This evening marked the real official end to the massive holiday season, which has left exhausted. A group of us broke down 2 of them in about 3 hours. I am a little sad the season is over, it was a lot of fun this year, but I am also glad to have wrapper it all up. It was exhausting!

Peace to everyone in the new year!

We are in the midst of the holiday whirlwind! Since the end of Yom Kippur I have helped assemble 2 sukkahs, including the communal one at the PATH station in Hoboken. This one in particular needed some intense tree trimming to make it kosher. 3 of us were climbing, sawing, pruning, and running around until late into the night this week to make certain it was all wrapped up by the start of Yom Tov.

Last night I attended the first night dinner in the succah of my neighbor, a Chabad Rabbi, along with some members of the neighborhood, including the Rabbi of my Conservative synagogue and his family. It has been a long time since I sat down to a real meal in a sukkah!

This morning, I woke up and attended services for the holiday with the Chabad Rabbi and he gave me the lulav and etrog above as a gift for helping him with all the sukkah and sukkot related setup.

I didn’t eat before running to Minyan and when I picked up the etrog it smelled so delicious my stomach growled!

Now I am back home for a yontif nap. All the Jewish celebrating is exhausting.

When we spend all our efforts in hyper commercialization all uniqueness is removed.

An apt comparison is that of wheat; whole unbleached wheat is hardly processed and remains full of minerals and good fibers whereas hyper processed wheat has to have chemically produced nutrition added back in.

Someday people will, I hope, revolt against this crap and search for authentic holiday experiences. I see a direct relationship between this lack of authenticity and a revival in religious oriented celebrations of holidays.

My involvement with USH started when I decided to answer an ad in the shofar to help with the
building. I thought, well I know how to fix stuff and am not afraid of dirt, so lets see where this
goes.

That is how I bet Barry Grossman. He met me in front of the building, we chatted for a few
minutes and in my recollection handed me a ring of keys, suggested I look around for things that
needed attention and to check out the basement in particular.
And now the running joke is that I am in charge the basement

A little bit about me Classic Jewish tale: grand parents and great grandparents came over from
Eastern Europe, largely observant, Yiddish speaking

Involved in Conservative Synagogue and Reform movements

Bar Mitzvah: refused to have anyone from my family there, bribed by my grandmother, and
rejected this and the golden calf parties. I wanted to read from the Torah in a purely religious
unadulterated experience.

Skipping 8-9 year, I moved to NYC, about 1.5 blocks from JTS, but couldn’t get engaged in Jewish
life at Columbia and in the area.

Fast forward another 10 years and I was standing in the Jewish quarter of Prague realizing that I
was disconnected from MY past, MY heritage, MY tradition because my friends were asking me
questions about Jewishness that I knew I should know the answers to, but didn’t

This was a little flag in my head. What was I up to?

When I returned I was wandering around the book store and came across The Sabbath: Its
Meaning for Modern Man (1951) by Abraham Joshua Heschel founder of JTS. It a short book, read
it, it will help you realize what is special about being a Jew. After reading his thoughts on
sanctification of time vs. space, it become immediately clear I had been looking for theological and
philosophical constructs that already existed. But not only did they exist they were mine already, I
knew them, I just forgot.

I began to read as much as I could, bough a new siddur, and a set from artsroll covering the major
holidays. And started to pour through Internet sites like askmoses JTS, jewfaq, myjewishlearning,
ou, chabad . They all have so much information and all contain a “start here” section.

But this wasn’t enough, because I knew that being Jewish wasn’t only a theological or academic
pursuit but we are taught that application in the real world is paramount, aka the system of mitzvot
in concrete and the Kabalistic Tikkun Olam - repairing the world – in the deeply philosophical
abstract.

I knew USH was here in my neighborhood, but I still wanted to figure out what kind of Jew I
wanted to be, I looked into Reconstructionist, Modern Orthodox, Reform, and unaffiliated
synagogues all around the area, but came back to idea that USH was in my neighborhood and I
would be able to interact with my neighbors.

I also enjoy volunteering because of deeply rooted belief that it is the only way to counteract the
personal despair and frustration created by years of destroying other nations, increasing poverty,
decreasing wages, increasing environmental distress, etc. By volunteering here in Hoboken, I can
affect positive change in what I can touch and see. USH has helped me live into action this
important personal ethical goal.

In addition to the ethical, USH has fostered my spiritual life through good book suggestions on
Messianism, of course services on holidays and Shabbat, and Tikkun l’el Shavuot where I debuted
this year with a talk on Demons and Angels in the Talmud along side presentations on Historical
Zionists Figures, Traditional Rabbinic Ordination & the Legend of Acher, Judaism’s most famous
heretic.

The most memorable moment, by far, was last Yom Kippur, my first at USH, where I felt the
weariness of fasting transition through the words of Isaiah “Then shall your light burst through like
the dawn/And your healing spring up quickly;” into joy and celebration as Havdalah arrived. It was
as if the sins of the past were physically lifted off of me and I could indeed begin a new year anew.

But more importantly, this is a place where we are afforded the wiggle room to explore the kind of
Jew each of wants to be. There are some leftward leaning Jews here as well as some rightward
leaning and all interact with a kind of respect for each other that is a model for a level of civility
that is inspiring. Now, don’t think there are not tussles and disagreement, but what family, what
JEWISH family, doesn’t have kibitzing?

I encourage you to come bring your story to USH, to find and make your special place in our
Jewish community. You are welcome at any time to any of our events, even if you have no idea
where to start. Just raise your hand and someone will help you.

If you dont know where to start, come ask, take a class, show up, dig in!!!

And if you are thinking, wow I cant start this, I have so much else going on or so much to relearn. I
leave you with the thoughts Rabbi Nachman of Breslov, great grandson of the Besht, and founder
of the Breslover Dynasty (I love that term!) “G-d doesn’t rule over his creatures with tyranny” and
“the Torah was not given to ministering angels”. Meaning G-d knew we would mess it up and
expects us to, so much so he gave us the tools to fix what we break! Rebbe Nachman goes on to
say “do not be abnormally strict to the point of foolishness, certainly do not let it make you
depressed…True devotion consists of simplicity and sincerity; pray, study, do good deeds, don’t
worry your self…”

So another Biblically ordained day of rest passes into memory…

What was on my mind this Shabbat? I was thinking about the relationship between certain classes here in the my area. How basically people like me ignore and avoid certain other classes in the name of PCness. Simply put, we are not allowed to complain about how other behave so we perpetuate our own segregation. Just look around you! There are malls for one set of the population and malls for another. It is a shame that PCness has let us ignore what some call “home training” as a virtue.

I have also been thinking about how it is worth reminding yourself every morning that the choices you make each and every second of your life define who you are. This is vital to understanding why you are a success or not, why you are liked or not, why you are anxious or not, why you need medication to sleep at night or not, allow yourself to be abused in a relationship or not, and on and on and on.

I have been thinking more and more about how there are people I observe who in one context are earnestly trying to make the world a better place, but at the same time refuse to see the ugliness of patterns of behavior. This incongruousnesses lies at the heart of how choices define who you are. Being good to only those you choose is easy, being good to everyone is really hard! But I ask you, what is more virtuous? The cynical relativists out there will say, “well it is hard to be good all the time, so why should I try to be, especially if no one is going to cut me a break?” The answer is so simple, break cutting starts with you.

Do you see how these 2 are related? To a certain class of people everything is about “respect”. Every other words out of their mouths is some derivative of this term. I think they really want what is more commonly called politeness (again home training) or perhaps break cutting. I don’t know how to solve this problem and this divide, but a little bit more break cutting certainly wouldn’t hurt!!

Last night was a seriously fun time!!! Here is a photo of our fire!

It was a super cool holiday! I got some wonderful gifts from my family and friends. A gift certificate to Artscroll that allowed me to get a new Tanach and some missing back volumes of the Bavli Talmud, a new bulb for my fishtank, a cool Lego car kit, some misc books and magazine, a beautiful knit sweater that was hand knit by my mother, and a few other thoughtful gifts.

Thank you everyone!

I left work tonight at 11 and walked past Macy’s holiday windows. I had a huge grin on my face before I knew what was happening. They are pretty cool this year. I don’t know if you can tell but the dragon’s eyes are TV’s showing people looking in at him.

I walked out of my office tonight at about 7 with thoughts of the holiday on my mind. As I walked by starbucks I saw the decrepit old homeless lady I frequently see in the area. It is cold and raining so she is inside reciting names and numbers from an old phone book. I assume there is something mentally wrong with her because an obsession like this is a good indicator.

What memory pops into my mind? The exact moment I learned holidays are a sham and people suck.

I was about 6 or 7, because my parents were still married, at least they wanted it to look that way, and I was driving in the car with my father. We were stopped at the light on the corner of Union and something street, I am guessing 14th maybe. As I looked at the large tanks of the milk processing plant across from the bank, my father asked me what was wrong. I told him that I had read a story in the Bangor Daily about how many unwanted cats and dogs there were at the local shelter. Worse yet, and the main point of the article, that people give the gift of animals far too cavalierly resulting in even more animals post holiday being killed at the shelter.

My father tried to reassure me, but he could not. Instead he used it as an object lesson in responsibility.

As you can see, I never forgot that moment. Nor have I forgotten the lesson.. We have a responsibility to tend to things around us. Do not make excuses, get up and go out and do it. One less gift if one more donation. Do not fall for the trap of hopelessness or the intractable nature of the problem. We have the power to make our world at hand better.

So this Thanksgiving I am thankful for the gifts I have been given that I can give away.

UPDATE: Thanks to google maps, it is exactly Union and 14th, it doesn’t look like there is a dairy there anymore, but this was almost 30 years ago.