leading services

Thursday night I led the shiva minyan for Steve. I hadn't led one for someone I was close to before, but I thought I'd do ok or I wouldn't have accepted the assignment. It went ok -- a little shaky in a couple places as I thought about Steve, but overall fine. My rabbi was able to make it after all (he arrived just as we were starting), so we split it. That turned out to be perfect, as I don't know how to chant ...malei rachamim yet. My rabbi complimented me later. Several of my coworkers were there, thus mingling work and private lives just a bit more. The entry I posted Thursday night was partly a result of a conversation I had with someone after the minyan, though it's something I've been meaning to do for years.

Originally I was supposed to lead the regular (congregational) service on Thursday, but with the shiva and some other stuff things got jiggled around. I wonder who did end up leading that service. I guess it was probably the associate rabbi. My rabbi told me that I may lead that service on some nights now even when he's there. (Specifically, nights with board meetings or executive-committee meetings -- also when we are almost guaranteed a minyan.) I appreciate my rabbi's willingness to give me these kinds of assignments; my query about Friday-night services requires a broader discussion, but meanwhile he's finding ways to give me other opportunities.

It's past time for me to explicitly tell him about Thursday mornings. It's not that it's a secret; it's just that it hasn't come up in conversation. But now it might matter to him, so I have to find a way to bring it up. (He does know -- and did at the time -- that I was leading occasional Shabbat services there for a while. But leading weekday services is newer.)

Academy

Today the local SCA group hosted the Academy, a (roughly) semi-annual event consisting mainly of classes. (The event rotates around the kingdom; we don't hold it locally that often.) It went pretty well. The event was held at CMU, which is no more than a mile from my synagogue, so I just walked there after services. It turned out that I beat Dani there by 15 or 20 minutes and he had my garb, but a friend had a spare tunic I could throw on until he got there so that was fine.

Some classes that I wanted to take were cancelled due to instructors not being able to make it at the last minute. Oh well. I did get to take a nifty class on making cheese; Broom (there's more to his name, but that's what eeryone calls him) is an entertaining teacher.

Tofi, who moved to LA a few months ago, came back for this event, so it was nice to be able to spend time chatting with him. He seems to be happy with his new job, and they managed to sell their house here pretty quickly.

There was an "ask the laurel" table set up at the event. This sort of thing is an open invitation to wacky questions and there were some of those, but it was all in good fun. More importantly, there did actually seem to be some useful exchanges of information and advice, so that's good. I don't know how much, but hey -- it gave people a place to hang out and gab, and that's not bad. :-)

As a pleasant change of pace, admission to this event was free (you had to pay to eat, which is appropriate), so there was no offensive corporate tax. So I made a point of supporting the event; I volunteered for the clean-up crew (which turned out to be an easier job than I expected) and also volunteered to do advance cooking, though the latter wasn't needed. I'd like to see my group do more free events.