The High Holidays can prove to be spiritually lacking, particularly for those of us who spend everyday surrounded by Judaism. When having to work on Rosh Hashannah or Yom Kippur, it’s hard to devote yourself to making a deep and meaningful connection with God.
Mason Lerner has a solution for both professional and lay Jews alike. For all of us who feel that the holidays aren’t hitting the right spot anymore: Get excommunicated.
And what better way than to espouse belief in the “Doctrine of the Invitation Only Jews.” Only go to services upon receiving an ribbon-decorated, hand calligraphied, took 75 cents to mail invitation–for Bar and Bat Mitzvahs and maybe a wedding here and there.
His first step was to skip High Holiday services, which I’m sure was scary the first time. You could be risking your place in the world-to-come.
“What if the after-life is nothing but a big bureaucracy, and when you get there, they just have a checklist of things that you did or didn’t do. And lets face it, you probably didn’t swing a rooster around your head three times before Yom Kippur and chant, ‘This is my substitute, this is my exchange. This is my atonement. This fowl will go to death, and I will enter upon a good and long life.’, but at least you can get credit for putting on a tie and sitting through services. And that’s something.” (MORE)
Yom Kippur
Pronounced: yohm KIPP-er, also yohm kee-PORE, Origin: Hebrew, The Day of Atonement, the holiest day on the Jewish calendar and, with Rosh Hashanah, one of the High Holidays.
