Yom Kippur 2023

I'm pleased to report that I had an excellent Yom Kippur. Here are the details:

Start: 8:00 AM
Finish: 3:00 PM
Break: 90 minutes
Neillah: Ended late
Break Fast: Cake, then soup, followed by pasta

Quality of the music: better than ever.
Quality of the introspection was not bad but MYOB
Quality of the Koren: Amazing. Burn your Artscrolls, and don't look back!

Big discovery: There was a hot shot German philosopher named Franz Rosenzweig who decided at the age of 27 to convert to Christianity. This wasn't a big deal, because he had never been much of a Jew. But he wanted to be a Jew before converting. He didn't want to convert as a pagan, but as a Jew. So he went to Yom Kippur 1913 and came out a changed man, dropping the idea of converting.

I went down the rabbit hole last night trying to find out what exactly happened, but no one seems to know. The smarter sources say he never told anyone, while the dumber ones say it was a "mystical experience." Either way, he went on to commit himself to Judaism (not sure exactly how far he went observance-wise) before dying at the age of 42 of ALS.

So... make of that what you will.

But along the way, he wrote "Star of Redemption," which some smart people online call a masterpiece. I have started to investigate it, and I'm not deep into it yet, but it seems fascinating so far.

Your turn?