Torah study

The Saturday-morning group (well, a subset of the people who come for the service) studies Torah for a little while after services. This group started 13 years ago (long before my time there) at the beginning of Bereishit (Genesis), reading a few verses at a time, sometimes spending months on a passage and sometimes going more quickly. They spent 6 months on the flood, I'm told. I remember spending about as long on the revelation/10 commandments, at least a month of which was spent on Shabbat alone. So overall, it's been slow and thorough. Last week we finished Shemot (Exodus). So this past Shabbat we had a party (siyum) to celebrate, and we had a discussion (not yet resolved) about what to do next.

Some people want to go ahead to Vayikra (Leviticus). A lot of people find this book distasteful, but it is part of the Torah and there is stuff in there other than laws of sacrifices. And, well, if it only takes us 3 or 4 years to do Vayikra compared to the 6 or 7 spent on each previous book, that's not a problem. You can probably tell that this is the option I favor.

The other popular opinion is that we should study the portion of the week. The problem with that is that the weekly portion is typically several chapters, so any short discussion (we don't spend all day at this) will of necessity be either cursory or very tightly focused. I think what's going to happen is that a separate parsha discussion group is going to form out of this group (and others). Our congregation already has a weekly parsha discussion, but it's lunch time on a weekday so lots of us can't make it then. So they're looking for an evening slot, or maybe Shabbat afternoon (late, timed to end when Shabbat does).

There is a minority movement to study prophets instead of Torah because, well, we basically never do. It's an interesting idea but doesn't seem to have the required support. This ought to become more of a focus in the adult-ed program, though.

One person (and no, it wasn't me) advocated studying Talmud.

We'll continue the discussion next week, though presumably over less food. :-)

(no subject)

I've pretty much had the office to myself today -- not just my space, but all of MAYA. It's being a remarkably productive day. No, I wouldn't want it to be like this all the time; I value human contact too much. Telecommuting every day would drive me nuts, for instance. But it's a nice break.

A little while ago as I was walking back from the kitchen I heard a noise, so I went to investigate. One of the engineers had just come in to grab something. She said I was brave for investigating the noise; I reassured her that burglars usually wait for the cover of darkness, and if we had an Uzi-wielding nut we would have heard him break through the glass front door, so it was probably either a coworker or pigeons. I don't think she knew what to make of that. :-)

LOTR

We've been invited to dinner tomorrow by friends, so we went to see LOTR tonight. Well, first we went out for Chinese food (it's traditional), and the service was kind of slow, but we still made it to the theatre in time.

Side note: the theatre recording said the running time was 3:13, and I was curious about whether that included trailers. Commercials started at 7:29, trailers at 7:31, the movie at 7:41, and final credits started to roll at 10:30 sharp. We didn't stay through the credits, but unless they ran for more than 10 minutes their calibration was off.

But enough of that. The movie was visually stunning. The music worked really well -- which is to say, most of the time I didn't actively notice it but sometimes I did and it was setting the right moods. I still don't know how they shot some of the scenes with the hobbits and height differentials. (It apparently worked for the unaware: Dani asked me afterwards if the lead hobbits were played by mdgets.)

I hated the photography in most of the fight scenes, though I generally liked it otherwise. Yes, fights are fast and chaotic and you want to convey "action", but when things are actively jerky it just doesn't work for me. A secondary complaint about the fight scenes is the lack of tactics the combattants tended to show; I don't expect grand strategy, but you don't entirely stop a fight to watch someone die, nor do you run past an enemy and ignore a clear shot. Ah well, the price of high drama. :-)

But don't get me wrong -- I did enjoy the movie!