(See I, II and III)
On the first night of Rosh HaShanah I was mechalel Yom Tov.
When I think back to my practices over the years I can see that my practices have followed a fairly straight line from charedi to kofer. I've long stopped worrying about what order I put on my shoes or the order I cut my finger nails. Cholov Yisroel had come and gone over the years. It's specifically been gone since I left Lubavitch about a decade ago. Wearing Rabbeinu Tam tefillin dropped off some time after that. I started trimming the beard, then finally I shaved it off. Once I married I was exposed to whole new set of laws that I've proceeded to bend. I (actually, we) came to find most of the gedarim* surrounding niddah presented more shalom bais (marital happiness) problems then it was supposed to solve. So instead, we pass the salt and sit on the same couch. Most or all of these things are not obligations (according to most reasonable points of view) which is why they never were a major issue for me. But, my recent recognition that there is no god has made keeping any of the actual obligations significantly harder.
We spent Rosh HaShanah away from home. In the middle of the first night I noticed the alarm clock left for us next to our bed had been set to go off. We hadn't set it. I made the decision that to leave it on would make the morning miserable, if it was even set to go off in the morning. I turned it off. I was never told cholov akum is treif. But electric switches on Shabbos and Yom Tov has always been a definite no-no.
While flicking an electronic switch is not a melachah (electricity shouldn't even be muktza but that's another story) it was a significant deviation in my behavior.
----------------
* gedarim
Jewish Law is full of gedarim, fences for the Torah. The idea is simple; 'fence off 'the commandments with boundaries. For example, on Shabbat, traditional Jews won't use electricity. The Rabbis introcduced a fence, called Muktzah, essentially banning even touching electrical objects on Shabbat, just in case. A large part of Halacha is fences around the Torah. These serve to prevent a person doing something they shouldn't (like actual fences).
source http://everything2.com/index.pl?node_id=1481841
1 comment:
eh, first of all, switching the alarm off is not mechallel anything as there is no open current that you are closing.
Second of all, if you got your wife to pass salt to you and all that, that's way more than I've ever done here.
Post a Comment