ISO inspiration 4 hoshana rabah/shmini atzeres/simchas torah

seeker

Sat, Oct 03 2015, 8:55 pm

Mainly the last days since tomorrow will be here and gone before I know it Sad

I've been having a nice enough yomtov B"H but it feels a bit thin for me this year. I've been busy doing mothering type things and making it a happy yomtov but besides for that I feel a little uninspired and would like to somehow tap into greater spirituality around now.

What did you feel "talked" to you about these days? Links welcome but no hour-long shiurim please.

amother

Pewter

Sat, Oct 22 2016, 8:40 pm

I'm feeling the same way. Very uninspired and just going thru the motions of shopping, cooking, and taking care of the kids. I feel like I'll come out of the yuntiff the same way I went in and not 'get' anything from it. It's kind of the same every year. Being a frum momma is a lot of physical work! I have no patience for Shiurim and even space out when my husband says divrei Torah.

seeker

Sat, Oct 22 2016, 11:13 pm

This year is especially hard because we had to rush from shabbos to yom tov and back again for an entire month! And it's not over yet! I never related to that feeling of waiting for yomtov to be over but this year I've just about had it Sad

Hate feeling that way but it's been really hard, it's the first year that both I and DH had work in between all that. Last year I was between jobs and before that I worked in yeshivish schools that had off chol hamoed, erev chag, isru chag, and DH was also formerly in kollel and then happened to be between things at this time of year. I was pretty spoiled now that I know what pretty much the entire world has to cope with. I took the kids on one little chol hamoed outing and just stared gaping at all the relaxed looking yeshivish families strolling around with two chilled out parents... sigh. My digestive and immune systems seem to have crashed from letting my diet go (who has the energy to fight that battle at this point?! And challah is practically required, I usually eat no bread during the week but now we average 7 challah meals, some of which we ate out at people who made amazing challahs and dips! And kugels and desserts! And not as much veggies and clean proteins as I usually do) so now I'm bloated and fat and coming down with something. My kids haven't had a full night's sleep since probably Yom Kippur. I keep letting them have whatever nosh is offered because I want them to have positive feelings about yom tov but it's going to be hard to come back down from that. And they're getting tired of each other (even though we spent as much time as we could with other kids for variety). I happen to love having them around, I'm not so excited about sending them to school except that I'm running out of ways to amuse them. OH GOOD GRIEF.

No time to look for inspiration Sad

There are some books that probably cover these holidays but who has time for books? And all the sound bites like shiurim and magazine articles focus on Rosh Hashanah, Yom Kippur, and Succos. Which makes sense because shiurim tend to take a break over yomtov, so the last shiur was before Succos. I'm surprised my preschooler had time to make a Torah flag in school.

Liebs

Sun, Oct 23 2016, 12:10 am

Vsamachta bchagecha- so being there and making the food for e/o to enjoy and taking care that kids enjoy is huge mitzvah in itself! But I know you meant more like spirituality of YT so here is a. few things I related to...

SUCCAH: Feel embraced. Just go sit under schach for 2 minutes and tap into feeling Hashem's love for you. He loves you no matter what. Even if you act rotten. Like a father to a child.

SUCCOS: is used to tap into midda of yakov avinu, his nisayon= "hatzilainu myad achi myad aisav". Why does it say achi an eisav, we all know his brother was eisav, sound repetitious. Because his test was to win over his brother, his test from his brother. Sometimes they come in form of eisav, meaning we know it's bad and know shouldn't go there but we sometimes do anyways...but we know it's "eisav" and we should stay away. But sometimes it comes in such "clean" forms and looks like "but it's our brother" and we justify and doesn't look bad and we often fall for those more. So we have to tap into that midah of being kovesh whether a nisayon looks like eisav/achi and look out and especially be aware of where achi shows up for us in our lives.

HOSHANA RABA:
We take the arava. No smell/taste. What does it symbolize?
We are coming to Hashem and saying "hoshana na" Please save me. We are coming with nothing, just our mouth. Arava shape of mouth. We are not saying save because I did teshuva/because I do mitzvos....we are saying we know we did nothing and have nothing but the coming close to Hashem is just simply with our mouth saying "save us".

There is a lot of deep stuff. We say a gutten "kvittel". Hoshana Rabba like peak of yamim noraim and our "kvitlach" (like notes that one gives a rebbe) are being taken to Hashem.

Simchas Torah-didn't yet hear the dvar torahs! But for me it's tapping into what really makes me happy. I know running after certain stuff doesn't really give me internal happiness and connecting to Hshem and keeping his torah to connect to HIm is what really fills me up! So using that time to connect in shul in a loving happy way with all the singing and dancing...and it's like wedding with Hashem!