Shavuot

[cellio]

I didn't make it to the evening service (with confirmation), due to impractical timing, but I did go to the tikkun that followed. There is a tradition of staying up all night studying torah on Shavuot; our congregation doesn't do the entire night, but we usually go until about 1:30 or 2:00. (If that's not enough, you can always go over to Kollel where they go all night.)

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. :-)

Comments

[mishtaneh.livejournal.com]

I made it to both the evening and morning services, but ended up skipping the tikkun to make up for missing most of work that day (overslept rather badly, made it to campus about when I normally leave... so aside from the services I was on campus and working from 4pm Tuesday to 3:30pm Wednesday. Ugh).

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).

[cellio]

You were there and I missed you? Oops, sorry. I would have said hi or something. (People who sit up front get to leave last, so I guess you were already gone by the time I got out of the chapel.)

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.

[mishtaneh.livejournal.com]

Oh, right; forgot that. And I'm effectively stuck up here over the weekend.... Bleah.

[cellio]

Sorry to hear the bus schedules suck so badly. You might enjoy the informal morning service if you could get to it, but I don't know if that's practical.