Rosh Hashana

(I hear you saying: what, in May? :-) )

This year, for the first time, my congregation is going to have services for the second day of Rosh Hashana. Our not doing so was the only way in which we veered from our policy of following the Israeli calendar, and the rabbi brought it up with the worship committee recently and we decided to try it. That the second day of RH is on a Sunday, rather than a weekday, this year will not hurt. :-)

Someone on the committee asked if we could do some "creative" readings instead of just repeating the previous day's service. "Creative" can be a code word for "fluffy" (usually is, IMO, but there are exceptions), so when the rabbi asked a subcommittee to make proposals I asked to be in the group. As I privately told the chair of the worship committee, my goal here is to keep things from getting weird. (I don't know if these particular people are prone to weird, but better safe than sorry.)

The subcommittee met for the first time last night. It's a good thing I'm part of it; some of the other members were all too willing to cut out required parts of the service and I was able to talk to them about what's core liturgy that we Do Not Mess With, what can tolerate variations, and where our machzor already made adaptations so we can make different adaptations if we like. I wish I had a more traditional machzor to use as a reference, though I don't wish it enough to spend money. Hmm, I wonder if I can borrow one from Tree of Life; I'll try to remember to ask on Thursday. The problem is that sometimes Gates of Repentance (our machzor) made changes -- they're clearly changes -- but without knowing what they replaced, it's hard to know how to react.

I think we'll be able to produce a service that's true to what it's supposed to be. I've mentally identified areas where I can give the other members free rein, which should give me karma points to apply to the parts of the service I really care about. We'll see. Of course, the full committee has to approve and the rabbi has final say.

We talked a little about the balance of Hebrew and English, and congregational reading versus readings by the leader. We were looking at something that's specific to the RH liturgy and someone said (without looking at it) that the congregation could read this in Hebrew. I said the congregation can be relied upon to read in Hebrew what is familiar, but I wasn't sure about this. On further investigation, we determined that I could read it but not confidently and quickly, and I'm apparently a sort of congregational canary: that I can read something doesn't mean anything, but that I can't is significant. Interesting; I didn't know that's how some people view me. :-) (I can read anything slowly, but I don't do unfamiliar text at typical reading speed yet.)

random bits

My fourth-season Blake's 7 DVDs came last week. In this season they have a new-to-them ship with a computer named Slave. I don't think I had previously noticed that the computer addresses Avon as "master" but the others as "sir". I wonder if Avon threatened it. :-)

Sunday night we joined ralphmelton (birthday boy), lorimelton, and mrpeck at John Harvard's in Monroeville. Dani and I ordered a beer sampler to explore the options; we got the smaller one, which is five five-ounce glasses (your choice of beers). They deliver the sampler on a placemat with a key (so your glasses go on specific places on the mat); I hadn't noticed that the list was ordered from less to more hoppy/bitter until they lined ours up on one side of the sheet. :-)

Tonight's dinner was almost a case of "grandfather's axe": I followed the recipe on the can of coconut milk, except that I used chicken instead of shrimp and broccoli instead of asparagus and onions instead of bell peppers, but it's still the recipe on the side of the can. (Verdict for next time: needs spices; try ginger.)

Dani and I talked about making reservations for an upcoming SCA event (war practice) tonight and we both realized that we're going entirely on inertia. Neither of us is actually drawn to this particular event this year; we're just running on auto-pilot. So we might not do that. Don't know yet. (It was actually Dani who pointed this out; I've become less active in the SCA and am being careful not to influence him in that direction, but he's feeling "eh" about this one on his own. We were just at an event a couple weeks ago, and that seems to have satisfied us both for the nonce.)

At the shabbaton I talked with someone who's currently taking private Hebrew lessons, and she suggested that we share a lesson slot and pair up as partners. I think she's more advanced than I am and I pointed this out, and she said that's fine. We'll probably start this after the ulpan. (Different teacher. She doesn't like the one I'm currently taking classes from and she says her tutor is much better.) This should be quite helpful, and if not, I can drop out and she can go back to what she was doing.