Hey, everybody, how were your Atonement Days? Mine was great. Where I went, the morning service lasted–and I kid you not about this–ten hours. For Shacharit, Torah service, and Musaf. Niggunim with unlimited attention span. My own attention span is a little more limited, but it was still pretty groovy until my inner Litvak started griping about could they hurry it up a little? They started Mincha at 4:30pm, after having started in the morning at 6:30am or so. I went someplace else for Neilah, though, because I had a strong desire to end the fast on time.
The secret to a good writing day is, predictably: unplugging the modem.
I have 12,500 words so far in my current chapter and I haven’t done almost any of the real expository work–this is just like the crude crayon outline. You’ll remember that each chapter is supposed to be about 7500 words. There will be much much cutting of the fat, but still. I wonder how much over the wordcount my editor is going to let me go. Hopefully some.
We’re (those of us dwelling in the Holy Land) on Winter Clock now, which happens every year right before Yom Kippur, because why end the fast at 7 if you can end it at 6? Sometimes this whole Jewish State business cracks me up. In any case, the good news is that for the next month, my friends in the U.S. are magically an hour closer to me, which makes emailing, IMming and phone calls an hour easier. Yay for that.
My days were awesome! 🙂
Ten hours, eh? Wow. Where’d you go?
At Elat Chayyim there was an optional restorative Torah-yoga thing at 7:30, which I did not attend; services proper ran from 8:30 until about 3:30, and then we took a break for about an hour and a half before Yizkor and Mincha and Ne’ilah. It was actually just about perfect for me — all the good jazz I expect from the machzor, plus all the good jazz I get out of niggunim and really settling in to the day.
That said, it sure feels good to be eating again today… 🙂
“My inner Litvak.” Excellent phrase! Worth copyrighting.
For some more grumpiness, this time directed at ba’alei teshuvah, check out this speech. Over 9 minutes but worth it: http://www.njop.org/html/hgvideo.html
When I told my dad about the time change planned perfectly to coincide with YK, he said, “I guess that’s the kind of thing you can do when you have a country.” Classic.
The time change always seemed fundamentally misguided to me (like the US congresspeople who argued that the extra hour of daylight in the summer would be better for the crops) — if the fast ends an hour earlier, then it also starts an hour earlier, so you haven’t gained anything (especially if shacharit is starting an hour earlier!). And your body clock is providing no help, since it hasn’t had time yet to adjust to the time change. But hey, if it makes people feel better, go for it.