(no subject)

[cellio]

Thursday night I was the only person to show up for the ma'ariv service. (This is unusual.) The rabbi and I decided to "make lemonade", though; we did the entire service in Hebrew, without any of the English repetitions or substitutions, because we can. He commented afterwards that this was really refreshing; he doesn't get to do that very often when leading. I told him I was glad to be of service. :-) I also got my own private mini-sermon -- well, sermon turned min-discussion, because while one wouldn't normally interrupt at a service to ask questions or raise counter points, there were just the two of us... So that was neat. I really, really enjoy discussions with him, especially when we can skip past the introductory stuff you sometimes need to do when you can't assume that people have read basic sources. (This happens a lot in the Shabbat-morning study group, for instance.)

Speaking of that, I have a meeting scheduled for Wednesday to begin studying Tractate Shabbos. Yay!!

This Shabbat there was no bar mitzvah (a rare occurrence when your congregation has 850 families), so the morning service and study could run longer. Aya read Torah, which was neat. She didn't chant, but she's fluent in Hebrew so she read expressively -- she knew what she was reading. I need to bug my rabbi about reading (chanting) Torah; he said he wanted to put together a group of people that could do this, and he was going to start teaching in January, but nothing's happened yet. I need to get the skills before I can get assignments, after all. (Well, ok, I can learn any portion by rote, like I'm doing over at Tree of Life, but that's not the goal. In the case of ToL, it's just proof that I'm willing to do the work, I think; maybe David will help me learn the trope system next time if I do this one well.)

Speaking of ToL, I'm doing the cantorial-soloist thing again this coming Friday.

Saturday at the study session we talked about the meal offering. (I mentioned last week that there were offerings other than animals.) One thing that I hadn't really noticed before (though I've read this text several times), but noticed when we read this section a verse or two at a time, is that this offering took different forms: the text says that if it's flour do such and such, and if it's a loaf (of bread) make it this way, and if it's cooked in a skillet (pancakes?) make it this way, and so on. (Leviticus, chapter 2, first 5 verses or so.) So what determined when you did it which way? Did the person bringing the offering decide? It's not specified in the text, and the rabbi didn't know off-hand of rules governing this. (Tractate Tamid only talks about animal korbanot, not this.) I wonder if this evolved into a competitive element at all: "Well Mrs. Rosenberg's loaf last week was ok, but wait until she sees my skillet-cakes!" :-) And the plain old uncooked-flour offering (with oil and frankencense) is available for those bachelors who can't cook, I guess.

Interesting (to me) trivia from the morning service: one of the melodies we use (it's just a short little thing for the end of Psalm 150) is, according to the rabbi, a Sufi tune. I wonder what words they set to it. I can see how it would work well for something akin to meditation, which the Sufis do more than other Muslims.

Over the last few weeks I've been reading A History of God by Karen Armstrong. My synagogue has a series of book reviews (discussions, not newsletter articles), and the folks in charge asked me if I would do this one. (Their reasoning was that I was familiar with two of the three montheistic religions, which put me ahead of most other candidates.) So Monday night I'm supposed to present this material and lead a discussion. It should be a challenge. I have 8 pages of summary notes (put together last night after Shabbat), but I'm not quite sure how to present the material. And I didn't even take notes on many of the details presented in the book, because I knew they would get lost in the condensation process. I think what I'll do is talk generally about the key themes and then see what people want to drill down into. I mean, the book starts with pre-Abraham paganism and ends with modern fundamentalism, so there's a lot of ground to cover.

The book has a lot of interesting information, but also a lot of unsupported assertions. It looks like a scholarly work -- footnotes, glossary, extensive bibliography -- but when you actually start reading you realize that she's not always supporting her claims with either reasoning or citations. So that's frustrating, because it means I don't know what I can trust and what I can't. Most of it rings true, but just enough things set off bells for me that I'm going to have to recommend reading with extreme caution.

It's also slow reading and not organized as well as it could be. When 20-25 pages per hour is not an atypical reading speed for the book and chapters are 40-50 pages long, subsections would be good. People are going to read the book over several evenings or even a few weeks; she requires that you keep too much context in your head for that to work well. I often found myself consulting the notes I'd taken, but most people sitting down for recreational reading don't take notes, and I wouldn't have if I weren't doing the review.

A couple people asked me about the book at services Friday and Saturday, and it sounds like we're going to have a larger-than-normal crowd. I hope my public-speaking phobias are up for the task.

My niche found me this weekend. (I won't say that I found my niche, because I wasn't looking for one.) Phyllis, the synagogue administrator, approached me and noted that I often ask good questions at the board meetings, in particular about the finances when we're given a budget or statement. (I think of my questions as basic ones that anyone presented with that data ought to ask, but I seem to be the only one who does.) So she wanted to know if I'd consider doing that in a more organized way by becoming involved with the financial committee. I said I was agreeable in principle (someone will contact me with more info about what this means in practice), so we'll see what happens. I did stress that I have no credentials -- I'm not an accountant or anything like that -- and she said that's fine.

This is a little weird because when I ask questions like this I always feel like I'm bringing up stuff that probably everyone else there already knows, and I as a new board member just need to come up to speed. So I start out feeling guilty taking up meeting time with this stuff, and then it comes out that most of the other board members don't know either. I just have trouble believing that I have especially good insights or whatever, but it seems to be the case, at least relative to this population. (Note: I am not trolling for compliments here.) I've been thinking off and on about resigning from the board, because I feel out of place, but I guess I shouldn't.

Comments

[eub.livejournal.com]

Hey, how do you like the Gryphon?

[cellio]

This is cool stuff! (I realized that I hadn't returned your CDs yet, which I will do tonight, so I wanted to play them one last time.) If asked to describe them I would probably be at a loss for words, but I like them. Thanks for sharing!

[eub.livejournal.com]

You're welcome!

[figmo.livejournal.com]

Anyone who is as active as you are in their synagogue belongs on its Board of Directors.

[cellio]

That seems to be the reason I was recruited. (Though that trick never worked for the SCA. :-) ) I guess I just always assumed that there was a "longevity" component and that I don't qualify under that. But they want a mix of ages/tenures/interests/skills on the board, so ok...

Meal offerings

[goljerp]

this offering took different forms: the text says that if it's flour do such and such, and if it's a loaf (of bread) make it this way, and if it's cooked in a skillet (pancakes?) make it this way, and so on. (Leviticus, chapter 2, first 5 verses or so.) So what determined when you did it which way? Did the person bringing the offering decide?

Maybe it had to do with the person's finances... the text seems to explicitly say that in some cases you can give a sheep, or if you're poor a goat, or if you're really poor a dove... so maybe the same thing goes with the meal offerings; if you're really poor maybe offering bread would be too tough? I like the bachelor comment, too. :-)

Re: Meal offerings

[cellio]

A financial argument makes sense for animals (and it's given explicitly in the text when talking about birds), but how much variation is there in the different types of meal offerings? For that matter, if you just bring the raw flour you need to include frankinsence; how valuable is that? Granted, I'm assuming that everyone has access to the tools for cooking food (oven or skillet, here). Hmm.

Re: Meal offerings

[goljerp]

how much variation is there in the different types of meal offerings?

Yeah. That's where my argument falls down. :-)

Maybe the difference is in the time involved in the different sacrifices -- bread's a more involved process (and, before the days of packaged yeast, didn't you need "starter dough" from your last batch or something?)

I'm assuming that everyone has access to the tools for cooking food (oven or skillet, here)

That's a pretty reasonable assumption. I'm pretty sure that in Talmudic time, there were communal ovens for bread, so I'd be willing to accept that even if people didn't have their own ovens, they had access to an oven. (Even though the laws were aimed at a period before talmudic time, this law seems aimed at a slightly more settled population than the children of Israel wandering in the desert.)

Re: Meal offerings

[cellio]

Maybe the difference is in the time involved in the different sacrifices

But... isn't God supposed to be the most important thing in an Israelite's life? Surely they would be expected to make the time, yes?

bread's a more involved process (and, before the days of packaged yeast, didn't you need "starter dough" from your last batch or something?)

Or you could rely on wild yeasts (which they didn't explicitly know about, but could certainly notice the effects). In this case, though, yeast isn't involved: "Do not make any meal offering that is sacrificed to God out of leavened dough" (Vayikra 2:11). Note that it does on to say that this is ok in some other circumstances; we're still talking specifically about meal offerings.

Sorry to bust your theories here. :-)

(Even though the laws were aimed at a period before talmudic time, this law seems aimed at a slightly more settled population than the children of Israel wandering in the desert.)

Yeah, back to the question of "so where did they get all this stuff?". Later authorship is one answer; I presume that the Orthodox answer involves divine provenance.

Re: Meal offerings

[goljerp]

Sorry to bust your theories here.

Not a problem. I'll just respond to other parts of your comment. :-)

Yeah, back to the question of "so where did they get all this stuff?". Later authorship is one answer; I presume that the Orthodox answer involves divine provenance.

Well, one answer is that they got lots o' stuff from the Egyptians when they left. (This has plenty of evidence; Moses is told that this will happen, and we're told about the israelites getting stuff from the egyptians during the plagues.) Another pshat-level answer is that some of the laws were given in the desert, but meant to be performed in the land of Israel. I don't think anyone really thinks that they were leaving the corners of their fields unharvested while wandering in the desert.

Re: Meal offerings

[cellio]

Not a problem. I'll just respond to other parts of your comment. :-)

Noted. :-)

Well, one answer is that they got lots o' stuff from the Egyptians when they left.

True. I always imagined it as "loot" like jewelry and the fine silver, rather than planks of acacia wood and bags of flour, but who knows? The "for later use" interpretation works well for much of this. (Everything but the actual mishkan, possibly; we're told they built that in the desert.)

Re: Meal offerings

[goljerp]

Hold on a sec... I thought that all they ate in the desert (after the first couple of weeks) was Manna (with some quail as a change of pace, perhaps)...

Everything but the actual mishkan, possibly; we're told they built that in the desert.

Which brings up the question of where they got those dolphin skins for it...

There's actually a modern midrash about this, collected in one of Howard Schwartz's anthologies. (amazon, amazon) _Gates to the New City_, I think. Anyhow, I don't remember the author, but the midrash goes a bit like this:

When the children of Israel were crossing the Red Sea with their flocks, there was a problem in the sea: fish aren't used to having the sea parted. So the dolphins tried to warn the fish, saying "don't go there". but fish, not being particularly bright, would say, "don't go where?" and then flop onto the dry land, where they'd be in trouble. So the dolphins shooed the fish away. Also, the sheep weren't too bright and kept on straying into the water, so they shooed the sheep back onto dry land. And finally, they splashed water onto the land to make the ground muddy to make Pharoah's chariots stick in the mud. When it came time for the sea to unsplit, the dolphins stuck to their jobs (keeping fish safe & sprinkling the chariots) until the last second, and so many of them were killed when the sea unsplit. In honor of their performance at the sea, their skins were used in the tabernacle.

(It's much better than this short summary makes it sound, and besides, I think it's been years since I read it. The fact I remember it at all means it made an impression on me... or I just think sheep are cute.)

As long as I'm on the subject of the parting of the sea, I'll also mention another cool midrash about it in Jill Hammer's book _Sisters at Sinai_. Basically it tells the story of the parting of the sea from the POV of Reshit, a maidservant, weaving together creation and the parting of the Red Sea. It also takes the rabbinical saying "A maidservant at the Sea of Reeds saw more than Isaiah and Ezekiel ever saw" and gives it a whole new meaning. But I can't do a summary of it that will do it justice (and it's still in print :-)

OK, I think I've digressed enough for one comment...

Re: Meal offerings

[cellio]

Hold on a sec... I thought that all they ate in the desert (after the first couple of weeks) was Manna (with some quail as a change of pace, perhaps)...

If the commandments about meal offerings (or show-bread) were meant to apply in the desert, then they needed flour. Of course, if they needed the show-bread but not meal offerings, they didn't need much flour... though acacia wood and all those tapestries and stuff would still be a lot of stuff to schlep around. But you're right that the only food they needed was that which was provided, and if you believe that a lot of the stuff with the mishkan was back-edited into this account then life gets a lot simpler.

Thanks for the midrash!