Yom Kippur and Stuff

My time in Oakland was wonderful. It’s really nice to remind yourself every once in a while of just what good friends you have.

By the way, Michael W. said that if I wrote anything from there, to tell everyone I said, “Hello” from him, so hello. If you would like to say hello back (and let’s face it, who wouldn’t?) visit his website at http://www.wertzateria.com.

I spent most of my time there with my head buried in a computer, finishing up a project I was working on. The next-door neighbors have some kind of a Macaw, which screeches all day and follows each screech with a command to itself to shut up. It’s hilarious. Of course, I was only there for a short period of time, and I’m sure if I had to hear it every day the way Michael does, it would probably drive me insane.

I did see a few friends other than Andy and Michael and Michael, thanks to them and no thanks at all to me. Have I mentioned that I have great friends? I do.

Here’s an “I’m a bad person” story. I was talking to my friend, Laura, about this really awful thing that straight men do when you date them. (Note: Laura and I both have a habit of dating the not-quite-straight, so straight is not always implied by the dating thing.) Anyway, it seems like they always force the woman to be in the position of arranging to get together. Chivalry is really dead, in our experience. Men will say something like, “Let’s get together Wednesday,” and if you agree, you still have to be the one to call them on Wednesday and say, “So, we were going to get together today, right?” and they act like this is a novel idea. Of course, this behavior usually starts after you’ve been dating for a few weeks.

At any rate, directly after commiserating with Laura about just how lame this is, I did pretty much the exact same thing with Rich. We keep saying, “hey, let’s get together,” and something always seems to come up. So in my generalized misanthropy, I wasn’t making specific plans this last time. Eventually, Rich played the part of the girl. We were talking on the telephone, and he said, “Look, I’m going to make this easy for you. I’m hanging up the telephone, and I’ll be there in twenty minutes.”

This morning, I looked out the window and saw one of the neighbor girls, walking down the driveway with a pack on her back and a despondent look on her face. Ah…school has started again.

So Yom Kippur started at sundown. Laura reminded me yesterday that every single year, some bizarre thing happens to me, and I end up either cutting it really close when it comes to getting something to eat before sundown, or I end up missing it altogether and being starving even as I begin the 24-hour fast. So I rushed into the kitchen to begin cooking.

I pulled some frozen, cubed (raw) chicken out of the freezer. I was not the person who purchased or froze this chicken, a fact which became important later.

The longer I cooked the chicken, the more convinced I became that the cubed chicken was actually pork. The idea of ushering in Yom Kippur by eating braised pork seemed, well, especially blasphemous to me. I’m still not sure what it is/was. I am sure that fasting until sundown may just create a Catholic out of me.

Anyway, even if you don’t really hold strong religious beliefs, there are at least three Jewish holidays that I think are really valuable to observe, and Yom Kippur is one of them. The other two are Passover and First Fruits.

Yom Kippur: Day of Atonement. There is something really healthy about setting aside one day of the year for self-examination, reflection, sincere acknowledgement of your own failings (without lying to yourself), and attempts to atone. I mean, yes, you should probably do this anyway, but it’s easy to get too busy to really reflect.

Passover: Passover is a bit like Thanksgiving. In a kind of communal and historical way, this is a day for recognizing how fortunate Jews have been as a people. There’s a part of the feast called the Dayenu in which you list out everything that has occurred in the past, and after each recital, you say, ‘Dayenu,’ which means “it would have been sufficient.” It goes something like this:

If you had just called us as a people, and then abandoned us to the world, it would have been sufficient.

So you just look at your own life, and do the same thing. I mean, if you think about just how fortunate you were to be born in the first place…if my whole life was miserable afterwards, you know, I still would choose to be born. That would have been sufficient. But I haven’t always been miserable. Every good thing that has happened in my life is one more extra thing, without which it would have been sufficient. And, once again, I think it’s really good to set aside one day a year in which to really acknowledge how fortunate you have been.

First Fruits: First fruits is about giving the first fruits of the harvest back to God, to acknowledge that he is the one who gave you the things you have in the first place. Again, even if you don’t believe in God, it’s a good thing to acknowledge that the things you have earned and have obtained are only so much a result of your own actions. If you’re a farmer, and the weather has been good, then you have been fortunate, and your harvest is due to both your own efforts and to that fortune. If you’re a computer programmer, and you’ve not gotten sick over the last year, then you have been fortunate. I think this acknowledgement is good for two reasons—one is that it gives credit where it’s due ,and the other is that it reminds you to be compassionate. Someone on the street may have not had the same benefits as you.

One of the other things that these holidays teach you is personal responsibility. On Day of Atonement, there’s nothing in there that says, “Oh, but what if the person you wronged was nasty to you first?” It doesn’t matter. On Passover, there’s no comparison of your fortune to that of others. You just acknowledge that it doesn’t matter if others have more than you or an easier life. Your life, as it stands alone, has had some good moments. Someone else’s good fortune doesn’t diminish the good of yours.

So anyway, that’s the business of three of the holy days. Maybe some other day I’ll say something about the rest.

My latest job-hunting strategies are as follows: since the whole September 11 thing, I realized that I should be starting all of my cover letters to UK-based companies with the sentence, “If you don’t hire me, the terrorists win.” My other strategy involves this interview with the used-car dealership looking for someone to program their intranet. I just should continually ask to check with my manager, walk out and smoke, come back in, and say, “Hey, what would it take to get you to walk out of here, today, having offered mea job?”

One last thing—there’s some kind of gross bug thing on the wall in the basement. I can’t wait until Charity gets here, because I’m sure if I have hysterics loudly enough, I can get her to deal with it.

All right, this is too long. I’m going to get back to trying to ignore the fact that I’ll be starving until sundown.