This week I was Yom Kippur, and Pam and I went to services at Beth Shalom. The basic gist of the holiday is this is when we ask forgiveness directly to god. Some prayers explain the process; "On Rosh Hashsanah it is written, On yom Kippur is is sealed". The first torah portion read is about the sacrafice when the jews has The Temple. Now that we don't, we just read the passages for the same effect.

At services I saw a number of differences from the synagoge I grew up at. The first was the extended use of gestures. They would point to the torah at a certain point in a certain prayer. They would do the hand gestures at the candle lighting prayer. Its intresting to me how these gestures go from making sense in a context to more abstract symbolic things outside if that orginial context. The candle prayer is a great example. In this case it was to show that you felt the warmth of the candle. However an entire congragation doing it for candles a room away has a strange effect.

The sermon was also good. The rabbi talked dabout the different types of fear the weak causes in the strong. He also went into a psalm about the anger that was caused by people doing horible acts in god's name. The psalm went from anger to self reflection. "Will I make the same mistake?"
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