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Shabbaton
Friday night's service was pleasant and leisurely and we did a little more of kabbalat shabbat than usual. It's nice to not have to worry about the folks watching their watches and thinking about bed-time for the kids (or whatever it is the people who get fidgetty think about). My rabbi asked me to lead the counting of the omer. I wasn't sure if he meant just the bracha (and a short song before it) or the actual counting, but he did the counting, which is good because I still don't know how to count ordinals in Hebrew and I do that part in English. Which would have been ok, but Hebrew is better.
After services my rabbi led a discussion on a chassidic teaching (Yosher Divrei Emet; too long to transcribe), after which we broke into smaller discussion groups. My group was excellent; we all know each other pretty well and really clicked on what was, at heart, a pretty personal discussion if you wanted it to be. I later learned that while some folks (not just us) loved this others hated it. I hope my rabbi wasn't discouraged by that; no one is going to love everything that happens at a shabbaton, but this is a chance to stretch a little and I think you've got to be open-minded about it. Or, failing that, gracious about it when something doesn't work. I made sure to thank my rabbi for inviting that conversation.
After that was our usual late-night singing, which went until 1:00 this year. That surprised me because my rabbi was the only guitarist present, but I guess we had just enough interspersed storytelling and the like to give his fingers the breaks they needed. Yay. We've had additional guitarists in the past, but none have come close to my rabbi in keeping the communal, participatory aspects up. (That said, I know two of the people who were there do play and they didn't bring instruments or offer to play, so I have no idea how they'd be as leaders.)
Shabbat morning the question was to talk about a time when we had really felt connected -- mind, body, soul. I thought of several things and ended up, a little hesitantly, talking about that day when I'd had my beit din in the morning and then come to my first shabbaton that afternoon. I know I've told that story before, which is why I hesitated, but the other things that came to mind felt like they were either too obscure (would require more time to explain than was fair) or too self-serving (e.g. I have had moments of extreme connection when leading services, but would that come across as pushy?). Later, and without knowing of any of this inner churn, my rabbi thanked me for sharing that story, so I guess it wasn't too old and boring. :-) (Another convert, who spoke after I did, had talked about that moment in the mikveh; I think it was the combination of these two that stood out for my rabbi.)
For the last year or so someone has been leading a (guided) meditation group in our congregation, and my rabbi had invited her to lead a session at the shabbaton. I've never done meditation before so this was an opportunity to find out what it's about non-commitally; now that I've done so, I think it unlikely that I will do so again. I'm a pretty introspective person and enjoy quiet time, but when I have quiet time I want to be alone with my thoughts, not trying to tune out all thoughts and focusing on what my body is doing. So eh. I'm glad I tried, but as I said before, not everything works well for everyone.
In the afternoon we also studied some passages by Rabbi Akiva from Pirke Avot. There was quite a bit of discussion around "all is foreseen yet free will is given", which isn't surprising. We had some literalists arguing that if God knows I'm going to snap my fingers right now then (snap) I didn't really choose to do so did I? Someone suggested that God knows all possibilities but not necessarily specific outcomes, a sentiment I share. I suggested that God operates in a different sphere than we do (and under a different concept of time for that matter); maybe what God knows is that we are going to use our bodies and snap our fingers and clap our hands and stuff but really, does He even care that I'm going to do this specific thing at 5:15PM on April 17 2010? We don't have to see God as a micro-manager, do we? My rabbi commented that I was getting pretty close to Rambam's comments on negative attributes -- fair enough. (This is the teaching that, because we are limited humans, anything positive we say about God is wrong. How can we say that God is all-knowing when we don't know what "all-knowing" even means on a divine level? At best all we can say is that God is not unknowing -- we can use negative attributes but not positive ones. This is just one example.)
Someone brought up the flood; the plain reading of the text tells us that the world had descended to a level that distressed God so He wiped it and started over (but for one family and some animals). If God saw that coming, why did He create the world in a way that would let that happen? Someone suggested that our ideas of God have changed over time and someone else said it's just a myth, but I wonder -- and do not know -- what Akiva would have said about this. Rabbi Akiva almost certainly didn't believe that it was just a story or that that God was somehow different from the God who revealed torah to us. Does anyone know?
What I really love about the shabbaton is that it preserves the sense of Shabbat past the end of the schmoozing after the morning service. It's a full Shabbat, which I rarely get. Except in the winter I often find Shabbat afternoons hard; in the summer Shabbat doesn't end until 9 or 9:30 (or later, a couple times), but my community pretty much disbands by noon and we haven't really gotten the "lunch and songs and torah discussion for a few hours in someone's home" meme going. (I invite people occasionally and need to do more, but I'm not critical mass. And a couple people, including my rabbi, are allergic to cats, sigh.) So Shabbat afternoon usually feels pretty isolated and restrictive for me; I'm not finding that joy I'm supposed to, many weeks.
I've discussed this with my rabbi in the context of his desire to start summer Shabbat services (on Friday) even earlier for the sake of families; if Shabbat already drags for me when why would I want to add an hour or two to it? During a break at the shabbaton we talked some about this and I asked if he thought we could have the occasional gathering in the synagogue after morning services -- either brown-bag or someone organizes food in advance. He seems open to the idea (but doesn't want to organize it, which I wasn't asking him to), so I'll see what I can do about that. We could eat and sing and discuss things like Pirke Avot. :-) We do have a monthly beit midrash in that timeslot, but people who aren't interested in the day's topic leave, so I'd like to create something more open and free-form on some of the days when we don't have the beit midrash. We'll see what happens.
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Typically for the regular minyan the service ends around 11, people schmooze over snacks for about 15-20 minutes, a small group goes out to a restaurant for lunch, and everyone else scatters. Once a month we have a beit midrash starting at about 11:15, so the schmoozing happens, those who are staying sit down at the tables with their brown-bag lunches, and everyone else goes away. (The beit midrash goes either an hour, if there's one speaker, or about an hour and a half divided between two speakers. We've done two one-hour sessions and found that people don't want to stay quite that long, at least while sitting at the table.)
One idea I'm going to discuss with the rabbi who runs the beit midrash is, on days with only one session, start it a little later (12 or 12:15, I'm thinking), with a substantial community kiddush/meal during which people can schmooze, sit at the tables talking torah, or whatever they want. We could end that with a little singing and bentching, and then have the beit midrash. People who come just for the beit midrash (there are some) would either come at the same time for the meal and then the beit midrash or just come later; it doesn't appreciably change things on them. People who come for the service could stay for the meal even if they don't want to stay and study; no one would look down on them. So win there. The only people who would object, and I don't know if they exist, are those who'll stay for services and a beit midrsah but won't stay until 1 or 1:15 because they have other family obligations.
So I'm going to pursue that idea, but independently of that I'm also going to pursue having something more like a meal occasionally on other days. I don't know which order it makes sense to try them in; in the one case I can leverage an existing beit midrash, but in the other I'm not asking people to stay "too late".
Since the substantial kiddush is not part of my regular experience, could you help me out? What is usually served?
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The local Conservative shul to me tends to have a lunch kiddush every week, with tuna and egg salad to put on bread, also hummus and probably some other things too.
I've been places that had hot cholent and/or kugel, but it's not usual for the places I tend to go.
I think of the difference between regular and lunch kiddush having to do with seating (rather than standing) and having motzi, rather than just mezonot, plus adequate proteins/veg.
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Other times it's a bit lighter: baby carrots, crackers + Hommous, herring, cookies, and fruit (grapes usually); add in a kugel or two and you get something a bit more filling. And, of course, there are the b'nei mitzvot which have elaborate spreads... but those aren't that frequent at my shul.
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