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5:25 AM

Q: How to have an easier time with Yom Tov?

NOTE: None of the following applies to Yom Kippur. I am a chozer b'teshuva who has found most of the mitzvot to be positive challenges: within my reach, if only over time. However, one absolutely mainstream thing that I cannot, cannot, cannot do is keep Yom Tov. My main problem is with observ...

^^^ This post has received much attention. If I weren't a mod (and even then if not for all the attention already by high-rep users) I would have voted to close as unclear when posted. I don't understand what is being asked. The only questions I see are "What do people actually do? Does everyone actually cheat? I can't imagine this is easy for everyone. Why don't I hear other complainers?" all of which seem primarily opinion based. It's not even clear what about Yom Tov the OP is struggling with

The answers are all different (one suggesting activities for YT, one claiming that most Jews don't cheat on YT, one discussing the philosophical meaning of YT, one about the importance of full commitment in Judaism, etc.). This indicates that something is wrong with the question in terms of its appropriateness for Mi Yodeya (I'm not bashing the OP).

What is she struggling with about Yom Tov? Why God commanded this? Not checking facebook? Too much Shul? Too many special rituals (sukkah, matza, etc.)? Missing work? Too many consecutive hours of no phone calls to family? I don't know what she's looking for us to say.

There may be interesting things about YT to ask, and some of the answers say interesting things, but this thread is not currently a good one for Mi Yodeya IMO.

note too this comment (currently 3 upvotes)

From your question, I don't understand what it is about observing Yom Tov that is so draining and depressing. Is it the problems with missing work and getting behind? Why is it so difficult to avoid switching on and off lights? Maybe you need more Shabbos lamps? Or is it the food? The lack of things to do? Maybe keep searching for things you enjoy doing (perhaps certain seforim you haven't learned before -- there's amazing array now, everything from frum novels and biographies to inspiring hashkafic books like those of Rav Arush). Going on an hour walk each day is another option... — Kordovero 2 days ago

ping @MonicaCellio @yEz @IsaacMoses who answered there (and @msh210 who's a mod)

msh210

5:52 AM

I'll post here now the text that I thought of posting here the other day but, for some reason, did not:

> By the way, re that yom tov question: When first I read it, my reaction was "is there an actual question here?". But I decided to get back to it on a later reread instead of closing immediately. The actual question is:

> > What do people actually do? Does everyone actually cheat? I can't imagine this is easy for everyone. Why don't I hear other complainers?

> The first of those is unclear unless the second is meant to clarify it, so I'll assume that's the case. The last is probably meant rhetorically. So the question is Do people cheat?. The answers (except a small part of Isaac's and a small part of LN's) don't really answer that, instead discussing the issue and how to think about it.

> That's a mark of a bad question IMO.

> I personally think it should be closed as unclear. But I suppose not by a mod with all those decent answer attempts.

Isaac Moses

6:31 AM

@DoubleAA @msh210 I read the first sub-question as "What do people do to cope with the restrictions presented by Yom Tov, in general?" Her background story establishes that the restrictions are difficult for her to cope with; some particulars of her personal difficulty are unclear, but are, AFAIC, immaterial to the basic question. IMO, all of the extant answers address this basic question. That they do so from different angles is a feature, not a bug.

What the back-story does make clear is that what's being coped with is an emotional sense of restriction, rather than, say, the practicalities of arranging one's work schedule around Yom Tov. So, I'd rephrase my interpretation of the first sub-question as "What do people do to cope with the sense of extra restriction presented by Yom Tov?" Again, I believe that all of the extant answers address this.

11 hours later…

Monica Cellio

5:42 PM

My understanding of the question when I answered it was similar to what @IsaacMoses said -- the main question seems to be "what do people do?", with "does everybody cheat?" as one possible suggestion of an answer. It's like if I ask on SO "why is this code exhausting system resources? do I have a memory leak?" and somebody says no, there's no memory leak, but did I mean to spawn 50,000 threads and have I ever heard of thread pools? The question isn't really about memory leaks (or cheating).

So I addressed "what do people do?" in my answer and initially ignored the "cheating" part, but when I saw others addressing that I added to my answer (though I thought I'd already answered the question).

I read it as a more practical "how do I get through this long slog?" question, while some others interpreted it as "how can I engage with yom tov better so I won't feel that way?", and one basically said "get over it" (which I don't find helpful, but apparently the OP and others in the community did). Maybe the range of interpretations in the answers means that the question was unclear; each answerer presumably thought it was clear enough to answer, but we saw different things.

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