short takes

[cellio]

The spam subject line "Pick your favorite Idol!" caused me to do a double-take. I don't do idolatry, guys! Oh, wait, they're probably talking about a TV show.

My cats are psychic. (Maybe also psycho, but that's another subject.) I opened several cans tonight in the process of cooking tonight's dinner and prepping for Shabbat. They came running exactly once -- when I began to open a can of tuna. They couldn't have smelled it and reacted unless they have teleportation technology. And if they could teleport, the occasional wrestling matches would be shorter.

Purim is coming up soon. It is, among things, a day of some amount of silliness. I am looking for inspiration -- or better yet, stealable material -- for the "kiddush" to recite at the festive meal. (Kiddush is a blessing said, over wine, to sanctify Shabbat and other holidays. It's formal and has a fixed text and stuff -- except Purim doesn't have a kiddush, not being a Torah holiday, but that never stopped people from having fun.)

I wore a talit at services this morning for the first time at that congregation. (Well, I also wore a talit when I led Shabbat services there, but I was specifically told I should for that.) The people who were encouraging me said positive things and I didn't notice anyone giving me strange looks. Good. Now I can be consistent. They gave me an aliya, and then asked me to stay up there to lead concluding prayers. That was nice, and I do that part pretty well. (If Kriat Sh'ma weren't kicking my butt on the Hebrew I could lead the entire morning service. Note: we don't do a chazan's repetition of the Amidah, so there's no nusach to learn there. Everyone is presumed to be competent to daven for himself.)

I have located exactly two gas stations that serve diesel fuel within a couple miles of my home. (One's in Oakland and one's in Swissvale.) That's not enough for me to be comfortable buying a car with a diesel engine.

Comments

[cellio]

I suspect it's a recent trend rather than a regional one, but I'm not sure.

In my (Reform) congregation, about a third of the people who come on Shabbat morning wear talitot, and it's about evenly divided between men and women and between younger and older members. (I would have expected this to be more of a tendency for younger folks, at least among women, but I'm not seeing it here.) At the Conservative congregation that I wrote about here, I'd say that about 75% of the men who come on weekdays wear talitot. (Many but not all of them also wear t'filin.) There are only about 3-5 women there on a typical weekday, and I have never seen a woman wear a talit there even though the congregation is egalitarian in all other respects. It could be that it's just not of interest to any of them, which is perfectly fine, but I had no real way of sniffing out a congregational discouragement of the practice, so I erred on the side of caution.

Perhaps oddly, while wearing a talit helps to boost my kavanah (I think it's the idea of wrapping oneself in a connection to God, or some such), I've never been tempted by t'filin. I've never seen a woman wear them (in person, I mean), and the few times I've seen photos of women wearing t'filin, it's provoked a negative visceral reaction that I am completely unable to explain. I imagine, though, that some people might have a similar reaction to a woman wearing a talit, which is why it took me the better part of five years (and suggestions/invitations from a few regulars) to do it at this congregation.

[figmo.livejournal.com]

I wonder if the trend is somewhere in between. In south Jersey I never saw a woman wear a Talit. Ever. Even the women cantors didn't wear them.

In New York I saw women rabbis wear them, but not other women. Then I came to California.

The first time I got to a service in California (I'd guess it was in the mid-80s) at Stanford Hillel, the cantorial assistants and some of the female Stanford students wore them.

At my cousins' synagogue in Queens, the synagogue not only provided a yarmulke basket, but a basket of lace doilies and hairpins for the women to wear on their heads. This was a first for me, but I saw it again at his brother's bar mitzvah on Long Island (different shul) a few years later, so I presumed it was commonplace at least in NY. I saw a few of the younger women wearing Talit at that bar mitzvah, but most didn't. At another cousin's bar mitzvah in south Jersey (oddly enough, the same congregation I grew up with), there was no "doily basket" for the women, but a few of the conservative ones wore their own doilies. Only the cantor wore a Talit.

That's why I think it might be a regional thing, or at least more likely to be found in more liberal congregations in larger urban areas.

[cellio]

Interesting. For what it's worth, I've never seen a doily basket.