cellio | random bits

My new cell phone has a camera, as previously mentioned. Some genius thought it would be a good idea to let people take pictures with the phone closed. (Why? You have no viewfinder in that case. Just open the phone and frame your shot!) I have read the documentation and attempted to send email to the manufacturer, but thus far I have not figured out how to stop taking pictures of the inside of my pocket. Whee.

A coworker is trying to place some puppies (black lab mix) rescued from the middle of a road. If you're local and interested, let me know. (This and a photo is all the information I have.)

Since my session of the Melton class was cancelled this year, I was able to return to the SCA choir that practices on the same night. This is a good group, and I'm happy with how quickly I'm picking things up (or back up) again. We'll be performing at an event in a few weeks; I hope the merchant who is making me garb in one of the mandated colors delivers in time. After that, it looks like we'll start working on the Rossi Kedusha -- yay! It's a pretty piece, and it's been lingering in the files ever since a previous director requested a typeset version and then didn't use it.

After the first couple days we've had good sukkah weather. The final holiday of the season starts tomorrow night, Sh'mini Atzeret and Simchat Torah. Sh'mini Atzeret is, err, a mandated holiday without any real "stuff". The rabbis later added Simchat Torah to this holiday, when we finish the annual torah reading and start right up again. It's meant to be a big party. I haven't yet been to a congregation that really gets the "dance" thing; we kind of manage a somewhat-bouncy skip around the room (while carrying torah scrolls). Perhaps this year I will take advantage of the fact that traditional congregations do Simchat Torah a day later, and see what I can find Thursday night. Or not; I'll decide at the last minute. (A couple years ago there was a big party on a blocked-off street near my house, but we were on our way somewhere. It wasn't there last year.) To be clear: I'm not dissatisfied with my congregation; I'm just curious.

I'll be reading the first aliya of B'reishit (Genesis) both Wednesday night and Thursday morning. That should be fun!

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The puppies thing is a ... well, not a hoax exactly, but its not real.

Snopes (http://www.snopes.com/critters/crusader/puppies.asp#update)

thus far I have not figured out how to stop taking pictures of the inside of my pocket.

No, no, no. That's the whole point: pictures of the inside of your pocket.

Y'see, the next time you misplace your keys, you'll be able to look back at all the pictures of the inside of your pocket and based on the photo timestamps, determine where you were when you mislaid them.

I kept forgetting to ask you re rosh hashanah: when your congregation decided to observe the second day, why didn't you use the traditional readings for both days? IIRC, you were using the traditional reading for the second day on the first, so you could have used the traditional reading for the first day on the second (assuming you didn't want to confuse everyone by switching to a "new" reading for the first day)...

Whoops. Thanks.

So I'm supposed to carry my keys in that pocket? Oops; it wasn't in the documentation.

The traditional first-day reading seems anticlimactic after the Akeidah, doesn't it?

The Reform movement's machzor offers creation as the secondary reading, so we follow that. The reasoning, as it was told to me, is that Rosh Hashana is also about creation (in addition to kingship and other themes), so that's why they chose it. Whether the "anticlimactic" thing was their reason I don't know; that's my understanding.

Since most people only come on the first day, we want them to hear the Akeidah then.

As you said you might, I took advantage of Reform having Simchat Torah on one day and others the next. I had one day of Simchat Torah in my home congregation, which was even less lively than back in Pittsburgh last year (some of trying to get the circle around the room to even skip were pulling teeth). But I was happy to see a big crowd for the service, and we did something I hadn't done before. We rolled the Torah around the sanctuary, as in, everyone stood in a big cirlce against the walls, and two people slowly unrolled the Torah upright, and it rested on peoples' palms. It was neat to see it all in that format. You could see things like the song of the sea from across the room. Second night I went to the local Lubavitch congregation, where the gathering was much smaller, but people there certainly knew how to dance, and I had a fantastic time.

Sounds like you had fun! I've never seen a scroll unrolled all the way. (I'm told we sometimes do it on long rows of tables for the school kids to see. Of course, I assume only adults are actually touching it in that case.)

random bits

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It's not a bug, it's a feature.

speaking of torah readings and 2 days of yom tov

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Re: It's not a bug, it's a feature.

Re: speaking of torah readings and 2 days of yom tov

Double Simchat Torah

Re: Double Simchat Torah