Jew to Certain Circumstances... The Service
Friday, 12/03/04, I was Jewish for the night. Well, ok, for a few hours.
I was asked if I had anything going on and I thought, well...no... and Friday rolled around, and though I wanted to just check in early... I'm glad I opted to come with to a service. Sure, Big Ern and I were initially bribed with the idea that after the service, a reception was said to have alcohol... and I was more interested in the potential cute jewish girls there. But when we were there, it was a really cool experience. I can't speak for Big Ern, but coming from this mixture of conservative/liberal catholic's view, it was pretty neat.
P.T. said that there were four types of jewish servies, being Non-Observant, Reform, Conservative, and Orthodox. The one we went to was Reform. The drive to the temple was pretty fun, but I napped until we got to downtown. No...I wasn't the one driving. Heh heh.
So, ok... like... we get there... and there were some pretty cute jewish girls, including the one we came with :) , and i'm like... well, crap. I'm the only asian here. Is there such a thing as Asian Jews? I mean, I can almost pass for mexican, but that still restricts me to being Catholic. Later we asked someone, and there -are- some... but they just haven't seen any. At that, I commented "Yeah, we're just like unicorns and UFOs then".
Ah, they had a good sense of humor. So yeah...the service was really nice and upbeat. Granted, this wasn't your typical service, I guess, it was jovial and solemn at the same time. They did hymns and prayers in, i guess, yiddish or Hebrew, and the structure was really what got me interested. They had a moment where they acknowledge the happy events in people's lives such as weddings, births, and as P.T.'s description, "it's like when Moms get together and say, my son/daughter got straight A's". So after that, a blessing was said, and on with the rest of the service. Later, they remembered the recently departed and those they had left behind. And then some more hymns and prayers. It was a really neat service to experience. After awhile, I could translate some of the words with the help of some translations.
After the service, we headed into this reception area. They got a picture of the lightweight with a bottle of beer in each hand. The cookies were nice too. I told Big Ern, "ya know, we never get this stuff at ours". "Yeah, we usually just get Jesus juice". "And she said there's no concept of hell, either, or something".
I enjoyed the service mainly because of how they involve the folks there, they welcomed the newbies, blessed the joys, and remembered the dead. And not just a to-whom-it-may-concern approach, but in actual gimme-names. I know in some of the masses i've served and been in, we did that, but not often enough. Then again, this was only my first and only experience, so it might not be typical. But for what it was, it was a really nice experience.
I was asked if I had anything going on and I thought, well...no... and Friday rolled around, and though I wanted to just check in early... I'm glad I opted to come with to a service. Sure, Big Ern and I were initially bribed with the idea that after the service, a reception was said to have alcohol... and I was more interested in the potential cute jewish girls there. But when we were there, it was a really cool experience. I can't speak for Big Ern, but coming from this mixture of conservative/liberal catholic's view, it was pretty neat.
P.T. said that there were four types of jewish servies, being Non-Observant, Reform, Conservative, and Orthodox. The one we went to was Reform. The drive to the temple was pretty fun, but I napped until we got to downtown. No...I wasn't the one driving. Heh heh.
So, ok... like... we get there... and there were some pretty cute jewish girls, including the one we came with :) , and i'm like... well, crap. I'm the only asian here. Is there such a thing as Asian Jews? I mean, I can almost pass for mexican, but that still restricts me to being Catholic. Later we asked someone, and there -are- some... but they just haven't seen any. At that, I commented "Yeah, we're just like unicorns and UFOs then".
Ah, they had a good sense of humor. So yeah...the service was really nice and upbeat. Granted, this wasn't your typical service, I guess, it was jovial and solemn at the same time. They did hymns and prayers in, i guess, yiddish or Hebrew, and the structure was really what got me interested. They had a moment where they acknowledge the happy events in people's lives such as weddings, births, and as P.T.'s description, "it's like when Moms get together and say, my son/daughter got straight A's". So after that, a blessing was said, and on with the rest of the service. Later, they remembered the recently departed and those they had left behind. And then some more hymns and prayers. It was a really neat service to experience. After awhile, I could translate some of the words with the help of some translations.
After the service, we headed into this reception area. They got a picture of the lightweight with a bottle of beer in each hand. The cookies were nice too. I told Big Ern, "ya know, we never get this stuff at ours". "Yeah, we usually just get Jesus juice". "And she said there's no concept of hell, either, or something".
I enjoyed the service mainly because of how they involve the folks there, they welcomed the newbies, blessed the joys, and remembered the dead. And not just a to-whom-it-may-concern approach, but in actual gimme-names. I know in some of the masses i've served and been in, we did that, but not often enough. Then again, this was only my first and only experience, so it might not be typical. But for what it was, it was a really nice experience.
posted by Bum at 23:28
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