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Monday part 2
We're currently planning to do something unusual (and possibly controversial, but what are learning experiences like this for if we can't take risks?). We're using Mishkan T'filah (that's not the controversial part), and in that siddur they've restored more of the text after the Sh'ma that early Reform siddurim took out. The paragraph about tzitzit is nicely set up by a (re-)addition to Ahava Rabbah (which comes right before the Sh'ma). So we're going to explain that addition, do that part of Ahava Rabbah, and then continue past v'ahavta into the tzitzit paragraph. I'm looking forward to seeing how well it works. (If the leaders of our movement balk then the congregations probably aren't ready for it.)
Ok, now where was I before that battery problem? Oh yeah, classes.
Classes
Back to the worship class. The rabbi pointed out that sometimes prayers that are very familiar are at risk of becoming rote, but that small faithful tweaks can do wonders. She passed out an English rendering of v'ahavta that was cast in the first person instead of the second ("I shall love [God] with all my might, with all my soul, with all my being... I shall teach these words to my children... etc"). It may sound hokey but it actually worked for me; it wasn't a corruption of the text the way some changes are but it was just enough of a change to make me think about it more intently. A similar change she suggested is to sometimes read kaddish in English to remind people what it is they're saying.
She suggested that often the torah service is a little alientating; the reader reads a long passage in Hebrew and does a translation at the end, but most people aren't fluent so they aren't engaged until they get the translation (which is often presented blandly). But doing section-by-section translation is hard for the reader unless he's fluent; you're holding the scroll (probably) and a yad, and you don't have a hand free to manipulate a chumash. This is, she says, where the second reader comes in. Have a different person read translation bits after every few verses. (These two obviously have to work together to choose good break points.) I may try this next time I'm reading a longer passage. (Aside: my own observation is that most people do not follow the reading in a chumash if they think a translation is coming later.)
When making a change, always introduce it and explain (in positive terms) why you're doing it. I'm not sure I agree with "always", but I'd grant "almost always".
There were two classes today on the broad theme of building caring
communities, whether this means support for sick congregants, addressing
congregants with special needs, being accessible to all, and so on.
We got a large pile of handouts on various special topics which I will
read through later (maybe not until I get home). There was some good
material here, though a lot of it struck me as common sense.
We did talk some about people's reluctance to share problems they're facing. And sometimes it's not exactly reluctance; rather, people don't even think to let the congregation know that they're dealing with an illness in the family or someone's lost a job or whatever. They see the synagogue as a place to kvell, not kvetch. The only negative thing that tends to involve the synagogue is death. My congregation seems to be doing a little better than that; we do have some support structures for those who are ill. I'm sure we could do a lot more, though we probably need to grow more volunteers first. She stressed that you have to be careful not to offer more than you can deliver because there can be a lot of hurt feelings if you start choosing only some people to help.
Oh, by the way -- remember that class I was looking forward to that was called something like "dealing with the elderly"? Gone. Presumably subsumed into this one, though we only talked briefly about their specific needs.
These classes had a bit of an entitlement current running through them, to my ear, and I'm not sure if that perception is accurate and if so if that's a problem in the movement (or broader society). I absolutely believe that as a religious community we need to offer what help we can to others in that community who need a helping hand -- but I think it's appropriate for them to meet us partway, too. We can't be detectives and find out where all the needs are if people won't talk, for instance. The rabbi talked about not placing a stumbling-block before the blind, and I wanted to counter with: we must help our neighbor unload his burdened donkey, but we must not do it for him while he sits idly by. He has to help. (This is not about the case where he can't, but where he won't.) I wish I could remember where in talmud I read that. Probably Bava Metzia.
Chugim
Each day (starting today) has one slot for a "chug", which is an elective. There are three options this year: torah cantillation, Hebrew, and assorted one-shots. I was one of about four or five people who took torah cantillation last year; about half the class is taking it this year. They said something to the effect that if you don't think your Hebrew is good enough for cantillation you should take the Hebrew class instead. So this did not leave me with optimistic feelings about this class meeting my needs, but today's one-shot didn't interest me so I figured I'd go today and then decide whether to stick around. (I did ask the teacher about his plans -- would this be a language class or a decoding class -- and he said the topics would be decided by the students.)
I don't know if I'm the most-advanced student in the class, but I had the most-advanced requests. :-) I said that my eventual goal is fluency in Biblical Hebrew -- I want to be able to read a torah portion in the original language and comprehend it -- and that while obviously a one-week class can't do that for me, I'll take any relevant advance on my current knowledge. Other people expressed a desire to understand the prayer book -- which is also fine with me, as there's always stuff to learn there. While it looks like there will also be decoding work, it's not going to be only that. (I mostly know how to pronounce Hebrew. I'm not as fast as I'd like to be, but practicing that here would be a waste of valuable classroom time. I can and do practice that at home.)
I said I mostly know how to pronounce, so when he asked for questions about decoding I took the opportunity to address my one (known) remaining question: if the typesetting doesn't distinguish, how do I know whether a kametz is a kamatz gadol (pronounced "ah") or a kametz katan (pronounced "oh")? Is there a rule, or do you just have to memorize the vocabulary? (I once asked Dani this question and he said the latter, but he learned the language by living it more than by studying it grammatically, so I didn't take that as a final answer.)
So. There is a rule, but it took half an hour or so of discussion to elucidate it and it's easier to explain when Hebrew characters are available. So in this entry I'm going to wave my hands and just throw out some hints; if anyone wants me to go into more detail say so and I'll tackle it when I get home and have better tools.
View from 10,000 feet: there are two types of vowels, long and short, and two types of syllables, open and closed. They pair up in that order, except that an accented syllable flips the rule. Where's the accent? Mostly the final syllable; there are five patterns of vowel placement that move it to the penultimate syllable instead.
So good -- I learned something about decoding. (We also bumped into another grammar question along the way for which his answer was "it's complicated; come find me later". Which I will do. That question was: he said that two prefixes, mi- and ha-, force the following consonant to take a dageish. But does that mean that every consonant can have a dageish, even though it only matters for pronunciation in a few cases? I'm not sure I've seen this pattern play out universally.
Other bits
Each service group has a staff advisor. We got the cantorial student, and I learned today that she volunteered for us specifically "because none of you signed up to lead music". Before groups were assigned we were asked to rank our top three choices among: read English; read Hebrew; lead music; read torah; give a d'var torah. I marked both "read Hebrew" and "lead music" as "1.5", with a note saying either of these would be just fine. That was too complicated for their tabulation system; oops. (I'm always happy to lead music, but I did that last year and there are other skills I'd like to develop too.) It turns out one of the other people in our group is also ok with singing (though he didn't prioritize it). So for the most part we don't need to lean on the cantorial student (she's helping us with one thing), but she's been very helpful as an advisor so I don't feel like we took her away from a group that might have needed her more.
All three of the staff teachers (two rabbinic students, one cantorial student) seem very good, by the way. No repeats from last year, but at least one of them graduated so that's not surprising.
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I'm actually a bit surprised that isn't done more often; according to the Talmud, kaddish was written in Aramaic instead of Hebrew so it would be understandable to most people (since, at the time, Aramaic was the "common tongue"). (Likewise Kedusha.) Orthodoxy invokes "tradition" to keep it in Aramaic (thus ironically making it somewhat less accessible, given that Hebrew fluency is expected but not necessarily Aramaic), but it'd make sense for Reform to do them in English.
Huh. I know of a simple rule which isn't especially helpful for beginners (if any form of the word has cholam for that vowel, then kamatz will (almost?) always be kamatz katan) but was under the impression there wasn't any other way to figure it out.
The gutterals cannot take dagesh; instead, as I understand it, the vowel on the prefix changes. Exactly how it changes is somewhat complex, though. (Actually, it's easy for mi-; it becomes mei-. With ha- it gets interesting.)
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Hebrew: I'll get back to this when I'm home and have better tools for communicating. (That might mean a scanner, because I don't know how to typeset Hebrew using unicode and I don't have Davka.) Remind me if I seem to have forgotten.
The gutterals cannot take dagesh; instead, as I understand it, the vowel on the prefix changes. Exactly how it changes is somewhat complex, though. (Actually, it's easy for mi-; it becomes mei-. With ha- it gets interesting.)
With ha- (we learned today), the patach becomes a kamatz. I don't know about other cases yet. The five gutterals do not take a dageish ever.
Lots more good Hebrew stuff today. I hope I took good-enough notes to retain it.
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One of the special cases is that sometimes the patach becomes segol before an ayin. (E.g. he-aritzim in the b'racha after the evening Sh'ma.) I think it only happens if the ayin doesn't have a reduced vowel: compare ha-aratzot in the Aleinu, where the vowel on the ayin is chataf patach; the vowel in he-aritzim is kamatz.
(This is distinct from be-emet, which IIRC is because you're not supposed to have two sequential reduced vowels and emet starts with a gutteral (ayin) with chataf segol, so the sh'va in b'- gets promoted to the corresponding full version (i.e. segol).)
All quite fun....
torah reading & translation
This amused me as an instance of new = very old. It was once standard (I'm pretty sure I saw this in gemara, possibly mishna, but I don't remember where) to have one person read a verse and then another translate, but a/the major reason for having the reader and translator not be the same person was to keep the text and the translation distinct for the listeners. Obviously this was more of a concern with Hebrew & Aramaic than with Hebrew & English, which don't share much vocabulary, grammar, etc. *g*
Re: torah reading & translation