The Book of Life

Tonight was the first night of Rosh Hoshanah, the Jewish new year. I went to services, something I don't do very often, even for the High Holidays. As I remarked in a previous post, I didn't grow up in an observant family, but in recent years have felt drawn at times to the world of the synagogue, of prayer and observance.

This is what I liked about the services tonight:

--the immediate sense of welcome and belonging I felt when I walked in to the crowded, brightly lit church (yes, this congregation meets in a church).

--the utterly beautiful music, the moments of silent meditation, the familiar sounds of the Hebrew prayers

--a passage that the rabbi read from a letter from a congregant who had recently lost his wife, and, when people asked him how he felt, could only describe himself as feeling raw and as "bearing witness."

What I didn't like:

--the rabbi's sermon was basically a plea for people to give thought to how they treat domestic workers that they hire. Well, it was more complicated than that--she made a lot of dramatic and valid points about race and gender. Abraham and Sarah and Hagar came into it, too. But it felt like a harangue at times, and for me, a single woman with a tiny apartment that I can barely afford and no children, the issue of hiring a domestic worker seems remote indeed.


In the end, I think I was unhappy because I wanted spiritual uplift or consolation, not political consciousness raising. And because, although I exchanged a few words with the people sitting on either side of me, one of whom was another single woman, leaving alone was hard.