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Shavuot
We had a small but good group this year (peaked around 16-18). Three of the eight confirmation students joined us, and they had good insights and questions to offer. Another wanted to join us but lost an argument with her mother.
We always begin our tikkun studying the revelation -- from the beginning of Exodus 19 through the ten words and the people telling Moshe "you go; we can't handle this". (That is, of course, a paraphrase.) My rabbi observed this year that it's sort of like a Pesach seder: we cover the same text each year, but the discussion is always different. Good analogy.
We talked about the idea of "am segula" -- treasured or precious or, as usually translated, "chosen" people. We argued some about what it means to be chosen and isn't that kind of snooty and what should it mean for us anyway. Personally, I feel that the problem with the phrase "the chosen people" isn't "chosen" but "the". There are other peoples and they have their own relationships with God; the torah is about ours. My rabbi brought out the passage from Isaiah that covers this (the "do you think you're the only ones? all these other peoples have standing with God too, you know!"). It was a good discussion.
A detail I'd never noticed before: God commands Moshe concerning the kohanim (priests) before the priesthood has been established. The traditional answer is that the torah has no beginning or end and some things occur out of order, but from a narrative perspective it still stands out a bit.
We always study some talmud. This year is was the part of Sanhedrin that covers who has a place in the world to come. We never really got past the discussion of who is an apikorus, but that's ok.
My rabbi always intersperses niggunim (wordless melodies) and stories (midrash and/or somewhat mystical stories) throughout. He read one story (I believe by a modern author, though I don't recall the name) that goes roughly as follows (in highly-abbreviated form):
There was a Jewish community that lived under an oppressive ruler. He banned the sacred texts, but they were dedicated to Judaism and responded to this by fashioning a blank torah scroll and having a blind man recite the portion from memory each week. There was another community where the people prospered and the synagogue was empty except for Yom Kippur. The day before Yom Kippur the gabbai of the latter entered the shul to make sure everything was set up, and he saw the ark doors open and letters flying through the air. The next day, the prosperous community found a blank scroll and in the oppressed community, the blind man could now see to read the text from their newly-populated scroll.
This led someone to ask: do people need to be persecuted in order to thrive? When we're comfortable, do we just get lazy? There was a lot of argument about whether anti-semetism is necessary for a strong Jewish people. One of the confirmation students articulated well what I was thinking: anti-semetism might lead to a strong sense of peoplehood, but it's neither necessary nor sufficient for a strong sense of religion.
As has become traditional (that is, do it three times and you've created a tradition), my rabbi ended with a reading of the Kafka story "Before the Law". Even though I know the story pretty well, it still makes me shudder. But in a good way.
My rabbi and I walked home together. I don't remember what we talked about, but I always enjoy spending time with him. Odd bit: he pointed out some graffiti (on a mailbox) that said something like "I saved the whales instead of the children and now we have too many whales". Neither of us could figure out what it meant.
At morning services, after the torah and haftarah, we read the book of Ruth. I don't think I'd quite noticed before that the slacker relative, the one whose responsibility is to bail out Naomi and her family after her husband dies but who punts, doesn't even get mentioned by name. I guess some people just aren't meant to be remembered. :-)
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Maybe his name really is "Ploni Ulmoni"? :-)
(Ploni Ulmoni is translated by JPS as "So and So", and I think it's sort of equivalent to calling someone "john doe" or "joe blow". Despite my suggestion, it's obviously not a real name.)
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I'm also under the impression that it's a "Joe Schmo"-class name.
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I have to admit I was surprised to see the number of people wearing talliyot during the morning service, since nobody ever does so for Erev Shabbat (or, for that matter, did for Erev Shavuot).
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Talitot are not worn at night (except for Yom Kippur), so that's why you haven't seen them before. (Even though Rodef's erev Shabbat service is held during daylight, it's an evening service so you wouldn't wear a talit to it.)
The officiating rabbi/cantor usually wear a talit even at night, but that's a convention because they're conducting the service. They are not fulfilling the mitzvah of talit while doing so (and don't say the blessing before putting it on); it's just ornament.
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Some of the marshes along the Charles River have a serious problem with geese, or more precisely, goose guano. To control the goose population, a group from the MSPCA and related organizations is sneaking up on goose nests after the eggs are all laid and dipping the eggs in oil. The oil blocks respiration across the eggshell, so the goose embryos suffocate. (As long as the eggs are oiled within two weeks of being laid, even PETA will accept this as a humane goose-abortion procedure.) Since the mama geese, poor deluded creatures, think they are sitting on live chicks, they don't simply lay new eggs or build nests somewhere else.
So all this raises the question: if the person oiling the eggs is Jewish, does the commandment of "sending away the mother bird" (Deuteronomy 22:6-7) apply? And that was the rabbi's hook for reviewing the details of this commandment. (Short answer: The rabbi couldn't find anything in the halakhic texts to indicate that the mitzvah only applies when you're taking the eggs to eat; it seems to apply whenever you want to take the eggs, for any purpose, from the female of a wild species of kosher bird where you can tell the difference between the mother and the father.)
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#2: how does this compare to the idea that the sins of the father are visited on the children? Sparing everyone the perpetual embarrassment is of course the kind thing to do; I'm just not sure the kids could really expect it. With ten witnesses (plus Boaz, Naomi, and Ruth), I suspect the children did have to live with the embarrassment -- but at least their names weren't dragged along years after everyone involved was gone.
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And Ruth said "Naomi -
This is my world.
A Jewish wife I will be
Your G-d, your Life and your People
Are for me."
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There sure is! It's a nice surprise. (I long ago gave up trying to predict which posts or sections of posts would prompt discussion.)
Why doesn't Naomi tell Ruth about Boaz and Ploni in the first place?
I wondered about that too. I mean, it's not that she's a woman and doesn't have standing to bring the claim, because she's not trying to bring the claim -- just put Ruth in a position to make Boaz aware. The only thing I can think of is that for some reason Naomi didn't know Boaz was still there and alive until Ruth reported being in his field. That feels weak, though.
(I suppose there is also the question of whether one is required to redeem in the case of an intermarriage. Presumably the answer is yes because it's your (Jewish) brother you're helping, not the wife, but I wonder if this is discussed.)