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Shabbats (future and past)

This Saturday is the Shabbat service where I'll be chanting Torah. I have the first piece. (There are, I think, five readers total.) This should be nifty. I went over the portion with my co-worker again today and things seem to be in order. (I also went over it with Aya, a fellow congregant, at the shabbaton.) I think my plan to chant Behar at Tree of Life the following week might fail, though; the portions are too similar, and I'm getting cognitive dissonance. (When I first set out to do this I thought the portions were two weeks apart, not one.) Oh well; if not this year, then next.

The shabbaton featured some very good conversations that I find myself unable to summarize. We spent some time in the morning studying Pirke Avot (particularly talking about discipline in study and observance), and some time in the afternoon talking about how we relate to God and why we're uncomfortable talking about God. Friday night included a lot of music and storytelling.

A while ago I noticed a big difference in approaches to ritual between the liberal and traditional Jews I know. The shabbaton provided another example with havdalah, the ceremony marking the end of Shabbat. I've done this with traditional friends who've done it quickly and matter-of-factly, not because they were rushed but because that's just the way you do things. At the shabbaton, havdalah extended for a good 15 minutes (maybe more), with music. We were relaxed about it. It is the difference between fulfilling a specific obligation, because you have to, and infusing a ritual with meaning (or at least making it fun). You can see something similar with prayer sometimes; we say fewer words than they do, but we don't rush it as much as some of them do. (Far be it from me to generalize to all traditional Jews. I'm talking about trends I've seen, nothing more.) When you've got so much text that it'll take you 40 minutes to get through (daily) morning prayers touching every word, you don't have much incentive to linger.

I sometimes wish that the Reform movement would put a little more of the traditional content back, but I don't want to end up in a tradition of speed-davening at the expense of paying attention to what the words actually mean. There must be a balance point.

short takes

It figures. Yesterday I saw that one of Amazon's affiliates had the second season of B5 for $50 (which is about half of the list price, though copies are easy to find at about $70). So I ordered it. An hour later another affiliate showed up with it for $40. Oh well. Then today another affiliate showed up with it for $26! But I've already ordered it, so too late now. And the memories of chasing the best price and nearly getting burned through half.com are still fresh, so I'm not going to feel too bad about missing out on the $26 copy. (They all claim to be new copies, by the way.)

We're most of the way through the first season. Tonight we watched "Grail" and "Eyes", along with the JMS commentary on "Signs and Portents".

Last night lefkowitzga came over and we traded Hebrew tutoring for illunination tutoring. It was fun! She has a good hand for painting, too. (I don't, especially. I'm pretty good at design, but my implementation has always been so-so.)

My neice is graduating from high school next month. I wonder what an appropriate gift is. She's been pestering her mother for a laptop computer, which is way beyond her mother's means. She's not going to get it from me, either, but she hasn't dropped any smaller hints. (I was really thinking closer to $100 than the $1000+ that would be required to fulfill that wish...) I don't like giving gift certificates, but that might be the best move. When all else fails, feed the book habit. :-)