Into the Woods

In big cities, Boston in particular, tickets in September, and sometimes October, are ridiculously expensive. Over the rest of the summer, seating is relatively cheap, but in the fall, demand for tickets sky-rockets. Specifically, I’m talking about tickets to an important fall classic in the Fenway area of Boston, MA. This Friday, I’m hoping to go to an important evening event, even though it is not my home field, the venue is particularly nice and historic. My friend Lindsay said she might be able to get us some highly covetted tickets from a somewhat questionable source she met there the other night. For those of you who are quick witted, and have been following baseball with at least a modest interest, will know that I’m not talking about the Red Sox.

The Jewish High Holidays of Rosh Hashanah (The Jewish New Year) and Yom Kippur (The Night of Atonement), are the two occasions when all Jews, even those who don’t ever consider attending even a single Shabbat (weekend) service, yearn to go to Synagogue to celebrate the New Year and confess their sins, naked (not exactly, in fact Jews wear more to pray than anyone else) before God. This Friday evening begins the celebration of the New Year, and I’m hoping to attend services at the beautiful Synagogue on Beacon Street, down the road from Fenway Park. I don’t usually like going to services outside the familiar confines of Tempel Beth-El in Ithaca, NY, but I’ve always wanted to visit that synagogue and Lindsay brought it up, so why not.

I’m not sure how much tickets for this synagogue are, even if they make any available to non-members (memberships are several thousand a year I’m sure). However, Lee informs me that tickets for Conservative (in the Jewish not political sense) Synogogues regularly charge 200 (dollars) a ticket for Yom Kippur, the same price as a Home Plate Pavilion luxury box ticket at Fenway, complete with in-seat food service. Perhaps on Rosh Hashanah they bring apples and honey to your seat. On Yom Kippur there of course is no food to service, so maybe they offer free Talis ironing.

Anyway, Lee and I both feel this is ridiculous. Probably because we both grew up being dragged to synogogue by our parents. And even though we have grown to enjoy services, looking forward to them each year, we (at least I) could never come to terms wtih paying for such an historically, in my life, dreaded event.

This entry was posted on Thursday, September 21st, 2006 at 12:29 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.