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Jewish geeking
I also talked with the new cantorial intern tonight. She seems really nice and easy to work with. She asked me to fill her in on how services work when there aren't any rabbis, and I did so. I told her she should pick whatever music she wants; I'm not going to try to dictate to her. We'll have a little huddle 20 minutes before the service to make sure everyone understands cues and it'll all be good. (I warned her that while I'm not new to the congregation like she is, I am new to being worship chair and she should let me know if she sees any problems.)
The rabbis will actually be gone for two Shabbats (that one and the next). The plan had been for the worship committee to lead one and the cantorial intern to lead the other. She told me tonight that she's a little uneasy about that, being new to the congregation and never having led a full service. I told her we have people who can lead a service cold (including myself) if need be and she should think about it and let me know what parts she wants to offload. We can decide this at close to the last minute, after she's had a chance to settle in a bit more. (I've already lined up a torah reader and am working on someone to give the d'var torah, so she doesn't have to do those.)
The torah portion is coming along well. I have one verse left to work out; I got to it (after working on this for a while) tonight, saw that it started with a trope symbol I don't know how to sing, and decided that this was as good a time as any to pause. I'll come at that fresh on Shabbat, when I plan to spend a lot of time working on this. But hey, I read the previous two verses without having to consult the trope book, so I'm definitely internalizing the more common symbols. I can currently chant about half of the portion from the unpointed text, and all but one verse of the rest from the pointed text (sometimes with hesitation). It's often flowing well. I think I'm in good shape for a service that's two weeks away. My rabbi will want to hear me chant it when I see him next week, and my goal is to have it nailed by then.
This morning's mini-class (after minyan) was on tevila, aka immersion in a mikvah (ritual bath). The rabbi talked mostly about laws and customs for women (monthly) and a bit on men (there are times when men are supposed to do this too). He also talked about how this is part of conversion. (He didn't talk about dishes until I asked about it. You're supposed to dunk new dishes before using them, but lots of people don't know that.)
When talking about conversion he said that Reform rabbis don't require tevila, and I corrected him and said that some Reform rabbis don't. Some do. One of many reasons that I ruled out a particular rabbi when I was looking was that he did not require tevila. Now let's think about this: without it, many rabbis (including pretty much all Conservative ones) will consider the conversion invalid. (Orthodox aren't a factor here; they generally won't accept any non-Orthodox conversions.) Tevila isn't a big deal; it's just a dunk (well, three dunks) in a pool. Conversion is a long process involving (usually) years of study, reflection, soul-searching, and critical evaluation by one's rabbi. Why in the world would someone risk the acceptance of the final results by omitting one non-threatening ritual step? And yet, people do. So long as you stay within the Reform movement maybe it doesn't matter, but as soon as you go to a Conservative shul, you have potential problems.
Mind, this isn't to say that Conservative will necessarily accept one's conversion with tevila, but without it they almost certainly won't. A mailing list I'm on recently had a long thread on another key factor, that being acceptance of mitzvot. It was an interesting thread, but I'm not going to try to summarize it right now. Maybe later.
And, apropos of nothing, a gentile I know seems to be thinking about Judaism (very early stages). I had some very supportive and helpful friends back when I was exploring, and I hope I can provide the appropriate level of support now from the other side (that is, neither pushy nor aloof).
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The laws of modesty forbid men from observing female candidates directly. In this case, the "mikvah lady" watches you and informs the rabbis (who are waiting outside) of the goings-on. The rabbis have to hear the candidate say the blessings, but they don't have to see anything.
I can understand male candidates being squeamish about circumcission (or the proxy, hatafat dam brit, one drop of blood), but aversion to the mikvah (by men or women) still strikes me as odd. Personally, I think the biggest hurdle is the chlorine in the water. :-)
"If they want a Conservative/Ortho conversion, they wouldn't have come to me, so why make it more complicated than it has to be".
There are, of course, many other (more important) factors that distinguish the movements, principally theology. For example, it would have been wrong for me to pursue a Conservative conversion (let alone Orthodox), because my theology is Reform. But while Reform doesn't mandate practice, Reform institutions and rabbis should be able to accommodate practice. The devil is in the details, of course -- we've had an on-again, off-again argument about kashrut and the synagogue kitchen for years -- but I think it would be wrong for a rabbi to do anything (avoidable) to impede observance by his congregants. That's not the situation here; I know of no Reform rabbi who refuses a request for mikvah from a candidate. But the argument of "if they want to do halacha they should go elsewhere" is fundamentally flawed, because Reform permits observance. If it didn't, I wouldn't be there.
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Good point.
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But yeah, I've been told that my posts tend to atrract interesting comments (and sometimes entire dialogues), so I'd say it's worth coming back occasionally to check. :-)