Shabbat (mostly)

[cellio]

We sometimes have baby namings at Shabbat services. This week we had one (for a family I don't know); the two mothers and their other two children gathered on the bima along with the newest addition to the family. I did not hear anyone say anything about the makeup of the family, either negative or positive -- it was just another family. That's refreshing.

The morning torah-study group reached the part in Numbers where God gives prophecy to the seventy elders so Moshe won't have to do everything himself (this is near the end of chapter 11). The text tells us that in addition to the seventy, there were two men -- Eldad and Medad -- who also got in on this, though they didn't join the others at the tent of meeting. Joshua hears about this and gets upset, apparently because they're encroaching on Moshe's territory or something. But since prophecy is clearly something that is done at God's instigation -- or, at the very least, with God's cooperation -- how could that be? I don't see anything in the text to imply that Eldad and Medad did anything; it's not like they were stow-aways or something. My read is that they were in the camp going about their business and -- blam -- they were prophesying. We didn't get to most of the commentaries today, so we'll return to this next week.

This probably means we`'re going to also talk about the people gorging on heaven-sent quail next week, because that's next in the text. My rabbi pointed out the coincidental timing with Halloween. :-)

Someone said that the Christian denomination whose members sometimes "speak in tongues" are basing that on this. Apparently (and I welcome correction here!), the idea is that when God talks to you it transcends language, and you say things that sound like coherent text to you but gibberish to everyone else. I'd heard of speaking in tongues before, of course, but didn't know it was tied to the idea of prophecy. (I wasn't sure what it was.) I always thought the point of prophecy was to convey God's words to everyone else (the prophet is just a vehicle), which would require doing so in a language your listeners understand. If this description of speaking in tongues is correct, that seems to be something that's about the speaker personally (and God), not about a message to the community.

Tonight after Shabbat we went to Hunan Kitchen, the successor (or reincarnation, or something) of Zen Garden in Squirrel Hill. It's no longer a purely vegetarian restaurant, but there are still plenty of vegetarian dishes on the menu. The meal was good except for the sizzling-beef incident. Someone at another table ordered something that comes sizzling in a skillet; apparently something went wrong and the dish emitted a great deal of smoke only after it got to the table. Everyone in the place was coughing. It was actually kind of funny, as the cough migrated outward from ground zero. (We weren't affected for the first minute or so, but then we were a little.) I didn't notice what happened to the dish in all this.

Comments

[zare-k.livejournal.com]

Any idea why Zen Garden went away? I liked them. I do recall that building being something of a revolving door for restaurants though.

[cellio]

I'm not sure if the place actually changed owners this time. The place mats asid "Zen Garden" on them, while the napkins, menu, and sign said "Hunan Kitchen", and they retained a non-trivial number of dishes from ZG's menu. I'm guessing they decided they need to add meat to survive, and that they thought a name change would get people to notice a menu change.

But that location is definitely a revolving door for restaurants -- Hunan Garden is the fourth I've seen in that spot, three of which sprang up since we bought our house here five years ago. (At least I think Zeb's replaced Sweet Basil after we got here; I'm not certain of that.)

Dani and I were speculating about this last night. It would be easy to blame it on high rents on that street -- it's customary for businesses to get deep discounts for the first year or two -- except that other restaurants on the street seem to have longer staying power -- even bad ones like How Lee a couple doors up. My working hypothesis is that the building is cursed. :-)