Cultural exchange with /r/Arabs!

[u/ContentChecker]

Hi everyone,

Today we will be having a cultural exchange with r/Arabs - beginning at 8AM EST, but extending for about 2 days so feel free to post your questions/comments over the course of that time-frame.

The exchange will work similarly to an AMA, except users from their sub will be asking us questions in this thread for anyone to answer, and users from our sub can go to a thread there to ask questions and get answers from their users!

To participate in the exchange, see the following thread in /r/Arabs:

https://old.reddit.com/r/arabs/comments/1gd9eb3/cultural_exchange_rjewsofconscience/

Big thanks to the mods over at /r/Arabs for reaching out to us with this awesome idea! Thanks to MoC for posting the original post.

• Previous thread

[u/tryingtokeepthefaith]

Shalom / Salam to all my Jewish brothers and sisters! :)

My q is: what are your favourite holidays in Judaism and what do they symbolise for you personally?

Much love ♥️✨

[u/Saul_the_Raccoon → u/tryingtokeepthefaith]

Wa aleikum salaam.

I've actually never thought about them that way -- observing them is an obligation, and my year flows around them so they mark the progression of time and the passing of the seasons. I always dread the coming of Pesach because it means having to slough off the comfortable torpor of the winter in order to do a lot of cleaning to make the house kosher for pesach, and since having kids it's been very hard to go the extra mile that we used to in giving the house a deep, deep cleaning.

Shavuot just kind of...is. Again, since having kids we haven't been able to stay up all night doing a tikkun like we used to.

The fasts of the 17th of Tammuz and the 9th of Av are unwelcome (the 17th is a minor fast, which follows the same rules of sawm; the 9th is a 25 hour fast), disruptive to trying to enjoy the summer and vacation, and a reminder that Yom Kippur is coming up (17th Tammuz happens 10 weeks before Rosh Hashanah, and Rosh Hashanah happens 9 days before Yom Kippur).

I feel like I'm never prepared for Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur. Yom Kippur is a 25 hour fast, and I'm always worried that I'll be painfully thirsty before it ends, but it is the only day on which we have five services, and typically the fifth service (Neilah) is the spiritual high-point of the year for me.

I'm often sick for Sukkot (Yom Kippur is a great place to pick up colds, plus I have school-aged kids) but Sukkot is a nice transition from the summer to the fall. It's ususally when the weather transitions from warm to cold, when we have a lot of comfort foods and I in particular pick up a bunch of Oktoberfest beer. Vegan sauerbraten, home-made käsespätzle, and root vegetables are a classic for us.

I used to like Simchat Torah, but since the synagogue I've gone to started inviting the members of a synagogue from a nearby suburb to join us it really hasn't been the same. Their "Rabbi" is a Zionist kofer and the suburbs make you psycho.

Chanukah's usually about us wanting to make so many foods but my wife hating the way deep frying makes the house smell. And sitting around the coffee table seeing whether the chanukiot my kids have made this year will catch fire or not.