dinner++

[cellio]

Tonight we went to Sitar (which does not seem to have a web site; tsk) with friends. It's an Indian restaurant with a nice variety of tasty dishes. Definitely recommended. Alas, they did not have the goat that Dani was seeking, so he had to settle for lamb. I got tandoori fish (I'd never heard of non-chicken tandoori). On reflection, that probably wasn't smart kashrut-wise; I failed to remember that a tandoori oven is clay, not metal. Oops. A couple other people got vegetarian dishes, so we were able to share.

The descriptions of dishes, while being passed, suffered some signal degradation: "one of the lamb dishes", "vegetarian something-or-other", "meat, um chicken?, with spinach", and so on. Fortunately, we were all somewhat aware of what had been ordered, so we only needed to disambiguate, not fully specify.

Later my mother called to try to figure out when we can get together. (Her birthday is Saturday.) This turned out to be challenging:

Her: Saturday?
Me: It's Rosh Hashana. Sunday?
Her: Your father has [schedule conflict]. Next Sunday?
Me: Well, Yom Kippur is that night, but we could do lunch.
Her: If that's a problem, what about Saturday the 11th?
Me to self: Do I want to explain to them about eating in the sukkah?
Me to her: Um, that's Sukkot. Let's go back to that previous Sunday...
Her: What's Sukkot?
Me: One of several holidays that are going to complicate this exercise for the next few weeks. :-)

Later I ended up explaining Sukkot to her anyway (quickie version) and she said it sounded neat, so if we decide that next Sunday doesn't work, they'll come out for Sukkot lunch or something.

Comments

[gnomi.livejournal.com]

Now, for an encore: Shmini Atzeret in one sentence

I frequently tell the story, especially around this time of year, of my friend Donna, whom I met in college. Donna was a physical therapy major, and the program was quite rigorous. In her junior year, I believe, all the fall Jewish holidays fell on Thursday-Friday (with Yom Kippur on Saturday), in early October. When she explained to one of her professors that she was going to have to miss class again (the professor was Jewish but only observed Rosh Hashannah and Yom Kippur), the professor asked why. The following exchange then occurred:

Donna: "It's a Jewish holiday."
Prof: "No, it's not. I'm Jewish and I don't know of any holiday on Thursday."
Donna: "It's Shmini Atzeret."
Prof: "That's not a real holiday; you're making it up."
Donna: "If I were going to make up a holiday, do you really think I'd give it as ridiculous a name as 'Shmini Atzeret'?"

The prof didn't buy the argument; the Hillel rabbi had to intervene on Donna's behalf, but Donna was able to miss class without penalty.

[cellio]

"If I were going to make up a holiday, do you really think I'd give it as ridiculous a name as 'Shmini Atzeret'?"

*laugh* She has a good point, you know. :-)

Our associate rabbi likes to complain (good-naturedly) about "poor, neglected Shmini Atzerer, lost in the shadow of Simchat Torah", but I think he misses the point that if Shmini Atzerer were actually about something, it wouldn't be in anybody's shadow.

[goljerp]

You want to see Shmini Atzeret really lost in Simchat Torah? Celebrate it in Israel...

[cellio]

Reform congregations in the US follow the Israeli calendar on this, so the associate rabbi has a valid point. :-)

[goljerp]

Something similar happened to me in Grad school. OK, the background: I was a 5th year grad student by this point, and had been a TA for freshman general chemistry lab 4 times already. I knew how to do the labs. The Jewish holidays fell on weekdays that year, so I naturally arranged to teach the lab on the days that the holidays didn't fall. But the prof in charge of the lab had this insane idea that it was vital for all grad students to do the lab every week. I was a bit annoyed about this, but I didn't really mind that much. The only problem was that the day he picked was... the day that Rosh Hashannah fell on. And Sukkot. And Shmini Atzeret. I explained to him after he picked the day that I wasn't going to be able to do the prep, and he said something like "I don't believe that there are that many Jewish holidays". I think he would've made a bigger stink if I hadn't offered to do the prep on another day...