My mind, and the places it goes

To everyone observing Yom Kippur tomorrow, may you be sealed for a good year. For those of you fasting, have an easy fast.

This year's Yom Kippur will be odd for me. I doubt I will spend much time davening due to needing to see to Muffin and Squeaker's needs (last year, we left them with the babysitter and went to shul; that is not an option this year). I will be fasting for the first time in three years (first two years I was on meds I couldn't fast with; last year I was nursing and was told not to fast). So we will be bringing food to shul for the baby girls, and mabfan and I will be making sure they eat and drink while we do not.

Rosh Hashannah starts in under an hour. My cooking is done, my haftarah is (mostly) learned for Shabbat, and I am ready to enter the new year. May the coming year be one of happiness and fulfillment.

If you are celebrating the holiday, l'shannah tovah tikatevu. To everyone else, have a good rest of the week. I'll be back online on Sunday.

This Friday night, like last Friday night, is a Shabbat Chanukah. This means that we light Chanukah candles before our regular Shabbat candles. Shabbat candles are traditionally lit 18 minutes before sunset (lest we come to accidentally light the candles *on* Shabbat, we give ourselves an 18-minute buffer. Many of us end up using these 18 minutes to finish whatever last-minute Shabbat stuff needs to get done (lcmlc has made a whole chicken dinner in the eighteen; I have said in the past that the existence of the Eighteen Minutes is proof that Hashem loves us)), but Chanukah candles are supposed to be lit at nightfall (actual dark, not sunset), and burn for half an hour (some say 20 minutes). But we can't light candles once Shabbat has started, so we light the Chanukah candles before we light Shabbat candles. This does not change the fact that we have to have Chanukah lights burning at least half an hour into the night.

The solution, therefore, is that we use extra-long Chanukah candles that will burn from candle lighting 18 minutes before sunset until a half hour after it gets actually dark (so this week from 3:54 until approximately 5:30).

But what if you're going out to shul or (if you're skipping shul) to someone's home for dinner? You are supposed to light where you're going to sleep. Lighting Chanukah candles and then leaving home is not particularly safe (and is something I have refused to do since Ross and Charlie's Very Special Chanukah Fire of 1990). One could light the shorter candles, knowing they'll go out before the requisite amount of time. Or one could light at the location where one is going to be eating dinner (or at shul), even though they know they aren't going to be sleeping there. But does that lighting then fulfil the mitzvah? Or does pikuach nefesh (literally, "saving a life," something done to prevent death or serious injury) trump here?

I have been offline since Friday because of Shabbat and Yom Kippur; please let me know if I missed anything.

But I come with an anecdote from Yom Kippur services at our synagogue. In the neighborhood around our shul, there is a large Russian population. Many of the Jews in this community are not particularly observant, but they come to shul for Yizkor, the memorial prayer said on one of the days of each of our three major holidays plus Yom Kippur. And despite signs on the doors in both English and Russian reminding people to turn off their cell phones (or, even better, to leave their phones at home), there are always phones that ring on Yizkor days. Today, the first one to ring was in the women's section, not far from where I was sitting. Its ring tone? "When the Saints Go Marching In."

*melody
** concentration

Happy Liza Doolittle Day!

Tonight through Thursday night are the seventh and eighth day of Pesach, which like days 1 and 2 are yom tov days. This means I will be offline starting Real Soon Now and won't be back until Thursday after dark.

I will not be able to catch up with LJ, as right after Pesach ends and we put away our Pesach stuff, we'll have to start heading into the preparation for Shabbat. Therefore, please let me know here if there's anything I should know.

Have a good couple of days, folks, and chag sameach to those observing Pesach.

I will be offline from now until Sunday night because of Pesach.

This duck has now burnt his chametz.





For all of those celebrating something this weekend, I wish you a chag kasher v' sameach and/or a happy holiday.

For everyone else, have a great weekend.

Happy Cheese Weasel Day!

-- Chapter 1 of Megillat Esther (the biblical book of Esther) takes place "in the third year" of King Achashverosh's reign. Chapters 3 through 9, the rise of Haman, his plot to kill the Jews, and his ultimate downfall, take place "in the twelfth year" of Achashverosh's reign. It wasn't until this year that I started to wonder what happened in the intervening nine years. There is likely midrash about this.

-- People take on alternative identities in a number of places in Megillat Esther. For example, according to the Talmud (Megillah 12b), Haman is the Memuchan mentioned in chapter 1 who suggests to Achashverosh:

"Not against the king alone has Vashti the queen done wrong, but against all the princes and all the peoples that are in all King Ahasuerus's provinces. For the word of the queen will spread to all the women, to make them despise their husbands in their eyes, when they say, 'King Ahasuerus ordered to bring Vashti the queen before him, but she did not come.' And this day, the princesses of Persia and Media who heard the word of the queen will say [the like] to all the princes of the king, and [there will be] much contempt and wrath. If it please the king, let a royal edict go forth from before him, and let it be inscribed in the laws of Persia and Media, and let it not be revoked, that Vashti shall not come before King Ahasuerus, and let the king give her royal position to her peer who is better than she. And let the verdict of the king be heard throughout his entire kingdom, although it is great, and all the women shall give honor to their husbands, both great and small."

Translation from http://www.chabad.org/library/bible_cdo/aid/16474

Further, we are told that Esther's name is Hadassah (ch. 2, v. 7), though it is not said if her name is Hadassah and she uses Esther or if her name is Esther and she uses Hadassah. Which one is the "mask" and which is "real" is unclear from the text. She also keeps her relationship to Mordechai hidden (ch. 2 v. 20), at Mordechai's directive.

Finally, we have Hatach, the chamberlain assigned to Esther by the king, who brings messages back and forth between Esther and Mordechai about Haman's plot (ch. 4 v. 5-12). According to the Talmud (Megillah 15a), Hatach is Daniel (see the book of Daniel, which in Jewish organization of the books of the bible follows the book of Esther).

It occurred to me this year that we have a number of hidden identities in Megillat Esther when I saw a few people wearing masks in shul on Monday night for the reading of the megillah. I don't have any particular insights on this, but it did strike me as interesting.

Tonight begins the month of "If it's Tuesday (or Wednesday), gnomi must be in shul." In other words, tonight begins the holiday of Rosh HaShannah, the Jewish New Year.

I'm going offline tonight around 6 PM and won't be back until Wednesday night. My LJ-ness over the month of October will be spotty at best, so please e-mail me or comment here if there's anything you want/need me to see.

To everyone celebrating, I wish you a ktivah v'chatimah tovah (may you be written and sealed for good).