Shabbat

The torah-reading went well -- better Saturday morning than Friday night, but reasonable both times.

We're in the process of renovating the sanctuary, so services are being held in the chapel at the moment. I love the chapel; it's a beautiful room, and as long as your crowd isn't too large it's great. I knew, intellectually, that the reading desk in the chapel is rather smaller than the one in the sanctuary, but somehow it didn't hit me just how small until I was actually reading torah on it. It was, um, cramped. And the desk is high and the portion started near the top of a column, so I was standing on tip-toes and leaning forward to read the first few lines. I probably looked kind of goofy, but if so people had the good grace not to say so to me. :-)

The other challenge Friday night was that the cloth on the desk must have been bunched up or something, because the parchment of the scroll was not lying flat. At one point I missed when going to the next line and needed to be prompted, and there were a couple other times when the curvature made things "interesting". But I got through it and I got lots of positive comments.

Shabbat morning the environment was familiar and I had no trouble seeing the scroll. And there was enough room that when I needed to go to a new column I could do so easily. Note to future self: bring a hair tie or something on torah-reading days; while my hair didn't get in my way as it hung down and reached for the parchment, it would be better to not do that. I wonder why I haven't noticed that before. I think I was having a fluffy-hair day, so maybe that was it.

Both times we did this with interspersed translations: I would chant a few verses and then pause while my rabbi translated, and then I'd pick it up again. (So this was all one aliyah, as opposed to breaking it up.) I think that worked really well; people who aren't fluent in Hebrew didn't have to go too long without help, and I got to pause during the reading. I wasn't sure if pausing would be an advantage or disadvantage going in, but it worked reasonably well. I wouldn't recommend it for someone who's nervous about reading or who isn't strong musically, though. I didn't have to think about start pitch for each segment; I was just there.

One person told me Saturday morning that my torah chanting helps her focus -- it's the combination of going more slowly than when just reading and my voice, she said. That's always nice to hear. One other person said I should do this some Friday night because I'm obviously good enough; I said "this was the rerun; I did that last night". :-)

My rabbi was right about soemthing Thursday night: I seem to have learned one of the trope symbols (gershayim) a third down from where it should be. Hmm. Must fix that for next time. I'm not actually sure if I've generally mis-learned it or if I somehow just goofed in this particular portion. (It only shows up twice, so not a lot of data.) And yes, my rabbi correctly identified the interval by which I was off. And no, we don't correct readers for trope errors unless they affect phrasing.

Eikev

We read from the third aliyah of Eikev this week. The specific text I read is Deut 9:4-14. So that's the context for this d'var torah.

This portion begins with Moshe telling the people that they aren't getting the land on their own merits. No, he says, they're only getting the land because the current occupants are even worse, and because God made a promise to their ancestors. That sounds harsh.

First off -- to whom is Moshe talking? He goes on to talk about how "you" sinned with the golden calf and in other ways, but this is not the generation that left Egypt. They all died in the desert; these are their descendants. These people didn't do those things. The torah does tell us that the sins of the fathers are visited upon their children, and maybe Moshe is thinking of that here, but maybe there's another way to look at his statement.

We've talked before about how the generation of slaves couldn't make the huge leap to worshipping God. There had to be a transition; they weren't ready but their children would be. When we consider the environment those slaves had lived their entire lives in save a couple months, the sin of the golden calf isn't that surprising. Sure, they'd witnessed God's miracles, but they'd then seen their leader ascend the mountain into the clouds, seemingly never to return. Is it that surprising that they reverted to what was familiar to them? I'm not excusing them for this sin, but I'd also point out that this is not the sin that caused them to die in the desert, either.

No, what led to that sentence was a lack of faith in God once they'd received the torah. They were on the border of the land, ready to enter with God in the lead, when the spies returned with a bad report and the people lost faith that God, who had led them out of Egypt and through the wilderness, could lead them into their land.

And now Moshe is talking to the next generation. These ones, unlike their parents, didn't know a lifetime of slavery; they have only known God. They are as yet untested. Their entry into the land isn't a reward; neither, however, are they being punished for their parents' sins. They have a chance at a clean start not unlike the chance that Adam and Chava had in the garden -- a truly fresh opportunity. Reward and punishment do not apply in this case, and Moshe's statement points this out.

( administrivia )

two SCA cookbooks

I buy lots of cookbooks, some SCA and some not. Redacting medieval and renaissance recipes can be a challenge, because they tend to say things like "take fatty meat and put by the fire with enough onions and corriander", and stuff like that. Fortunately, there's been a lot of work to redact these into usable recipes. At Pennsic I picked up the just-published Gode Cookery collection, which I'm looking forward to going through.

For people who just want easy food to take to SCA pot-lucks (that didn't come from a bakery or out of a can), I recommend Traveling Dysshes by patsmor. I think she's done a good job of compiling accessible information for entry-level cooks. I was one of her kibbitzers for the first edition some years ago, and there's now a second edition.

storm

Edit: The report I linked has since been edited and no longer contains the quoted text.

Holy cow. Since when does NOAA use the word "will" in forecasts of destruction? At first I thought the quotes I was seeing from this report were fake, until someone posted a link to the NOAA site.

"MOST OF THE AREA WILL BE UNINHABITABLE FOR WEEKS...PERHAPS LONGER. AT LEAST ONE HALF OF WELL CONSTRUCTED HOMES WILL HAVE ROOF AND WALL FAILURE. ALL GABLED ROOFS WILL FAIL...LEAVING THOSE HOMES SEVERELY DAMAGED OR DESTROYED."

There was a storm just a year or two ago that was predicted to flood New Orleans and it missed, but this sounds awfully certain. I hope the people who didn't get out in time find some way to be safe in all that.

insomnia has been posting information and is trying to hook up LJ users with crash space, though at this point I gather the problem is getting out of the city at all.

electronics annoyance

Grump. The DVD player seems to be relaying video but not audio. All connections are tight. And there are two audio connections anyway, and wouldn't they both have to be loose to produce a total failure? Sigh. The player worked fine a few days ago. (Yes, I confirmed that the TV has sound and that multiple DVDs failed.)

So we are now faced with the prospect that buying a new one might be cheaper than investigating and repairing the problem. That's just wrong, somehow. It's a region-free player and I don't remember if we bought it from overseas, so repair might not be trivial. But I don't like the disposable-goods consumer model and I feel bad every time I go that route. I can hear the landfills crying out for mercy.

It looks like replacements are slightly cheaper from Amazon UK than from Amazon US, but electronics is one of those areas where it might be worth buying from the guys in your own country. (And then there's shipping.)