Welcome To The Show?
One minhag I'm not sure if I understand is the minhag to start shacharis the morning after Yom Kippur a few minutess early. I know of a few shuls that do this, and one yeshiva I attended had a similar minhag. In yeshivos, of course, bein hazmanim begins after Yom Kippur, so there was a small crowd for the "early" yeshiva shacharis; everyone went to the local shuls for the later minyanim!
But what's the idea here? Is it to show God that we still have the Yom Kippur spirit within us? If that's the case, I really don't get it. If anything, it's kind of insulting God's intelligence. Are we trying to fool him into thinking that we're carrying over inspiration from the day before? And let's say after that shacharis, we go back to our daily routines - did that early shacharis make a difference? God knows all too well whether we'll carry over the inspiration from Yom Kippur to the coming year, or if we'll simply revert back to "normal" after the Day of Atonement.
I'm not sure what the mekor of the minhag is, or if there even is a mekor for this (looked through a few halacha and minhag seforim to no avail). But the idea of "showing God" something makes no sense to me. At best, it's silly and at worst it's quasi-heretical (in implying that God is naive).
But what's the idea here? Is it to show God that we still have the Yom Kippur spirit within us? If that's the case, I really don't get it. If anything, it's kind of insulting God's intelligence. Are we trying to fool him into thinking that we're carrying over inspiration from the day before? And let's say after that shacharis, we go back to our daily routines - did that early shacharis make a difference? God knows all too well whether we'll carry over the inspiration from Yom Kippur to the coming year, or if we'll simply revert back to "normal" after the Day of Atonement.
I'm not sure what the mekor of the minhag is, or if there even is a mekor for this (looked through a few halacha and minhag seforim to no avail). But the idea of "showing God" something makes no sense to me. At best, it's silly and at worst it's quasi-heretical (in implying that God is naive).
2 Comments:
Thought about this, too, and totally agree with you (as usual) but to play devil's advocate for a moment, perhaps it's not showing God as much as it is showing ourselves that we shouldn't just get back to our old routines. In other words, because we're starting earlier, we're saying, "Hey man, if I want this year to be better than last I better do more."
Obviously if it ends with the earlier minyan then it didn't really accomplish much, but like I said, your point is well taken.
isn't it like the whole Aseres Yemei Teshuva like when we take something upon ourselves that we don't usually do? G-d knows that we _______, but out of reverence for the day, we don't.
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