i've been thinking.

and since i use my brain less and less frequently as i work more and more, i don't want to miss out on this brain wave activity.

tomorrow, for the jews, is the day of atonement. which not only requires a whole bunch of apologies but also a whole bunch of not eating.

i have fasted on yom kippur since i was 9. jews aren't required to begin fasting until they reach the mature adult age of 13, but like i said, i’m an overachiever.

for the first time in my life, i didn't attend services last week for the new year. and i have been feeling this overwhelming sense of guilt. and if you've never wrestled with jewish guilt, the best description of it is secular guilt on steroids: it eats you alive.

to make up for my growing jewish skepticism, i've been thinking that maybe i should attend reform, conservative, and orthodox services tomorrow. okay, not really. eric, my boyfriend, is fairly certain that michigan's loss this past weekend is due to his lack of attendance last week at the new year services too. so he started fasting and atoning on monday.

which brings me to my next point of contention (take that, law school!). when surrounded by jews, fasting becomes a competition.

"i didn't eat anything today."

"yeah well, i didn't drink anything today."

"so what? i didn't even brush my teeth for fear of accidentally ingesting some water!"

"well, i fasted the whole month to make sure i didn't even have food in my stomach on yom kippur!"

it's absurd. but we jews can be very competitive ... although usually not in sports; usually, just in eating. and let's be honest. i can eat more than you.

most other religions have confessional year-round, yet the jews get it all done in one day. what? are we more efficient? or are we naïve enough to think we have less to atone and apologize for?

also, since jews don't believe in a real "hell" (just an alternative that is slightly less grand than heaven), why should we even bother?

the whole apology-because-judaism-says-today's-the-day-to-do-it is a tradition i've just never been into. rather, i find myself in the service generating huge amounts of anxiety and jewish guilt, which i suppose is, in itself, penance.

but some people take the apology thing seriously.

without fail, i have a handful of friends who call to ask for my forgiveness each year. seriously, i can't even remember that time i found out you called me a bitch to your sister's best friend's roomate's cousin. but because you brought it up, it only makes me remember to be mad at you. really, i hold grudges for a week at a time, and then i sweep everything under the rug.

unlike my mom, who doesn't have a grudge rug, and thus holds grudges indefinitely.

but by far, my favorite apologies that i get this time of year are the ones that come in the form of mass emails and away messages that say something along the lines of "please forgive me if i've done anything wrong to you this year."

really?! is that sufficient? because if it is, i have 200 people on my buddy list and probably a thousand email addresses i can wrack up to send apologies to. so if that's cool with you, g-d, i'd rather do that than make everyone else fear the wrath of my bitchiness that i inevitably get from hypoglycemia (low blood sugar) from fasting every year.

just out of curiosity, do blogs work too?