Back from a tough Yom Kippur

This High Holiday season for me has been quite interesting. Much less introspective than the previous years, but much more nervous. Somehow, somewhere I've gotten a little bit out of sync with things and it is just corroding me from the inside. Not literally yet, though.

Fasting was tough. I think it's been the first time that I join an orthodox service from the beginning to the end. Imagine this: You stop eating at about 5:30 pm. Then you go to services that start at 6:30 and go all the way to 9:30. You go back home, can't turn on or off any lights, so you just try to go to sleep and is only able to get to it at about midnight.

Then you wake up at 6:30, without any alarms, go around the house, read a little, get dressed and go to services that start at 8 am. Stay there (remember, no food since 5:30 pm) and mostly stand until 7:20 pm, when the shofar is sounded and you can happily go back home to have something to eat. It was rush hour, so it took me some time to get home, so I was only able to eat something at about 8 pm.

It was tiring. But these kinds of experiences is what really makes you experience religion as it was supposed to be in the early days. Something that takes you away from your ordinary life and makes you go through disconfort, especially when you are talking about such important religious event as asking for forgiveness for your sins.

Anyway, I'm alive and well. Had too much to eat last night, had a tough headache that is still with me this morning, but I'll live. Now I have to get back to a LONG day I'll have today.