Earlier this week I was on a business trip that required me to be on the floor of a manufacturing plant for periods of time throughout a two day period. During this time I didn't wear my tallit katan as a safety issue (and I personally see the point of wearing it to see the tzitzit, so I didn't just tuck them in). I gotta say that I felt weird without it on. After only a few weeks I've really grown attached to the presence and significance of the tzitzit. I found myself reaching down for them on more than one occasion and feeling saddened when they weren't there.
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I'm going to have limited internet access over the next week and a half, so there will be no new posts from me. But, Tuesday I promise to have a new post for both this blog and a new contribution to jewsbychoice.org.
Who I Am
- JD
- I am a committed Reform Jew interested in spirituality, mitzvot, Torah, and coming to observance as I understand it.
2 comments:
I get that you do the “Informed Choice” thing and you don’t see the point of donning them if you can’t see them but I say step out of it and into something larger. I do indeed agree with you on the subject, because it just feels odd to me as well, but if need be I will still wear them tucked in. I say this for two reasons first is that you are still fulfilling the Mitzvot by wearing them, even when tucked in. There are workarounds to make this more palatable. For example, un-tuck them when you daven during the day. This way at a few points during the day, you can get that sense of connection (call it a fix if you will), you just don’t get when they are tucked in. Second ,I think there is great value in really committing to any Mitzvot we take on (even more important IMO when it comes to the reform informed choice approach), because part of the spiritual purpose of Observance, is submitting to something larger than ourselves, even when we don’t get it, maybe even especially when we don’t get it. One of the purposes of the Mitzvot is to learn how to surrender the ego to G-d, through the symbolic and ritual structure of the Mitzvot. It’s an elegant and spiritually uplifting process (albeit an often difficult process), to find ways to fit, ourselves and our lives into the observance, instead of doing the opposite, which is fitting observance into our lives.
But that’s just my take!
I respect your opinion and your view on it, but I will respectfully disagree. I do see the point of donning tzitzit when they are not able to be worn out; however, as one of the reasons I began wearing them is because of the constant visual presence, I feel that I am being true to how I am interpreting the mitzvah for myself. I feel that how I handled wearing/not wearing my tallit katan last week is consistent with my personal observance, which I believe is just as important as the actual observance. Obviously, my view on mitzvot is different than yours and it works for me and my view of Judaism.
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