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busy few days
Shabbat services were good. My rabbi seems to be mostly recovered from his surgery, so things are back to normal. He's moving around more easily and has more of his energy back. Friday night he gave an excellent sermon (that doesn't summarize well).
Saturday morning we had an interesting discussion at torah study that started off with the observation that we all reflect on the people as a whole. This somehow morphed into the question of how a congregation handles notorious members (or attendees). If a Jew who's accused -- but not yet convicted -- of heinous crimes shows up at services and asks for an aliya (saying the torah blessings -- an honor), do you give it to him?
Some people said no; it's bad for appearances. Others said a mere accusation isn't enough that we should deny the request. I tried to point out that this is kind of specialized; most of us don't get aliyot most of the time, after all, so you can hardly call denying the request a punishment (as some people tried to argue). I don't think I got anyone to understand that point; oh well.
And then, of course, there are the complications: what if it's his son's bar mitzvah, when he would expect an aliya? We didn't go into cases like that.
I pointed out the slippery slope: that if you say accused serial killers don't get aliyot, then somewhere between that and people who don't stop completely at stop signs there exists a line, and you now have to place it. The answer isn't to declare a free-for-all, though. I think in reality it comes down to the judgement of the person who makes the decision for that congregation; much as some people would like to have hard-and-fast rules, I don't think you can.
As we were moving from study to the service one of our newcomers asked me, "so how do you decide who gets aliyot?". I laughed and said that different groups do it differently. In our morning minyan, the torah reader looks around before the service and asks someone, trying to not pick someone who's been picked recently. For our formal services, members of the worship committee make phone calls in advance, usually picking people based on life-cycle events (wedding anniversary, significant birthday, yahrzeit of a parent, that sort of thing). In other congregations, there is one person who's in charge of assigning the aliyot for each service, and he keeps things balanced and is aware of people's life-cycle events.
I'll be chanting torah in a few weeks, so I spent some of Saturday afternoon working on the portion. Let me just say that the third aliya of Sh'mini looks like it could be the poster child for weird trope combinations. I had to consult Trope Trainer for some of them; the book and class weren't enough. I'm just sayin'.
Saturday night was Ralph and Lori's annual St. Patrick's Day party. This was fun, and it looks like the hosts got to spend more time enjoying the party this time. (I believe they expressed a desire to have "only" too much food, as opposed to the vast quantities of food they've had in the past. This worked.) Several of the Claritech gang were there, though some past regulars were missing. We met some of Ralph's coworkers and didn't scare them away. There were people playing music, but not much gaming this time. (Well, we left around midnight and I think some gaming started later.)
We hosted Sunday dinner to allow Ralph and Lori to recover. As sometimes happens, I had a dessert I wanted to make and worked backwards from that. The dairy dessert dictated a non-meat meal, so I opted for spinach lasagna to prove I can make things other than fish. :-) (Note to future self: the recipe in Easy Kosher Cooking works well, and much much better than the one on the side of the noodle box.) As long as you're making lasagna anyway you may as well make extra, so I now have a pan in the freezer to donate to the synagogue food stash. Dessert was a gingerbread pineapple-upside-down cake, so I made a tossed salad with fruit (including pineapple) for foreshadowing. Ok, ok -- I had leftover pineapple. I wasn't sure how much garlic bread to make, but seem to have made exactly enough. It was a nice relaxing evening of pleasant conversation, and a good wind-down from the weekend.
This week is the final session of the trope class. Our numbers have dwindled and I don't know what's going on there. David (the teacher) told me to bring the torah portion I'm working on and we'll go over it. Sounds good to me.
Purim is in a bit under two weeks. ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif){kind=small}
estherchaya and
sethcohen and beckyfeld and Harold invited
Dani and me down for Purim and Shabbat, and I'm glad that Dani decided
to go with me. It's been a while since I've seen most of these folks;
it'll be nice to spend a weekend visiting. And, well, eating and
drinking, 'cause you have to on Purim. :-)
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Sorry we once again had to miss Ralph & Lori's party. Fun times last time we were up there.
As for how much garlic bread to make... In my experience there is no such thing as too much garlic bread. Whatever amount you make will be "exactly the right amount" because people will nibble on it until it's gone in most cases.
Finally, we're looking forward to seeing you on Purim! Harold will be quite pleased.
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I've seen it rarely. There was one guy who used to come semi-regularly to the daily morning minyan who would (seemingly-randomly) say to the gabbai "I need an aliya". He was kind of pushy and annoying. He often didn't state a reason, but I once heard him give, as his reason, that it was his wife's father's birthday that day. Mind, neither the wife nor the wife's father has ever attended that minyan so far as I know. So all in all, kind of strange.
More normally, I have sometimes seen a newcomer ask for an aliya because of a yahrzeit; the presumption is that because the person is a newcomer, the fact of the yahrzeit wouldn't be known. Maybe that's the scenario people had in mind.
During my first year or so at my congregation I felt a little left out because I was never offered an aliya (not even on the first Shabbat after I converted, when I suspected I might). I mean, it was good that I didn't have a lot of yahrzeits to trigger invitations, but I knew that that wasn't the only reason aliyot were offered. That said, though, I never presumed to ask for one; I just waited. Asking felt rude.
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But you don't need an aliyah on a yarzheit... That's sort of odd.
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The weekday minyan I attend gets anywhere from 10 to 25 people most days. They hand out aliyot using several factors: (1) If you sponsored the breakfast that morning you get an aliya. (People often sponsor breakfasts in honor of a yahrzeit.) (2) Newcomers are pretty much always offered an aliya. (3) People with yahrzeits of close family members are often offered aliyot, particularly if they're regulars. (One of the regulars had the misfortune to bury his son a few years ago, and he always gets an aliya on that date near as I can tell.) (4) The gabbai tries to balance things out in the long run so it's not always the same few faces.
Now, with 10-25 people and three aliyot, hagbahah, g'lilah, the two assistants (open/close ark doors and check torah reader), and (sometimes) leading concluding prayers being available as means of participation, in practice the reason is often "just because".
In contrast, my congregation reads torah Friday night. On paper, we have over 850 households. The custom is to assign aliyot (and candles and kiddush when there's no bar-mitzvah family to do those) in advance. Members of the worship committee do this; we're told that we can invite anyone we want, but if we're feeling uncreative here's a list of people with yahrzeits and simchas. Of course, with 850+ households, no one believes that having a yahrzeit is any sort of guarantee; there just aren't enough honors to go around.
(There are two different philosophies at work here, by the way, and one of these days the committee should talk about it. One philosophy is that if you offer the honor to someone who doesn't normally come to services, you draw his family in one week and maybe they'll like what they see and come back. The other philosophy is that you should reward the regulars.)
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