by Michael S. Kaplan, published on 2007/09/22 09:31 -04:00, original URI: http://blogs.msdn.com/b/michkap/archive/2007/09/22/5055092.aspx
When visiting family in Cleveland over Yom Kippur, some interesting issues take place.
They go to an orthodox congregation now, and the scooter question is a big one.
Many of the prohibitions about work on the Sabbath apply to Yom Kippur, and even if they did not it also falls on the Sabbath this year.
I did try going to כל נדרי (Kol Nidre) without the scooter but I quickly regretted it and let people know in no uncertain terms that I couldn't do it again....
Perhaps not surprisingly, the issue is different for different people....
I suspect people who were unhappy (and who will be today) got over it quickly so I was not too worried, it gave them something to talk about if nothing else....
But it led me to think about issues like I pointed out in If the porcine is טְרֵפָה then the fact that the bovine probably is too ought to count for something, though more extended where you can likely have 12 or more opinions for any 10 people you talk to about it....
The law can be clear, but not all the people who follow the law are clear on how they feel about it. The dynamic is interesting, as one would expect it to be.
Of course as I sit here and type this on my laptop I am clearly not troubled by the notion of using electricity and the computer and the Internet on Yom Kippur and if people wanted to find my sacrilegious I would think that this makes a much appropriate target.
Not that I am afraid of a little controversy. :-)
I saw my old math teacher Mr. Snodgrass who was quite unamused years ago about me in his math class doing calculations in base 5 so many years ago (while I suspect being delighted that he inspired the idea in the first place).
And I also saw the Sklars, which is always interesting (years ago in high school, I was specifically told that I was not allowed to date their daughter, you see; it now manifests in the conversation as an odd familiarity about the eagerness of youth and the jokes about how she was visiting for ראש השנה (Rosh Hashanah) and we had "just" missed each other, something we had technically been doing since I last saw her in New York some 7+ years ago!).
Plus several others, all of which was very nice. It is in part those personal connections that make trips back to where one used to live an interesting experience.
It makes for a high holiday that rates a bit higher in my book, in fact that has been cranked to 11. :-)
I was going to talk more about Yom Kippur and its historical connections with both Christianity and Islam but the Wikipedia article probably says more than I could so I'll let you read that if you are interested....
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chris on 22 Aug 2011 10:28 PM:
wow nice idea............
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