pulpit time

[cellio]

Still not king a rabbi, but I get to do stuff anyway. :-)

My rabbi will be away for three Shabbatot this summer, with the first being this week. The (until-recently) associate rabbi has moved back to Israel, and the third rabbi is not looking for a large role on the bimah (though he will get some now). And the cantorial soloist has enjoyed co-leading with me in the past. So the two rabbis and the soloist all agreed that I could lead tomorrow night's service, and maybe others. I'll also be leading torah study and the morning service on Saturday; I wanted to spread that around by having someone else lead study, but it didn't work out. Our assignment is the rainbow in the Noach story; need to read up on midrash and commentary.

The third second rabbi will be present Shabbat morning, so with luck I'll get some constructive feedback, particularly on the torah study. He might come Friday night, or he might stay home with his family.

Meanwhile, for the other two times my rabbi is away there will be b'nei mitzvah. While the other rabbi is of course capable of reading torah, he doesn't feel the need to keep it to himself. So he asked me and another of the regular torah readers to read for those services. The bar mitzvah will read some, of course, but I'll be leaarning about 30 verses. This should be interesting; it may be the first tiny step toward bringing the regular morning congregation and the bar-mitzvah service together a bit.

I also just received my high-holy-day torah-reading assignment. This year they gave me Yom Kippur mincha (the afternoon service). Should be interesting to see how well I can chant that far into the fast.

I'm feeling pretty good about opportunities to lead currently. I hope we can keep some momentum going come fall/winter; I'd like to be leading services more than I am, and it sounds like there is interest from people other than me in my doing so. Nice.

Comments

[mrpeck.livejournal.com]

I'd be interested if you knew anything special about the translation of keshet. One of my professors insists that the root translation is a war bow, so God would be hanging up his bow in the sky to indicate that he would not destroy the world again. Other professors are pretty happy with the translation as rainbow. Have you heard anything about different translations for keshet?

[cellio]

I understand keshet to mean "bow", and I understand that's the word used in the zodiac for Sagitarius though I haven't personally verified that. Ideas I've seen in rabbinic commentaries: the bow points away from us to show it's not aimed at us; it's made up of all colors to show it applies to all peoples; it diffuses into several colors to show it's not aimed in any one place. (Yes, those are contradictory. You expected that, right?)

I have seen it translated both "bow" and "rainbow". The talmud (e.g. Tractate B'rachot) uses the same word in talking about blessings upon seeing a rainbow, where it's clear they don't mean a weapon in human hands.

[mrpeck.livejournal.com]

The pointing and aiming are probably related to the war bow concept. But the use of colors would seem to make even that lean towards a rainbow.