Something that I hadn't thought of when I wrote my previous post is that my wife might want me to count the omer with our youngest son as she has in previous years. He's now past bar mitzvah so we'll have to see. I suppose I have to set a Jewish example for him but I wonder what values will I be teaching him exactly? Hypocrisy? Doing things just for the sake of appearances? Wheee. How responsible. What fun. (Not.)
It always freaks me out, this year more than in previous years, how so many o'dox Jews get so neurotic when it comes to Passover. Passover is when the obsessive-compulsives among us come out of the woodwork. There are people who weigh and measure out individual portions of matzah and maror so that everyone eats the exact right precise amount. God forbid that you should eat one gram less! Gevalt!! The seder is not supposed to be a mathematics lesson! Just eat some matza; if you eat under the exact, measured, quantifiable amount, it doesn't make any difference! I go nuts over long hair-splitting debates over what exactly constitutes leaning to the left. What if you're more comfortable leaning to the right/?!! It doesn't make any difference! Just sit and be relaxed & comfortable! And, of course, our sedarim go on forever (even though the Torah says that the Passover offering is to be eaten in haste, but the Oral Torah explains that away too).
This past Shabbat I (quite spur of the moment) decided to stop pointing at the Torah when it is held up after the reading and saying, "This is the Torah that Moses placed before the Children of Israel according to God, by the hand of Moses" (which is cobbled together from Deuteronomy 4:44 & Numbers 4:37) as I do not believe anymore that the Torah which we Jews have is indeed, "the Torah that Moses placed before the Children of Israel according to God."
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