2. What is your impression of Orthodox Judaism "from the outside", as it were? ( Read more... )

3. How did you choose the synagogue you go to?( Read more... )

4. How did you get into RPG and what's your favorite game? ( Read more... )

5. If you could have any job in the world, what would it be? ( Read more... )

Much of the feedback so far weighs in on the side of "required -- family is family". Someone cited honoring one's parents (the source of the request), and a couple people mentioned protecting a life (the sibling is apparently in real danger of injury without someone there).

I, on the other hand, am leaning toward "forbidden", though "permitted" is a possibility. Definitely not "required", though.

The issue is complex. While the sibling needs a caregiver, that's a service that can be hired -- so there's no apparent need for the poster to do it personally. Of course it's important to honor one's parents (this comes up a lot in text), but the talmud also teaches that if a parent asks you to transgress the Torah, you must decline (Bava Metzia 32a). This raises the question of whether attending another religion's worship service -- on its second-holiest day, to boot -- is avodah zara, forbidden worship. Is it enough if you don't intend to worship? What if you don't participate? What if you don't listen? That is a complex question with varied answers depending on circumstances, ranging from exactly what will take place to the strength of your own Jewish education and commitment, and you really need to ask your rabbi for a personal ruling.

I think the experience of facing this issue is valuable for the conversion candidate, actually. As a member of a minority religion (that sometimes faces hostility from others), sometimes you are going to have to make choices between your religion and your family/friends/society -- things like this, or resolving Shabbat issues with your employer, or various other matters. Finding out how you will handle those choices before it's "too late" -- before you convert and acquire new obligations -- seems useful to me.

I assume that most conversion candidates face some sort of religion-vs-world-at-large test during the process, but I don't actually know.

( Read more... )

Last week's Torah study produced an interesting conversation (which I predict will continue this week). What do we do when confronted with a Torah commandment we find distasteful? (The triggering issue isn't really important for this discussion, though we kept coming back to it.) ( Read more... )

This thought was queued up in the back of my brain when I met my rabbi Thursday to study and he asked me what I think of the war. ( Read more... )

Then we went on to study. When last we left our heroes, Rabbi Yose was standing in the ruins of the Temple having a conversation with the prophet Eliyahu. (And you thought the talmud was dry!) ( Read more... )

Somehow we wandered onto the subject of studying Torah for its own sake -- that God desires this behavior, and so it is salvivic even if we gain nothing practical from it. (Ah yes, I remember how we got there: there is a discussion, after the Yose part, about the prayer/study habits of King David, who some say studied all night. Some Chasidim strive to emulate him.) We then discussed why we study, as this is not the theology that either of us follows. I'm not going to share my rabbi's reasons here, but I will share my own. (Hey, he knows about this journal, though I don't know if he reads. If he wants to share his reasons, he will. :-) )( Read more... )

Rabbi Berkun had larnygitis (I bet I've misspelled that but I'm not sufficiently motivated to look it up), so it's just as well he had a guest cantorial type. He could barely talk; singing would have been a Bad Idea. I offered to take over most of the English reading that he normally does, but he had already scared up someone for that job. He still tried to give a sermon, but he cut it short.

The "sermon" was really more of a report from a conference he attended last week. It was a joint conference of Conservative entities with acronyms; I'm sorry, but I don't know who they all were. The rabbinical body, the cantors' association, something tied to education, a couple more... Anyway, some of the speakers, the rabbi said, had talked about ways of increasing individual observance levels, and Rabbi Berkun rattled off suggestions like lighting Shabbat candles, at least dropping pork and shellfish from the diet if not keeping fully kosher, and so on -- really basic stuff, in other words. I was surprised; the Conservative movement is a halachic one and -- officially -- considers all of these things obligatory, but either this speaker was out in left field or they are having big problems with this among the rank and file. These were suggestions I've often heard from Reform rabbis, but in that movement individual autonomy is encouraged, not shunned. I wonder what it all means.

This Friday was one of the nights that the intergenerational choir at Temple Sinai was singing -- oops. I didn't know about that at the time I scheduled Tree of Life or I would have tried for a different night. But I'm not sure how to discretely get a choir schedule, and I still feel like I'm "moonlighting" and thus don't really want to spread around my real reason for asking.

Saturday morning Rabbi Freedman led the informal minyan, which is unusual. He did ok for the most part (he doesn't usually come so he doesn't know the drill), though he lost control during his drash. (He allowed it to turn into a general conversation that went longer than we really had time for given that he had to go upstairs and do a bar mitzvah after this.) Oops. We still got some Torah study in, and after he left we just continued on our own.

Ok, I have a question about the various "personal offerings" (as opposed to specified communal ones) that were brought. (Maybe Rabbi Gibson will be able to help out next week.) One of these is often translated as the "peace-offering", though Plaut (and the Hebrew speakers in the room) assert that something like "offering of well-being" is closer to the mark. What I don't know is when, and how often, one typically brought these. And was this a case of "things are going well; time to give thanks", or one of "things are going badly; time to ask for help"? (Most people there seemed to think it's the former.) Was this something you did once or twice a year, or any time you wanted to have a festive meal, or what? (The offering could be anything from a bull on down to small birds... not sure if meal-offerings were part of this.)

The talmud talks at some length about making sure that procedures for handling "peace-offerings" and sin-offerings are the same, because we don't want to embarrass the person who brought the latter. The presumption, then, is that peace-offerings are at least as common as sin-offerings, because you're trying to set up the presumption that of course Shlomo over there is bringing a peace-offering, but that only begs the question. (We haven't gotten to sin-offerings yet.) Were people running to the Levites with offerings several times a week, or was this a special thing you did once or twice a year, or what? (I'm confident that the answer is between those extremes, but I don't have any better information.)

Saturday night I went to shiva for a fellow congregant. I didn't actually know the person who died, but I know his wife and she's on the board so I thought I should go. I still don't really understand the protocols. I'm also not sure why Rabbi Gibson has the idea in his head that I've offered to run shiva minyanim; I'm willing if asked, but no, this really isn't something that's calling to me, at least until I learn how to comfort the mourner better. (He asked me if I could run it one night later this week, but the night he wanted was bad and he said not to worry about it -- he has other people he can ask. That's reassuring.)

He recommended that I become familiar with the works of Leopold Zunz, a 19th-century scholar, though I failed to note why. (Presumably related to the whole question of reforms/innovations in halacha, as that was the main topic of conversation.) One of these days I'll get myself a copy of Encyclopedia Judaica so I can look up the bare-bones info on pointers like this.

We talked about how reforms to halacha go all the way back. He believes that the Reform movement follows the process, though because its interpretations are different, when you build on those things can seem to get kind of far afield. An example from me (that we didn't discuss): if you have made a case for egalitarian reforms in most things, as Reform and some Conservative have done, then I have to grant that you can make a case for patrilineal descent. (I still think this is a bad idea, however, as it really divides the Jewish people on the question of who is a Jew, and it's not like children of Jewish fathers and non-Jewish mothers can't convert fairly trivially if they're raised in the religion.) We didn't go very far down this path; I think I disagree with his claim, because at least historically there have been cases where Reform just plain threw out halacha, but maybe he's talking current practice and not history.

Remember, though, that Reform does not believe that the oral law (or, necessarily, the written law, i.e. Torah) came directly from God at Sinai, so this is presumably more about respecting the tradition than anything else. It seems obvious to me that my rabbi respects the halachic tradition far more than average in Reform (probably a lot of why we click so well), but one rabbi does not a movement make.

We drifted into the question of just how a modern Reform Jew goes about making decisions, and we kept ending up on Shabbat topics. We talked about electricity; I said I use timers for lights and the crock pot and am fairly rigid there and more lenient elsewhere (though I try to avoid issues rather than making explicit decisions; I'm a wuss). He asked detailed questions about the crock pot; not sure why. Somewhere in there I said that I don't unscrew the fridge light, though as a practical matter I know where in the fridge the things I'm going to need on Shabbat are, and occasionally (read: at night when the room is otherwise dark) I've been known to close my eyes and just grab the Coke anyway. He thought this was excessive, and this led to a discussion of intent vs. side-effect. He's right; I already believe that side-effects are not transgressions if I didn't want the results anyway. (We also talked about motion-sensor lights in this context. Summary: the (now-hypothetical) neighbor's lights are not my problem. Putting one in myself would be.)

We talked some about the get issue, and the Orthodox solution of editing history and how offensive I found that idea. I've mentioned this before.

We didn't really talk about what I describe as "rules hacks" in the halachic system. Another time. (I still have stuff I want to say about this, but haven't gotten it written down yet.)

At the end of the hour he asked whether I wanted to keep studying philosophy or instead begin to tackle talmud, and I opted for the latter. During the Shabbat discussion we had already started into that, so we're going to just start with the 39 melachot (forbidden categories of work) and go from there. Just as soon as the book I ordered comes in and I make a first pass through the first bit on my own to acclimate. Yay! I can't wait!

( You were warned. )

I had Shabbat meals with Yaakov, Rivka, and their 3-year-old Aaron. We never saw some of the other Jewish regulars. I got to talk with Yaakov some, though we haven't had a really good, long conversation at a con or event since Aaron was born. We talked about the Sinai board thing, and his advice amounted to: find out the background to all of this. I still don't have a feel for whether the behavior I'm seeing is considered normal in the Jewish community.

There were some areas of "uncertain practice" involving Yaakov. One occurred when I showed up for lunch on Saturday. He asked if I had made kiddush yet and I said no, and he said he had so I should go ahead. I drifted to a corner of the room and started to sing quietly, but he made it clear that he had intended to listen to me (and he and Rivka said amein at the end). I felt awkward because as I was starting I realized I had no idea what the *Orthodox* practice is, and Reform tends to abbreviate some things, and I suddenly felt self-conscious that I might be making kiddush "wrong" from his point of view. (In fact, the reason I had not done this before going was so I could hear him do it.) I explained this afterwards and there was in fact just one sentence missing from what I know vs. what he knows, and he didn't cons ider it an issue. On a personal level *I* don't consider it an issue; this is the way I make kiddush and that's fine. Being on the spot in front of someone with a potentially different practice, and who comes from a tradition that says theirs is right and mine is wrong, made me feel funny, though.

There were some other awkwardnesses involving the lack of an eiruv and the use of the electronic keys in the hotel, but I won't go into them now. They boil down to this: I am comfortable with my practice, but I am uncomfortable in situations where I feel like I have to justify my practice to Yaakov. Yaakov is my friend and I'm sure he's not judging me negatively -- but it still feels awkward.

After this weekend, I have resolved not to share a hotel room with Kathy again. A year ago she had agreed to get two rooms next time (she snores loudly enough to bother me, and does so at length). Then a couple weeks ago she said she couldn't afford that, so we got one. Maybe my memories were exaggerated, I thought. Well, they weren't. So next time we *will* get two rooms, and if the rest of the group decides that I'm being unreasonable I guess I'll just get a room of my own, though I don't think that would really be fair. It may be the most expedient solution, though. We'll see.

There were some good concerts this year, and there was a jam session on Saturday that was a lot of fun. I'm not all that experienced with jam sessions (we're talking session-style, like you see in Irish pubs, not SCA-style where they hadn out music), but I did ok. We had a couple harps, a fiddle, a larger member of the viol family (might have been a cello), a few recorders, a bowed psaltery, and some percussion.

Saturday night at midnight was the traditional singing of the Hallelujah Chorus around the swimming pool. The pool is in the lobby area and has a 5-story ceiling and glass walls most of the way up, and the accoustics are pretty good. (Like singing in the shower, but much moreso.) I don't sing this any more, of course; I don't sing explicitly-Christian hymns. But I stood and listened, and it sounded pretty good. A few people asked me why I wasn't singing; that is an awkward question for which they don't really want the real answer, so I mostly just said I didn't feel like it.

Friday night at the filking I sang Michael Greenstein's "9/11" song; I had wanted OTM to learn it but some members thought it was too bloodthirsty. (It's kind of a revenge song, but more on the theme of "we will be united against you".) It went over very well at the filk. I didn't get an opportunity to sing it Saturday night.

The drive back was much longer than usual, but I've already written about that.