Else what's a heaven for?

I'd like to claim I wasn't really in the mood for the High Holidays this year because they came so early, but whatever it was, I feel kinda guilty. Jon and I had agreed to check out synagogues in Brooklyn after last Yom Kippur, but we never got around to it and he didn't want to commit to a shul for all the services without having been there before. Even though it was logistically terrible, we decided to split the holiday between Ct synagogue for Rosh Hashanah and the trendy synagogue for Yom Kippur, admittedly in part bc the former is free-to-us and the latter has short services.

I was shocked by how few people there were at the Rosh Hashanah eve service: when I was in high school and college, everyone would come early and catch up, then we would pray, then we would eat apples and honey. This year, there were fewer than 2 dozen people in a synagogue set for a thousand when services started. We shook hands with the rabbi, who seemed =very= interested in my engagement. (He doesn't know yet that I want his assistant for my ceremony.)

Rosh Hashanah morning, my brother called to mention he might take his daughter to services, for as along as he could. The 20 month old was much quieter than our adult neighbors :-( and then we had to leave for her nap, although the president of the shul ran out of services to tell us how cute she is. Bc she is. We went to IHOP for a quick lunch, which was great bc I got to catch up with Lbro and he got his family synagogue experience.

Yom Kippur at the trendy shul was just as silly as I expected: it opened with a short play performed by professional actors and written by the assistant rabbi and included a talk by a NY Times art critic and the head of Manhattan Mini Storage marketing. It was also deeply moving. I've never heard such gorgeous arrangements of Jewish music as what Drew Brody did. I don't like the lack of praying at trendy shul, and AISOT, I've been navel gazing too much this year and reading too many self-improvement books, but I thought about how the past year has gone, religiously.

Sometime in August, I blithely commented to Jon that I thought the tabs were pretty even when it came to how much I'd sinned against others vs. sins against me. Then I remembered how I broke up with Jon last year during Rosh Hashanah and how my indecision hurt Julian -- and apologized profusely to both of them.

One of the things that's come up from my conversations with Julian is that we both say things in ways that sound more hurtful than we mean. This is something my female relatives have told me repeatedly, but with Julian, he doesn't leave when I'm horrible, so I can actually work on it.

There's an idea in Judaism called "lashon hara". When I was in day school, we were told this means "don't gossip," although a sermon I heard a year or two ago talked about how you shouldn't share other people's good news either, lest you make someone feel bad. This has never made sense to me: gossip is how cultural norms are enforced, so it's kinda necessary. If my mother didn't gossip with me, I'd have no idea what's going on with the rest of my family, which I was raised to believe is a much larger sin.

HOWEVER, Julian recently pointed out to me that I'm always complaining about so-and-so aggravating me for xyz reason. I bet this is cutting into the feelings of gratitude I try to cultivate when I'm feeling self-actualized. I still haven't worked out where the line is: I DO need to communicate what's up to my partners from the social media that I caught, I DO need to figure out why certain behaviors are bothering me and how to fix them. I also know that it's not a SMART goal, but one of my objectives for 5774 is to think more about what I say and how I say it. If I'm more grateful as a result, awesome.

I got to practice immediately after Yom Kippur. We broke fast at Jon's cousins house, which meant we got to see his mother's family again. It was a lot larger than I expected and much more elaborate. The good thing is, I keep forgetting that Jon's family, while not Asian, loves eating as much as I do. The bad thing was, there were lots of non-family. Jon's cousin kept talking up my adventures and I was feeling shy. oh well.

Sun morning, we got up wicked early to go kayaking. I'd bought a Living Social deal back in June, bc the trip combined kayaking and wine tasting on the North Fork. Alas, there was little of either. I'd had trouble scheduling the deal bc the company didn't get back to me for a month and then sold out. When I met the organizer, I realized why: he's a well-meaning guy who is completely incapable of handling business/authority, bitching about the NYPD stealing his profits and arguing with McDonalds employees (in front of his clients) for not honoring a coupon. He drove us 2 hours to the house where we spent the afternoon. His long-suffering wife took us for a 1.5 hr kayak around Peconic Bay, which was nice, but there was no instruction at all and we spent another 1.5 hrs sitting on their beach while the other group went, bc they didn't have enough kayaks. augh. On the other hand, I sat on the beach with iced tea and a sausage burrito, and read about R. so. The wine tasting turned out to be visiting just one mediocre vineyard. Walking in, I reiterated to Jon how much I regret most of my wine tasting purchases -- and I still came home with three bottles, in part bc the sparkling merlot tastes just like pepper jack cheese. um. Worse, we got stuck in traffic and the other people on the trip turned out to be baby lawyers discussing big law, student loans, and The Fountainhead. I don't know how Jon stood it; thank goodness I passed out.