
If I don’t connect to either of those, this may be the last year I really bother with this whole Jewish observance thing.
2) The other key factor:
I have finally connected more strongly to Buddhism this year, which has presented a really viable alternative framework for connecting with spirituality. And Buddhism has resonated with me infinitely more than Judaism ever has.
I’ve started a Resources page here on my blog (link) where I plan to list things I’ve read or watched that have shaped my thinking around mindfulness and being fully present in the world. It will be a living document, so I invite you to revisit it. I hadn’t planned to publish the page yet but I realized it fits in perfectly with this post. I will work on adding more resources and links to that page in the coming weeks.
P.S. I use my Android speech to text function a lot, due to pain in my shoulders and wrists from typing. The above text had a really bizarre segment.
I said:
“I have still found a way to attend at least parts of the services for both Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur”
And it appeared as:
“I have still found a way to attend at least parts of the services for both Roshana and yum keeper war”
Seriously where did the word WAR come from? And there actually is a Yom Kippur war. But if you’re going to substitute in a random war you could at least spell it right. Otherwise it would be ideal if you just wrote the words I said instead of inventing new content for me!!!
I tried to figure out if my dictation software is somehow powered by AI and I could not easily find that. I have certainly never opted in to do anything related to AI on my phone. But based on the creative and sometimes disturbing word changes my dictation software does for me I’m thinking there has to be an element of artificial intelligence at work behind the scenes. Cool. Non consensual imposing of artificial intelligence. Ugh.
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