(no subject)

[asterroc]

So havdalah w the horses was held at a small farm that does horse therapy for children w disabilities. It started at 5 with food on picnic tables (I'd just come from a picnic so I had a taste of the salmon and that's it). Around 7 they started passing around lavender and we did some blessings for a couple newly weds or soon to weds. Around 7:30 a few of the children held up magic wands with stars so we could see three stars and we did the ceremony. There was lots of (Jewish) folk singing - I love folks singing and picked up the harmony on one. The rabbi and another guy had guitars.

The horses weren't involved in the ceremony, they were just kinda around, though there was some hay smell. With extra allergy/asthma meds I was fine. I'm now a bit itchy bc I let a horse nuzzle me on the way out and didn't get to wipe off my hand.

Comments

[seekingferret.livejournal.com]

This is more or less what I would've predicted.

Havdalah is the ceremony performed at the end of the Sabbath. Its liturgy is quite beautiful. The word 'havdalah' means separation, and the whole ceremony is about negotiating the separation between the holiness of the Sabbath and the mundane work week. The principle is to try to bring a little bit of the holiness into the rest of the week, so we expose ourselves to small aesthetic experiences (smelling beautiful spices, drinking wine, watching the glow of a flame) to give us a little taste of God's beauty to carry into the week.

Technically by Orthodox law, havdalah can't be performed until after sundown, which is way later in the summer, but it's not that uncommon for Reform and Conservative Jews to bend that rule a bit. (Though I get a bit of a giggle from the three stars thing. For whatever reason, lots of Reform Jews know the three stars thing, but they don't realize that it's the rule for Friday night, not Saturday night. Since there is a difference of opinion between Talmudic Rabbis about when exactly sundown falls, we defer to the earlier opinion on Friday night and the later opinion on Saturday night, to be absolutely certain we are not performing work on the Sabbath. So a Reform Jew searching for three stars on a Saturday night is making a half-hearted attempt at paying deference to the traditional ritual, but they're doing the details wrong.)

And it's also not uncommon for Reform and Conservative Jews to do themed havdalah services combined with light meals as a tie-in to a larger event like a wedding or bar mitzvah. Havdalah on its own is such a short observance that you have to do something else along with it to justify making everyone come out. One of my cousins had a Hawaiian luau-themed havdalah service as part of her Bat Mitzvah party.

[sildra.livejournal.com]

According to what I was always taught--and, for that matter, Chabad that's backwards. You're not going to be able to see three stars in the sky until sometime after the sun disappears below the horizon. So Shabbat starts as early as possible (when the sun disappears on Friday night) and ends as late as possible (when three stars are visible on Saturday night)--this discrepancy is even bigger in any sort of settled area where there might be light pollution, when it might be nearly an hour between when the sun disappears and when three stars are visible. Same for Yom Kippur and all the other holidays where the start or end time is important.

[seekingferret.livejournal.com]

I think you're right, I misspoke.

[sildra.livejournal.com]

People being disparaging of Reform Jews and their education levels always raises my hackles.

[zandperl.livejournal.com]

What are the different definitions of sundown? Three stars sounds like it's one. What else?

And how is "three stars" determined on cloudy evenings?