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Shabbat, s'lichot, and the tiniest book I've ever seen
At torah study one of the regulars told me I'm becoming more and more like a rabbi over time. (I said "summer school was good for me", but he argued that it's more than that.) When I (gently!) corrected my rabbi during study he whispered to me "see?!" and I told him to hush. When he called me "rabbi Monica" at S'lichot that night, though, I told him that was presumptuous and to please not even joke about that. Just what I need -- someone overhearing and thinking the para-rabbinic program is going to my head or something. He agreed to poke fun at me in other ways instead, which is fine. :-)
We've been using lay torah readers in the morning service for a year now, and there's been some discussion of minor changes. Until now, the person reading torah is responsible for leading that part of the service as well -- we've made it clear that he's free to delegate, but that almost never happens. Meanwhile, some torah readers feel intimidated by the service (but don't make other arrangements), and some people want to lead the service but don't want to read torah. So after discussing it with people, I'm going to keep two separate sign-up lists. After the service four people told me they want to lead services (who were not already torah readers), so I think that was the right thing to do.
As part of that, I'm going to conduct a workshop soon after the holidays on the torah service -- liturgy, choreography, and practical skills. Assuming permission (likely), I'm going to copy a handout from a class at HUC on the choreography of the torah service, because why invent work for myself when I have a perfectly good handout? (It's an annotated siddur excerpt. It's not our siddur, but it's close enough.) This sort of public speaking I can do, though teaching more formal classes still intimidates me. One step at a time, I guess.
One of our regulars, a 13-year-old who became bar mitzvah in June, also signed up to read torah. I think that's great! He's the only person of that age who's currently showing up, and I'd like to keep him. His father has been involved in the congregation for years, including this service; the son started showing up at this service a year or two ago.
Aside that I might come back and expand on later, or not. This season involves three states: t'shuvah (repentance, literally "return"), s'lichah (forgiveness), and kapparah (expiation). It's not just about the first.
The S'lichot program this year was very good. I got there a few minutes late, but all I missed was havdalah, which I did at home before going anyway. They then had two mini-classes, one on the Rambam's laws of t'shuvah (excerpts; it's a long work) and the other on customs and random bits of information on the season. I think this is the first time (since I've been going) that they've aimed for an educational angle (as opposed to something like a cantorial concert), and I like this approach a lot. Then after that we had some refreshments, and then the S'lichot service itself. (This is customarily done at midnight, but we tend to start around 11:00. Some of our older congregants demanded it.)
Yesterday's mail brought a birthday present from my mother-in-law (a very kind woman). She sent a very nice purse, in which she had placed a keychain from the Diaspora Museum in Tel Aviv. The keychain has a tiny pouch (closed by a snap), and inside it was a teeny tiny copy of the book of Tehillim (Psalms). We're talking about a book that's as long as the middle joint on my index finger, as wide as the end joint, and somewhat thick. It's very cute, though I can't actually read the text myself. That's ok, though. I've (now) heard of smaller liturgical aids on keychains (t'filat ha-derech, or the traveller's prayer, which makes a lot of sense), but an entire book surprised me.
It does make me wonder about one thing, though. We do not take books containing the divine name into restrooms. I've always understood this to mean actual exposed books, though when I'm carrying a volume of talmud in my backpack I make sure not to carry that backpack into a restroom either. But what about something like these keychains? I'm not really worried about personal practice; I figure that if there were a problem with t'filat ha-derech keychains someone would have raised the issue by now, and my keys stay in my pocket when not in use. But I wonder where the line is that makes a keychain in my pocket seem ok to me, a book in a backpack iffy, and a "naked" book wrong.
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I used to carry a siddur in a ziploc baggie in my purse and I think there'd be a market for plastic zipper bags for them, too. These days, my daily siddur is in my Palm and therefore only exists when it's on and I'm in that program. It's not a factor on Shabbos or Yom Tov.
So, if those tiny tehilim are in a pouch, that's one cover. The second cover would be pocket or purse. Not a problem.
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