I can't take Rosh Hashanah! Something for nothing? My husband needs a dinner mate
By Wendy Belzberg
http://www.jewishworldreview.com --
I have always gone to temple on Rosh Hashanah and I am always bored. If I
don't go I feel guilty, but is there really any point in going when the
experience is not meaningful to me?
If you're looking for permission to stop attending High Holiday services,
you've written to the wrong columnist.
If last year's experience was boring, not to mention the years before
that, why haven't you sought out a different rabbi and a different shul?
Given the seriousness of the holidays (book of life and death and other
matters) it would seem to me that you're leaning in the wrong direction. Even
if you choose not to pray in the traditional sense, Rosh Hashanah is the
right time to do so, and a congregation filled with fellow Jews is the right
place for self-examination and reflection. Take along an anthology of stories
and essays meant to be studied during Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur; reading a
book during those minutes-or hours-that you are bored is the way many people
get through the long services.
* * *
Did you think the luncheon would be a small, intimate affair with just
you and a couple of the gals? Did you think the lunch was free? What exactly
were you thinking?
Like all organizations, Jewish organizations are about fund-raising. If
you are a person of means -- and I suspect you would not have been chosen if you
were not -- then you can buy several tables yourself and invite your friends to
be your guests. You accepted the honor, and so you are obligated to help make
the event a success. The good news is that you believe in the cause and can
passionately enlist others to support it. Get to work.
Next time you get a call offering you something "for free" --- a board seat,
an honorary position, an award, a condo-find out in advance how much it will
cost.
* * *
First put the little ones to bed, then eat dinner as a family with your
12 year old. There, problem solved.
The age difference makes it impossible to get all of the children on the
same schedule. But be patient. Within the next year or two your second child
will be old enough to join the family table.
(Then you'll mourn the loss of
the wonder years and wish they hadn't passed so quickly.)
You and your husband can now be in bed by 9:30. Or, you can go out for a
drink, a walk or a movie together. Not a bad substitute for dinner
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