daf bit: Chagigah 26

Near the end of the tractate the rabbis discuss cleaning up after the festival is over. The mishna teaches: as soon as the festival is over they cleared up for the purification of the temple court, but if the festival ended on Friday they didn't because of the honor of Shabbat. R. Yehudah said not on Thursday either, because the priests weren't yet free at the end of the festival. The g'mara clarifies that this last part means that they had to take out the ashes from the altar.

The mishna goes on to say that all the vessels in the temple had second and third sets, lest the primary ones become ritually impure (tamei). All the vessels were required to be immersed (in a mikvah) at the end of the festival, except the altars. The rabbis disagree on the reason the altars are excluded, but none of they say "because they were too big and heavy", to my surprise. (26a-b)

(Today's daf is 24.)

text and subtext

Message from landlord: "In accordance with city ordinance blah blah, we will be conducting a mandatory evacuation drill on $date at 10AM."

Implied message from landlord: "Unless you particularly want to walk down 43 flights of stairs, that might be a good day to make other plans."

Unknown: whether the latter was intended -- fewer people in the building means fewer people who can mess up a compliance-check, after all. Though this would have been more plausible if they'd called it for 8AM rather than 10.

On a tangent, I wonder how people with mobility impairments get out of office buildings during alarms. There's no job-related reason I couldn't have a coworker in a wheelchair, after all, so somebody must have thought this through. (Please let somebody have thought that through...) Do they keep an elevator in service in that case (even though elevators are normally disabled during fire alarms), or is the floor warden responsible for rounding up people to carry the person downstairs, or what?

Ruach services

( background; some of you may know this already so I'm cutting )

So that brings us to this year. Apparently my rabbi got a fair bit of flack for not being in the sanctuary for the entire service (we have another rabbi, and a cantorial soloist, by the way), so he said he would not be able to lead the "ruach" services and asked me to do it. (Frankly, I believe I'm the only layperson in the congregation with all of the skills needed to do so.) I consider this a great honor, and my rabbi prominently honored me on Rosh Hashana during the torah service, so that's nice. (Funny story there, actually -- below the line.)

We are using the draft of the new machzor (about which I wrote previously). Rosh Hashana went pretty well aside from timing; my timing was spot-on for the target they had given me, but the folks in the sanctuary were moving more quickly so we had to hurry at the end. It appears that we will also be short on time for Yom Kippur, so I've done my best to make it fit and trim optional parts. I've practiced all the unfamiliar parts for Yom Kippur, as I did for Rosh Hashana last week, and I think I'm ready.

And for next year, I'm going to ask for an earlier start. This service starts at the same time as the sanctuary service because that was the earliest the rabbi could participate (rightly needing a break after the first service), but if we can't have the rabbi anyway, why not start half an hour earlier?

(In case you're wondering how two services can start at the same time and yet the other gets ahead of ours -- it's because the sanctuary service, using Gates of Repentance, skips all sorts of stuff that ought to be in there, while this service (and the minyan out of which it grew) strives for something more authentic.)

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Here's the funny story: in recognition of my work with that service, my rabbi invited me to dress the torah (g'lilah) after it was read. There is another honor at that point, hgabahah, lifting the torah and turning around so everybody can see the text. This requires some coordination as you're holding the scroll overhead, from the bottom. The scroll we were using is also on the heavy side. But hey, I'm g'lilah; if the other person can handle that, the weight needn't concern me, right? The person who does the lifting then holds the scroll until it's time to return it to the ark.

So the other person was our associate rabbi. And he was helping to lead the part of the service right after this, so he couldn't hold it. So that meant me. That's still ok; just sitting there holding a heavy scroll isn't hard. Managing the prayerbook one-handed was a bit challenging, but I had that under control.

So, on Rosh Hashana we do the shofar service during the torah service (after the haftarah, for those who are curious). The shofar service is broken into three sections: a set of prayers and readings, then you stand for the shofar blasts, and then you sing s short song that's at a completely different place in this particular prayerbook. Then you sit down and iterate.

So as it turned out, I wasn't just holding the scroll in my lap. I got a bit of a workout! :-)

Also, did not prostrate during the Great Aleinu that fell during this time...