Shabbat services

Friday night murmur311 took me to Valley Temple for services. The same rabbinic intern who was there last year was there; they got him for a second year. (He's entering his final year of rabbinic school this fall, so this will presumably be his last stint as an intern.) Brad is an engaging service leader, and it's obvious that he and the congregation have clicked a lot in the last year. I was surprised that he recognized me and remembered that I was here for the Sh'liach K'hilah program; unless Jenny said something to him recently, that's a pretty good memory!

( service anthropology )

Jenny and I chatted with the rabbi some after the service. He seems like a really friendly person; he'll be a good catch for some congregation. (Hmm, we'll be looking for an associate rabbi to start in a year, which is when he graduates...) We ended up talking a bit about rabbinic job-hunting and he explained how HUC's matching process works. (Ask me later if you're interested. He said it was similar to what medical schools do for residency placements, if that helps.) I said I might be seeing this process from the other side in the coming year (ok, I'm being presumptuous and assuming I can get onto the search committee), but this is interesting for other reasons too. He and Jenny had both recently read a book called The New Rabbi that he recommends highly. (He named the author. I forget. I'll look this up on Amazon when I get home if one of you hasn't fed it to me by then. :-) )

Shabbat morning we went to Temple Sholom, one of three Reform congregations within a block. That seems unusual to me; I think at least one of them split off from one of the others, but I didn't get the full history. (In Pittsburgh, by comparison, there are five Reform synagogues -- two in the city about two miles from each other, and the other three each in a different suburb ten miles out or so.)

Their rabbi said to tell my rabbi hi. I guess on the one hand you'd expect a movement's rabbis to generally know each other, but on the other hand there are what, 1200 or more Reform rabbis in the US? That's a lot of people to know or even know of.

( service anthropology )

During the torah study there was some discussion of why this story of a non-Jewish prophet would be part of the torah. One of the people there thought Bilaam had had a true change of heart (hey, that sounds familiar :-) ), though I think I remember reading last week that Rashi blames Bilaam for the Israelite men going on to sin with the Moabite women, so I'm not so sure that works. (Or maybe I'm misremembering and Rashi blames Balak. I don't have a copy of Rashi to check -- at all, let alone here in Cincinnati.) I suggested that while the torah is primarily about Yisrael, including a passage showing that even a gentile "gets it" about God's goodness and might could be valuable to later readers (and to b'nei yisrael too, if they were of a mind to pay attention). The rabbi thought this was a good interpretation. (I didn't bring up Rashi.)

I wonder, in thinking about it, if the Israelites at the time were even aware of Bilaam's curses-turned-blessings aimed at them. I don't see how they would be unless told. While this is not the generation that rebelled against God, they still might have been boosted somewhat by the endorsement from outside. Hmm.

I liked both congregations that I visited this Shabbat. I noticed that both have rabbinic interns in addition to rabbis; I guess proximity to HUC has something to do with that. :-) The intern I met Friday night knows one of the student rabbis we're going to have this week (not surprising; they're presumably classmates) and had good things to say about him. Presumably we'll meet them all tomorrow.

random accessibility question

On Windows XP (probably up to date), does anyone know of a way to make the mouse cursor bigger? I had to set the resolution on this laptop above my preferred 1024x768 because that resolution absolutely sucked on this display, and then tell Windows to use extra-large fonts and twiddle my applications. (Mozilla's minimum font size is now 20, to give you an idea of the magnitude of the problem.) But this means that everything graphical is still down at its "normal" size (per the resolution). I can live with not being able to see images well for a week; it's not like I'm doing much browsing or graphics manipulation, after all. But the mouse cursor is also a graphic image, and that I care about.

I've already found the accessibility option for "tell me where the cursor is on demand" (it animates), but if I could make the mouse cursor itself bigger, or bright red (inverse-video would be better but hard, I imagine), or something, that'd be really helpful.

With the way technology is advancing, I'm guessing I'll never be able to reasonably buy a laptop of my own because of stuff like this. When a resolution I can actually see is considered non-native because it's "too low", I'm in trouble. (Yes I did try 800x600 too. No dice; it looked as bad as 1024x768. And there's nothing between the two..)

Update: Problem solved. Thanks everyone!