Last night, one of my roomates came back at 2 am a little tipsy.
We were all up, and ended up sitting around the table eating cracker, hummus, hot peppers and apples. Yeah, it was a strange combination, but hey, we're college kids now.
One of my roomates is not Jewish. She's really respectful of the three of us, and also really curious about our religous practices. Last night, we were discussing plans for Succot, and the drunk one said she was going back to Baltimore to help her family build the succah. The non-Jewish one asked "what do you build?" This lead to a conversation about the practices of succot, explained by the drunk one.
Here's what she said:
"We build these cabana style huts in our yards. For 8 days we eat only in the huts. We also take these branches and an upside down lemon and shake them around inside the hut. Then, at the end of the holiday, we have a thing where we hit the branches on the ground. Its alot of fun."
If that doesn't make you think Judaism is a cult, you should see us all daven Maariv behind the library each night.
3 comments:
A few girls and I were having a conversation with an MMY Rabbi about Kiddush Levana. One of the girls asked why one says "Shalom Aleichem" to 3 people afterwards. To which I responded, "Well, once you're done praying to the moon, you want to greet as many fellow pagans as possible."
Clearly I was just kidding, but I tend to complain about the ritualistic nature of Judaism. But then, there's always Buber vs. Rosenzweig...
Of course. Last week, a girl was giving a shiur at Hillel on Kiddush Levana, and one person said that it seems a little like you're praying to the moon. The shiur giver responeded, "The Rambam gave us this idea of rational Judaism. But before the Rambam, there were a plethora of ideas which tried to enhance Judaism by giving symbology to the practices." To that, someone said "Oh. So all these other things that we just read on Kiddush Levana are irrational symbologies?"
p.s. I wasn't specifically refferring to kiddush levana when I wrote the post. When it's warm outside, students at UMD daven Maariv outside behind the library, because it's a more central location than Hillel. So when other students are passing by, they see a bunch of Jews with funny hats shaking back and forth praying. One person asked what we were having a vigil for.
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