(no subject)

This is hilarious, in a sad sort of way that reminds me of roommates past....

random short takes

A few nights ago, at something like 3am, we got a phone call from someone who blathered at our answering machine -- in some language we couldn't quite identify. (It had phonemes that sounded vaguely like Japanese, but I don't think it actually was Japanese.) Then the next day, sometime while we were at work, he called again, same deal. You'd think that the English message on the machine would provide a hint about languages comprehended here, but I guess not. I wonder who he was and what he wanted -- and whether he had any idea what time it was when he called the first time.

What was the deal with Enterprise this week? The two crew members off in a shuttle see wreckage from a ship that's not theirs and they think it's the Enterprise? Aren't there some distinctive markings involved? And weren't they motivated to investigate? I just plain did not get the initial premise of this episode... (I still don't know if this show is actually worth watching; it's had a few very good shows and many that didn't speak to me but weren't actively bad. This was possibly the most disappointing to date, though the stupid alien-pregnancy thing a while back is also a contender.)

As part of the grand shuffling of stuff in our house, we're investigating central A/C for the second floor. We figure enough will drift down to the first floor on its own, and a window unit in the living room can supplement when needed, and running ducts is invasive. (We have radiators.) If we just do the second floor, they can put the hardware in the attic and run only short bursts of ducts. It sounds like a cunning plan; I wonder if it will turn out to be a cunning operation when it's done.

You know, one of the errors in our property assessment this year is that they think we have central air, but that's not why we're doing this. :-)

book discussion

Last Monday night I led a book review/discussion at Temple Sinai of Karen Armstrong's A History of God. (Billed as a review, but a discussion in practice.) I'll try to write up some more thorough notes or a review or something soon; I know some of you are waiting for this. The people who organize these book discussions had told me to expect it to go about an hour, so I went in trying to do the impossible and actually summarize 4000 years of how people view God in under 45 minutes. The first thing I did was to write a list of key points/ideas (time-ordered) on a board so we would at least be aware of how much there was to cover. I figured that, that done, if people wanted to linger in, say, the world of mysticism with the understanding that we'd then give the Enlightenment short shrift, well, that was ok too. I had read the book, after all, so I wouldn't be losing anything in that approach. So I told people to interrupt with questions or if they otherwise wanted, and they did. We had a good discussion that, unbeknownst to me at the time, dove-tailed nicely with a talk that Farooq Hussani, from the local Islamic center, had given the previous day. (I wasn't there, but some people in the room had been.)

I thought the discussion went ok but that I didn't have a good-enough handle on how to run such a thing, nor did I have a good-enough handle on the material. That is, I think I did a decent job of absorbing and summarizing the material in the book, but there are issues that the book didn't get into that are important, and I hadn't done any supplementary reading. (For example, the book talks about the Protestant reformation, but I know there was a lot more to it than what is described in the book, but I don't personally have a good understanding of some of those issues.)

The other people there seemed to think it went very well, and I've gotten some nice compliments since then. One person pointed out that it people weren't enjoying themselves they wouldn't have stayed for two hours. :-)

Shabbat report

Friday night I went to Tree of Life again. The turnout was small; I wonder how much of that was due to the time being listed wrong in the Chronicle and how much was just normal fluctuation. (No bar mitzvah, winter, threatening bad weather...)

Rabbi Berkun had larnygitis (I bet I've misspelled that but I'm not sufficiently motivated to look it up), so it's just as well he had a guest cantorial type. He could barely talk; singing would have been a Bad Idea. I offered to take over most of the English reading that he normally does, but he had already scared up someone for that job. He still tried to give a sermon, but he cut it short.

The "sermon" was really more of a report from a conference he attended last week. It was a joint conference of Conservative entities with acronyms; I'm sorry, but I don't know who they all were. The rabbinical body, the cantors' association, something tied to education, a couple more... Anyway, some of the speakers, the rabbi said, had talked about ways of increasing individual observance levels, and Rabbi Berkun rattled off suggestions like lighting Shabbat candles, at least dropping pork and shellfish from the diet if not keeping fully kosher, and so on -- really basic stuff, in other words. I was surprised; the Conservative movement is a halachic one and -- officially -- considers all of these things obligatory, but either this speaker was out in left field or they are having big problems with this among the rank and file. These were suggestions I've often heard from Reform rabbis, but in that movement individual autonomy is encouraged, not shunned. I wonder what it all means.

This Friday was one of the nights that the intergenerational choir at Temple Sinai was singing -- oops. I didn't know about that at the time I scheduled Tree of Life or I would have tried for a different night. But I'm not sure how to discretely get a choir schedule, and I still feel like I'm "moonlighting" and thus don't really want to spread around my real reason for asking.

Saturday morning Rabbi Freedman led the informal minyan, which is unusual. He did ok for the most part (he doesn't usually come so he doesn't know the drill), though he lost control during his drash. (He allowed it to turn into a general conversation that went longer than we really had time for given that he had to go upstairs and do a bar mitzvah after this.) Oops. We still got some Torah study in, and after he left we just continued on our own.

Ok, I have a question about the various "personal offerings" (as opposed to specified communal ones) that were brought. (Maybe Rabbi Gibson will be able to help out next week.) One of these is often translated as the "peace-offering", though Plaut (and the Hebrew speakers in the room) assert that something like "offering of well-being" is closer to the mark. What I don't know is when, and how often, one typically brought these. And was this a case of "things are going well; time to give thanks", or one of "things are going badly; time to ask for help"? (Most people there seemed to think it's the former.) Was this something you did once or twice a year, or any time you wanted to have a festive meal, or what? (The offering could be anything from a bull on down to small birds... not sure if meal-offerings were part of this.)

The talmud talks at some length about making sure that procedures for handling "peace-offerings" and sin-offerings are the same, because we don't want to embarrass the person who brought the latter. The presumption, then, is that peace-offerings are at least as common as sin-offerings, because you're trying to set up the presumption that of course Shlomo over there is bringing a peace-offering, but that only begs the question. (We haven't gotten to sin-offerings yet.) Were people running to the Levites with offerings several times a week, or was this a special thing you did once or twice a year, or what? (I'm confident that the answer is between those extremes, but I don't have any better information.)

Saturday night I went to shiva for a fellow congregant. I didn't actually know the person who died, but I know his wife and she's on the board so I thought I should go. I still don't really understand the protocols. I'm also not sure why Rabbi Gibson has the idea in his head that I've offered to run shiva minyanim; I'm willing if asked, but no, this really isn't something that's calling to me, at least until I learn how to comfort the mourner better. (He asked me if I could run it one night later this week, but the night he wanted was bad and he said not to worry about it -- he has other people he can ask. That's reassuring.)

(no subject)

An observation from last night's attempt to find the shiva house (only in Swisshelm Park, for crying out loud): when Mapquest's alternate reality meets Pittsburgh's ideas of navigation, Odd Things Happen. I still don't know where I was or quite how I got there, but I learned on the way out that there was a less-circuitous route. (This is Pittsburgh, so it wasn't straightforward.)

Mapquest is often good, but some miracles are beyond its limits.