October 9, 2019, Onboard Queen Mary 2
This year my birthday falls on the most solemn day of the year, Yom Kippur. No connection, of course!
I attended Yom Kippur services onboard. The rabbi was a large man, a retired rabbi from Oklahoma. The most riveting part of the service was a recording of a female cantor singing the Kol Nidre with piano accompaniment. It was extraordinarily beautiful and transported me to another dimension where difficulties might still exist but are subsumed into a world of vigorous faith.
All those prayers addressed to malek ha-olam, the king of the universe, were more problematic, however, at least for me.The King of the Universe has absconded like an absent father in Sandtown. So many absent fathers! That's why I have no problem having Him designated the King of the Universe and not the Queen. If God, who apparently controls the universe, is mythologically designated male, He remains an absentee Lord whose laws are easily ignored--we do it all the time. But try to ignore the mythologically designated female aspect, the Goddess of our great womb Earth, and you get in trouble right away. You can flout to a considerable degree the love-your-neighbor stuff and prosper, at least for a while; try to ignore, say, gravity by jumping out the window and the King won't lift a finger to save you. Earth's laws, some of them marvelous, some of them dangerous, are contravened at considerable risk. The stars are indeed splendid, but so are the glories of the Earth, the advantage of which is our being in direct contact with Her.
My friend told me her synagogue has removed all male references to You-(don't)-Know-Who. (Part of a misguided she-too movement, I think.) Progress?
The rabbi said we should do what is right without any hope for reward. Exactly, or almost exactly, what Hindus teach. It is not easy. Some dissidents, say, in China, do the right thing and get their reward: solitary confinement, or worse. Sometimes doing the right thing results in everything external going wrong. It is not easy and sometimes demands great heroism. Thank God for such people! Dietrich Bonhoeffer, for instance, was safe in America but returned to Germany to bravely fight fascism. His reward was an execution by beheading shortly before the war's end. Need I repeat it--doing the right thing without hope for reward is sometimes extremely difficult. We are, for good and for bad, creatures of Earth.
The rabbi's sermon was good, if not very profound. He praised a man who took care of this wife for fifteen years. When asked how he could have done all this--she had Alzheimer's--he simply said, "You do what you have to do." The second example of this behavior was a clerk in a store who apparently did what he had to do as well. The third example was a woman in the Israeli army who had to serve on Rosh ha'Shannah. She was determined to hear the sound of the shofar after she got off from duty.. Eventually, two persons accommodated her, long after the New Year's services were over. They did what they had to do as well.
The service was over 6:30. The rabbi warned us not to leave for dinner at 6, since this was the most solemn day of the year. If you intend to fast or feast afterwards, well, that was up to you. No one dared leave early.
I'm glad I went. The prayers, which have been intoned for centuries--and, I hope, of centuries to come--were beautiful, honed down to the essence like a bonsai oak. I might not believe in You the same way that the congregants did, but, malek ha-olam, I heard.
The night ended with small talk during dinner and dancing thereafter. Du musst dein Leben ändern.
This year my birthday falls on the most solemn day of the year, Yom Kippur. No connection, of course!
I attended Yom Kippur services onboard. The rabbi was a large man, a retired rabbi from Oklahoma. The most riveting part of the service was a recording of a female cantor singing the Kol Nidre with piano accompaniment. It was extraordinarily beautiful and transported me to another dimension where difficulties might still exist but are subsumed into a world of vigorous faith.
All those prayers addressed to malek ha-olam, the king of the universe, were more problematic, however, at least for me.The King of the Universe has absconded like an absent father in Sandtown. So many absent fathers! That's why I have no problem having Him designated the King of the Universe and not the Queen. If God, who apparently controls the universe, is mythologically designated male, He remains an absentee Lord whose laws are easily ignored--we do it all the time. But try to ignore the mythologically designated female aspect, the Goddess of our great womb Earth, and you get in trouble right away. You can flout to a considerable degree the love-your-neighbor stuff and prosper, at least for a while; try to ignore, say, gravity by jumping out the window and the King won't lift a finger to save you. Earth's laws, some of them marvelous, some of them dangerous, are contravened at considerable risk. The stars are indeed splendid, but so are the glories of the Earth, the advantage of which is our being in direct contact with Her.
My friend told me her synagogue has removed all male references to You-(don't)-Know-Who. (Part of a misguided she-too movement, I think.) Progress?
The rabbi said we should do what is right without any hope for reward. Exactly, or almost exactly, what Hindus teach. It is not easy. Some dissidents, say, in China, do the right thing and get their reward: solitary confinement, or worse. Sometimes doing the right thing results in everything external going wrong. It is not easy and sometimes demands great heroism. Thank God for such people! Dietrich Bonhoeffer, for instance, was safe in America but returned to Germany to bravely fight fascism. His reward was an execution by beheading shortly before the war's end. Need I repeat it--doing the right thing without hope for reward is sometimes extremely difficult. We are, for good and for bad, creatures of Earth.
The rabbi's sermon was good, if not very profound. He praised a man who took care of this wife for fifteen years. When asked how he could have done all this--she had Alzheimer's--he simply said, "You do what you have to do." The second example of this behavior was a clerk in a store who apparently did what he had to do as well. The third example was a woman in the Israeli army who had to serve on Rosh ha'Shannah. She was determined to hear the sound of the shofar after she got off from duty.. Eventually, two persons accommodated her, long after the New Year's services were over. They did what they had to do as well.
The service was over 6:30. The rabbi warned us not to leave for dinner at 6, since this was the most solemn day of the year. If you intend to fast or feast afterwards, well, that was up to you. No one dared leave early.
I'm glad I went. The prayers, which have been intoned for centuries--and, I hope, of centuries to come--were beautiful, honed down to the essence like a bonsai oak. I might not believe in You the same way that the congregants did, but, malek ha-olam, I heard.
The night ended with small talk during dinner and dancing thereafter. Du musst dein Leben ändern.
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