Abba Was The Torah

Yom Kippur was............great.
Yom Kippur was............terrible.
Yom Kippur was............long.
Yom Kippur was............hard.
Yom Kippur was............meaningful.

Yom Kippur was............well I am not really sure what else to put there. I suppose that if I thought about it I could come up with a few more adjectives, but I think that I am done with Mad Libs for the moment.

I spent a good part of the day with my tallis over my head and I am sure that more than a few people figured that it was an attempt to sleep. To be clear I certainly wouldn't try to go to sleep with a wool blanket over my head, far too hot. Really it is just an attempt to focus on davening.

Davening is not something that comes easily to me. It is something that requires a fair bit of effort, especially when I am battling hunger, thirst and a raging headache. A good friend of mine once suggested that I combat lack of focus by only davening in Orthodox shuls. The idea was that I'd find it easier to focus with more likeminded people and a mechitza.

I laughed at the idea. Been to plenty of Orthodox shuls and had no problem finding plenty of people to distract me. These three guys are talking, that guy over there keeps wandering in and out and the dude over there thinks that if he doesn't mutter loudly G-d can't hear him.

And let's not get started about the mechitza. I have a very graphic and active imagination. The inability to physically see women won't prevent me from engaging in any sort of thought about them. In short, if I don't work hard to stay focused it is easy to get distracted.

Truth is that I prefer to daven outside, but that is a story for a different day.

Read Torah again this year. New usher gave me grief about reading, decided that he didn't like where I was sitting and suggested that I was too far from the bima. Thanked him for his concern and told him that I started reading during the Reagan administration. This was confirmation that my headache was in full force.

Walked up to layn/lein and suddenly I hear my daughter's voice "Go Daddy Go!" It made me smile. Smiled bigger when I heard her argue with her mother about being able to cheer for me.

Later on that day she proudly walked up to her grandparents and announced that "abba was the Torah." Got to spend the next ten minutes trying to explain to her older sibling that she is four and he really didn't need to correct her. He then told me that I am a person and I couldn't be the Torah.

By that point in time my head was pounding. I was tempted to put on a Torah cover and breastplate just to prove him wrong, but I couldn't figure out where to place the rimonim and what shoes to wear with it.

BTW, if you took that last paragraph seriously you need more sleep.

Anyhoo, I am glad that we're in the home stretch. This time of year always makes me feel a little bit crazy.

Crossposted here.