On first night this year, I dug all the wax out of my menorah and there was more wax in the leftmost slot than the rightmost so I thought that I must have misremembered and the candles go from left to right and are lit from right to left. Well, no, I was right the first time. The candles go right to left and are lit left to right. So I’m changing the positions partway into the year.
While I was lighting the candles tonight, the second candle went out after being lit and I had to hold the shamash by it for a long time to get the wick out so it would burn and now it’s shorter than the others and is leaning out. The shamash then snapped at the bottom while putting it in the menorah so I need to watch it and make sure it doesn’t fall. This is what I get for buying shifting cheap manischewitz candles instead of spending more on something BDS compliant. These things are like birthday candles I swear.
Originally, my friend was going to host a Chanukah party tonight—but it was cancelled due to force majeure. Last minute we changed plans and instead after I’m done with candles and dinner I’ll go to a friend’s house to watch the new Doctor Who special.
Originally, I was to go back to work this week after many months of recovery from my accident. Then I got appendicitis and I’m back to rest and recovery for another two weeks.
Originally, there were a lot of plans I had for the second half of 2023, then I got a moderate concussion.
In the past, being autistic, I would have meltdowns over anything going wrong last minute. Anything not going as expected. As I’ve grown up I’ve gotten a lot better at coping with the ways life can be unpredictable. Sometimes it’s still a struggle but today I’ve been able to totally roll with the punches. It’s going to be a good night regardless of what happens.
Originally, I was going to write my thoughts about conversion tonight. I was “born Jewish” and was granted automatic acceptance because my mom is Jewish and I grew up in a Jewish suburb surrounded by Jewish culture. But I was raised secular. I only reconnected with the religious aspect at age 18 when I went to college and attended an Erev Rosh Hashanah service that was very meaningful to me. “Reconnecting with the religious aspects of my heritage” involved a lot of the same learning about Judaism that converts had to do, but nobody ever questions my Jewishness like they do the Jewishness of converts.
But, well, my mind isn’t there tonight. Instead I am thinking about order and chaos. My life growing up was chaotic and structureless. Judaism provided a comforting order and structure to life.
I inherited some Toxic Guilt from the Irish side of the family, and couldn’t understand how to forgive myself for any mistakes I had ever made, going back as far as I could remember. I had an ideographic memory before my first concussion so I remembered every mistake very clearly and every night when trying to sleep I would find myself going through every mistake and feeling guilty about each other worse and worse, totally unable to sleep.
The High Holidays gave me a structured practice for self-forgiveness. That first Rosh Hashanah I had an incredible spiritual experience of finally being able to forgive myself for the past 18 years of mistakes. I slept incredibly well every night from then on until 2020. My life gained structure. I had a schedule. I had classes and student activities to structure my material life and Judaism to structure my more abstract spiritual and emotional life. I thrived with that structure I had been lacking in my youth.
Even if all the details of my life are to be determined, every plan to be subject to change. Judaism gives structure to time. There will always be Rosh Hashanah, Yom Kippur, Sukkot, Chanukah, Purim, Pesach, and then Shavuot. There will always be Asarah b’Tevet, Tu b’Shevat, Tu b’Av. Even if I have to make the ritual happen on my own in my own way, the calendar gives me times for joy and times for grief, times for atonement and times for learning, times for humor and times and times for justice.
And those times might not go as planned but the seasons come and go just the same. Every week, a time for rest. There will be time to work later.
As I wrote this, the candles burned down, and the shamash did not fall despite the splinter. The warmth melted the wax back together, mending the fault.
2023 was always to be a time of rest and recovery, of solitude and wintering. I knew it would be because of GRS. But I didn’t think it would be quite this severe. Still, it is the time for it. There will be times for other things later. Now is the time for this.