Jewish Observances

Growing up as a Jew enmeshed in the conservative movement, I knew very little of actual practical Judaism; practical in the sense of what a Jew actually practices in daily and yearly observances, such as the Sabbath- otherwise known as Shabbat, praying three times a day- morning services, called Shacharit, afternoon services, Mincha, and night services, Maariv, as well as keeping kosher= not mixing milk and meat in anything and waiting one hour after eating dairy before eating meat, and six hours after eating meat before eating dairy, as well as the restrictions on how the meat is slaughtered, as well as how dairy products are farmed and produced. All these things, in addition to the rich knowledge offered by Jewish texts such as the Talmud, …show more content…
While it sounds cliché, my parents, brother, and I had become what are considered “once a year Jews”, Jews who only show up to synagogue for the High Holidays of Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year, and Yom Kippur, the Jewish day of atonement; while Christians can go a few days a week for a “spiritual tune up”, Jews are relegated to once a year day of repentance, a tour de penitence featuring all day fasting and a six hour morning service, with the infamous rabbi’s annual fundraising plea and speech on how we all need to reflect and improve, usually an hour. Nonetheless, we went for a couple hours to say we went and were all good with the Big Guy. Being once a year Jews, and synagogues knowing they get their biggest draw from Jews like us, they charge for tickets for seating; my old synagogue was up to $200/person when my parents said they’ve had enough. Upon falling out the old conservative synagogue, they found a Chabad synagogue in our area, and Chabad is free, as well as for everyone, not just Chabad Chasidim, so to Chabad we went. Through Chabad, we found an environment that was warm, welcoming, non-discriminating based upon socio-economic wealth, as other branches of Judaism and their respective synagogues are, and, while I noticed it and took it more than my parents did, the wealth of Judaic knowledge in not only Torah and Jewish law, but Jewish mysticism. Chabad essentially takes the mysticism offered by the Jewish Kabbalah, which talks about the aforementioned balancing of intellectual faculties and emotions, and synthesizes it into rain droplets understandable to the common person. I took to this more than my parents because I have always enjoyed philosophy and Chabad, which is an acronym for the faculties of chochmah- wisdom, binah- understanding, daat-