Bored at Rosh Hashana – Shofar Sho Good
Posted: September 22, 2011 | Author: boredofdeputies | | Tags: 31st december, amindah, high holy days, new years eve, nosh, resolutions, rosh hashanah |Leave a comment »
by Bored of Deputies
Rosh Hashana is a’ comin’ and in the absence of a mile long Coca Cola truck to herald its arrival instead we see the tell-tale signs in our daily life. First there are the disastrous youtube clips with appallingly punned New Year song titles like “Tishrei-ning Men, Hallelujah!” and “Return of the Mac-hzor”. Then Brent Cross Tesco’s subtly change their ordering policy to create a national record spike in Pomegranate demand. Less frequent attendants of synagogues arrive in shul looking like they were lost on the way to Ascot, White Hart Lane or Glastonbury. Finally, bridge tables and bridge rolls alike across the country are acquired to extend and then fill dining room tables.
The Bored however have found an especially troubling trend creeping in to Anglo Jewry. In the past, New Years Eve (31st December) in the UK was so badly thought of, so perennially disappointing and over-priced that our community never considered it a festival. At the same time British Jews were still sufficiently committed and engaged to tolerate or even embrace the idiosyncrasies of Rosh Hashana. However, recently British Jews have started to compare the two occasions and are reaching disturbing conclusions.
Here is some typical feedback:
“Rosh Hashana? More like Nosh Hashana at our house, I’m permanently full-up for 2 days with fried and baked shtetl gunk… This is no good for my no Carbs diet and on week days as well.”
“I am so fed-up with the tedious competitive conversations with my in-laws at dinner that I am genuinely considering sitting on the kids table this year.”
“What is the point of having a special Machzor that is “leather bound”, costs a fortune, weighs a tonne and gets used twice a year when I only sing along with kaddish anyway?”
The Bored are scared that our community are starting to prefer secular New Year to religious New Year, choosing solar over lunar and opting for Auld Lang Syne rather than Old folks time. This is a slippery slope toward assimilation and it must be stopped. Rather than bombard our community’s young people with a negative rationale to reject secularism we have instead compiled 7 reasons why Rosh Hashana is more than the equal of New Year’s Eve:
- Resolutions – Normally everyone across the country resolves to do the same cliché things, leaving gyms overcrowded and nicotine patches out of stock. A Rosh Hashana resolution gives you a 3-month head start on those smelly fatties and when you’ve abandoned them three months later you can always make some more.
- The Long Amidah – those who complain about the longest amidah of the year should remember that whilst you stand up in a crowded room mumbling to yourself and looking for action at the front, last year when you went to see the fireworks on the London Eye, you had pretty much the same experience and no kiddish afterwards.
- Days off – Bank Holidays are all well and good, but there is no substitute for taking days off when everyone in the office is at work and at super-inconvenient times, but there is nothing they can do about it. Conversely, if you work on New Year’s you make a packet, from baby-sitting, to bar work to illegal mini-cab driving the potential for funds is enormous.
- Cuisine – for copious over-priced booze and a kebab on the 4am Night Bus Home, read Apple – one of your five a day – and honey – an important natural source of energy – there is no doubt which should be the preferred choice of the parsimonious metro-sexual.
- Garbage Collection – after a massive New Year’s Eve house party, your place is likely to be in need of a clean up, but since it is Bank Holidays the bin men won’t be round for ages and when they do come you won’t be expecting them. On Rosh Hashana, we are actively commanded to drop leftover food into a nearby water source. Tashlich is the biblical equivalent of fly-tipping.
- Iconic sounds – Big Ben chimes 12… Shofar Blasts 100 (a bigger margin of Victory than New Zealand at the Rugby World Cup)
- Absolution for sins vs commitment of sins – in our increasingly litigious and ordered society surely wiping your slate clean once a year is preferable than being caught urinating on a statue by CCTV.
On that classy note The Bored will close our case, confident that any self-respecting member of our community will now appreciate that they have a lot more fun in five hours in a shul full of judgemental repenters than five hours in a club full of mental revellers!
The Bored wish you all a happy and Tweet new year.
More next week… don’t forget to follow us on twitter @boredofdeputies.