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Shavuot, Shabbat
What makes a tikkun great? In this case, at least, a combination of several factors. We had about the right number of interested people for good discussions (about 25 for most of the night, trickling down to six for the final half-hour session). It's not just about numbers; they have to be people who want to have discussions. Good material, of course; we studied the revelation at Sinai (Exodus 19), Ruth, some chassidic material, and a few other things. Good sequencing of material, with later discussions feeding off of earlier ones. My rabbi had prepared well and had planned provocative material and questions (feeding the discussion). We had some small-group discussions in addition to the full-group ones. Everything just clicked.
Earlier this week I saw a post on a conversion mailing list from someone local, so I wrote and introduced myself to her. She came to the tikkun and seemed to be enjoying it, though we might have overwhelmed her a little. I think I spotted her at morning services Friday, but if so she left before I could get to her afterwards to say hi. I hope to see her at our informal Shabbat morning service sometime soon. (She expressed interest.)
Shavuot random bits:
- When the torah sets the scene at Har Sinai before the revelation, it says (loosely) that the people camped "at the base" of the mountain. The word used is "tachat", which means "under". This is why there's that famous midrash where God holds the mountain upside down over them and says "so are you going to accept the torah?". But the word "tachat" also means "instead of" or "in place of"; at the Akeidah, the binding of Yitzchak, Avraham sacrifices a ram "tachat" Yitzchak. I don't know what this means, but it caught my eye.
- I had not previously noticed that Boaz, who married Ruth, was descended from Nachshon ben Aminadav. So we have a connection between the man who demonstrated great faith at the crossing of the sea of reeds and an "outsider" whose faith led her to join the Jewish people. Neat.
- The torah prohibits marrying Moabites (because they're an enemy), but the rabbis had to deal with Ruth (a Moabite), who is after all the great-grandmother of King David so that must have been ok on some level. My understanding is that the rabbis concluded that it's ok to marry Moabite women but not Moabite men, based on Ruth. But that doesn't seem right: Ruth converted to Judaism; it is from her story that we learn the requirements for conversion. And the rabbis say clearly that a convert is considered to be not a child of the birth parents but, rather, a child of Avraham and Sarah -- meaning that Ruth was no longer a Moabite when she married Boaz. So how can we learn anything about marrying Moabites from this?
Friday night it was back to the synagogue for Shabbat evening services. (My congregation follows the Israeli calendar, so this was not also a second day of Shavuot for us like it was for some people.) Then more torah study Shabbat morning -- between that, the tikkun, and studying talmud with my rabbi earlier in the week, I've been getting a lot of good study time this week. It's refreshing.
A few of the morning regulars always go out for lunch after services. Their usual destinations are all on my way home so I walk with them, but I don't do business on Shabbat so I've never joined them. Last week one of them said "we have to do this on a Sunday sometime so you can join us", and I said I had a better idea and next week they should walk three more blocks and come to my house for lunch. So we did that today, and four people joined Dani and me. (The exact composition of the group fluctuates; there were a couple others I expected.) We had a lot of fun, and having like-minded people around for a couple hours certainly made Shabbat better for me (especially on a long summer day). We have to do this again soon. (They acted like I had gone out of my way, but really, all I did was put more chicken into the crock pot and chop up a few more veggies for the salad -- not a big deal at all!)
Found on the way to looking up something else, an interesting sermon: what God made us good at. Food for thought.
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