Day 42. Sweet Year

Technically I shouldn’t be sitting here, blogging right now.  I should be in synagogue, because it’s Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year (now 5773).  The holiday started last night, at sunset, and it ends tomorrow evening, at nightfall.

I’m home by choice.

While I am spiritual (much more so since my trip to India), I am not particularly ‘religious’.  I never have been.  I am not an ‘observant Jew’ and don’t therefore, follow the laws, like keeping kosher, for example.  It is, in fact, the ‘laws’ that have always been the issue for me.  I am fine with ‘traditions’, but have a problem accepting that a set of restrictions and obligations must be observed, even if the reasons for them are no longer relevant.

So, to my mind, for me to go to synagogue one time during the entire year is hypocritical.  So here I am, at home.

When I was little my parents, who were not religious either, did give me a chance to make up my own mind.  They joined a synagogue and took me to the High Holiday (Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur) services for several years; until I said I didn’t want to go any more, actually.  They asked me if I wanted to go to the regular Saturday services.  They told me that I could go to

Day 33. Come Again?

Sometimes I have no idea why an idea or a thought pops into my head.  Last night, for some reason, just as I was going to bed, I suddenly thought about reincarnation.  Why?  Who knows.

It didn’t keep me up all night, as my ideas often do.  In fact, I think I fell asleep as my head touched the pillow.  But I remembered it this morning.  And, because I do believe that there’s a reason for everything, I came to the conclusion that this is the topic I should be writing about today.  So tell me …

Do you believe in reincarnation?  Do you believe that, once you’re dead, your soul can begin a new life?  And that you (as in your soul or your spirit)  can come back as another human, as an animal or even in a spiritual sense — depending on how good or bad you were in your previous life?  Karma.  Reincarnation is, by the way, at the very core of the Indian religions.  In an earlier post (in fact in a few of them) I talked about how kind, compassionate, understanding, generous and selfless I found the Indian people to be, when I visited there.  I am sure this is at least one of the reasons for it.

In jest I always say that I’d like to come back as one of my cats.  And who wouldn’t.  No stress, lots of love, never hungry, never thirsty, and a comfortable place to lay your head (my pillow) when you’re tired.

But in all seriousness, the idea of rebirth is not an altogether unpleasant thought, at least not for me.  Which is contrary to the teachings of my tribe (Jews).  In fact, within the majority of sects within Christianity, Islam and Judaism, it is not believed that we come back again.