With the High Holy Days fast approaching, many of you are probably facing the same question as you walk through the doors of your Temple, Shul, Synagogue, Schtieble, or rented out Church basement. That question is “what the hell am I supposed to say to these people?”

This is not because you haven’t seen many of them since this time last year, or because you saw their recent X post and are in shock, but rather because there are simply too many ways to greet people in Judaism. This isn’t just a Pesach problem; it’s for every holiday! I’ve counted, and we Jews have 128 different ways to greet each other over the holidays. It is out of control.

Do you know how many ways Christians greet each other on their holidays? Two! They either say “happy” or they say “merry”.

They took the word merry and limited it to a single viable use case. In fact, back in the 1800s, if you were to say the word “merry” and it wasn’t in the context of Christmas, you would be put in the back of a carriage along with uppity children and menopausal women, and sent to the mental Asylum. This is why Christianity spread so widely around the world; it wasn’t because of forced........

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