Is my health-insurance provider the Wall-Mart of the medical world, or are conventional rates really that wacky? I got a statement from them today (from a recent doctor visit) that said things like "[some test], provider's fee $92.50, our allowance $17.47, you owe $0". While that line-item was the most extreme, for most items the "fee" was about three times the "allowance". Does this mean that the insurance company is gouging doctors so much that they end up stiffing the uninsured, because it's fiscally fatal to not accept insurance, or what?

Even though I park in a garage at home and under a bridge at work, the trees have been having mad tree-sex and dumping the output all over my car. (Thanks amergina for that imagry.) How do they do that? I don't find myself covered in pollen just from walking down the street, so I don't think there's enough "just in the air" to do this.

The person I was supposed to go to services with tomorrow (at Chabad) called to say she has a cold and is going to stay home. Lunch is still on, but services will have to wait for another time. Oh well.

Earlier in the day we talked about logistics. Their services start at 10; ours end at about 11, so I proposed walking down the street and joining them in progress. (We have a new torah reader tomorrow and I want to be there for him.) This is perfectly normal in the Orthodox world, by the way -- not like Reform, and not like churches. Orthodox morning services, in my limited experience, are over 3 hours, so this seemed logical to me -- I figured I'd get there about the time they hit barchu, or at worst the beginning of the amidah. She said if I got there by about 11:15, I'd catch the start of the torah reading. !! She said they're usually done around 12:15 or 12:30.

The congregational meeting was last night. My name was mentioned several more times than I expected it to, and people commented on it. These mentions included one from my rabbi, who ackowledged about a dozen people individually starting with me. Wow! (Oddly, I heard three different pronunciations of my name; obviously not everyone speaking actually knows me well. :-) )

Friday night I ended up going to the Lubavich Center for services. ( an inner dialogue in one act, because I'm feeling punchy )

Oh well. It would have presumably gone much better if I'd had a (female) "native guide", but I don't know any. Saturday morning is probably a much better bet than Friday night, and I'll try that someday, but I had the Friday night available so I figured it was worth a try. I've got a Saturday-morning minyan that I'm very attached to.

Maybe I had unrealistic expectations; I don't know. You hear a lot about the joy in chassidism, and I guess I expected something similar to the "singing minyan" in Passaic NJ, which was sort of Carlebach-esque in feel (though I didn't know about Shlomo Carlebach's music until later). At that service there was singing and even a little dancing IIRC, and the community really felt inclusive. I somehow thought that Chassidism was that plus more. (And, of course, I don't know if Friday's service was representative of the larger community.)

This morning's service went very well. It also had much more ruach (spirit) and community than I expected (and about as much singing as I expected -- which is to say, a fair bit).

I got there early so I could get a look at the sefer torah (scroll) I'd be reading from. Good thing I did; the calligraphy was very hard to read, with more of the "widened" letters than I've seen elsewhere. (The text is justified, and rather than mucking with white space the way printers do, certain lettrs are permitted to be written wider than usual to fill in the space. Sometimes they're very wide. It can be distracting.)

I was the first of five torah readers. I was nervous, but it went well. I made one "invisible" trope error and am pleased that I didn't stumble when I realized it had happened; I just fudged things and went on, and I don't think anyone but the checker noticed. And she didn't stop me for it, which is good. I made no pronunciation errors, and I think the checker would have corrected me if I had (based on what I saw with another reader). I think my pronunciation was spot-on, actually, and my trope was pretty good. (Certainly musically sound; whether I had any glitches within that scope, I can't say.)

I learned three lessons, two of which I've learned before and had forgotten. So I will write them down this time:

• Practice chanting while leaning over a table, not while standing up straight. Breathing and vocal support are very different in that posture. (I was out of breath in places where I shouldn't have been, and hadn't been in practice.)
• Don't get too attached to the calligraphy in the tikkun (practice book); the scroll might be different (already discussed).
• Both of your hands will be occupied, so don't plan on using hidden gestures to aid in memorization. (I had two sections that were the same text and different trope, and I practiced with gestures under the table to help me memorize which was which. But I had to use one hand to hold a roller on the scroll and the other was holding the yad (pointer), leaving no hands free. And that's the trope I got wrong.)

I got a lot of compliments, and I think I did a good job. I need to chant it into a tape recorder (archive, in case I ever get this portion again), and then I'll be ready to focus on Behar (which will mean overwriting some of what I learned for this one). I didn't archive Behar last year or Shlach Lecha (my "adult bat mitzvah [sic]" portion) a few years ago, and time has taken its toll. Behar is still there but rusty; Shlach Lecha is gone. Oops.

Wednesday night I went to a seder hosted by friends from my congregation. Dani was too sick to go. I think I woke him up when I asked him to drive me over there; oops. (It was before sundown and I had food to contribute.) It was very pleasant, and it included several other people from my congregation who didn't have anywhere else to go, so I wasn't the odd person out at the family gathering. (The only family were the couple, her father, and their younger son, who is in college. The older son lives in California.) ( seder geeking )

Then Thursday it was off to Toronto. Fortunately, Dani was feeling much better. Crossing the border was innocuous in both directions, though the US guard looked at us funny when we said we were married. You would think that no one would be surprised by last names that don't match these days. (This was also the first time I had to show photo ID. Dani always has to show his green card, but they've never challenged me before.)

( Thursday's seder )

Talk of SARS is everywhere in Toronto, but it doesn't seem to be keeping people from going out. Friday we accompanied Debby and Tucker to a crafts show; it was smaller than last year's but well-attended. And Saturday night after Shabbat we went to see Second City (fun show), which was also well-attended. I thought our brief brush with the outskirts of Chinatown on Friday was a bad idea, but it wasn't prolonged and I think it was ok.

Saturday morning I went to Beth Tzedec (Conservative) for services. I was met at the door by a security guard who directed me to the SARS instruction sheet, which said, basically, "no kissing (not even the Torah), no handshakes, kiddush is cancelled, and don't enter this building if [list of conditions here]". We heard some horror stories from Debby (who works in a hospital) about entire congregations, workplaces, etc having to go into quarantine because of contact with one person, so I guess that makes sense, but it still surprised me a little. I mean, if I'm in the same room as someone and breathing the same air, does it really matter if I shake his hand?

( more about services )

We spent most of the time there being "on" with various family members. While visiting is preferable to being bored because everyone is off doing stuff and we can't really go anywhere, it's also wearing. I really wish there were a practical way to visit with Dani's family in smaller doses. We visit with my family several times a year, in 6-8 hour doses, which works well -- but they're local, so we can.

I also wish some of his family would come to Pittsburgh occasionally; the burden shouldn't always be on us to go there. Looking ahead, next year's seders are on Monday and Tuesday, which means there'll probably be pressure for us to come up the previous weekend. I think I'm going to lobby for driving up Monday, hitting the two seders, and leaving Wednesday. I probably won't get away with it, but I can try. (I won't give the effort four vacation days, so if we extend the trip it will be by going up Sunday.)

( random travel notes )

I learned two new euphemisms during this trip:

• "highway maintenance ahead"; yes, the sign was orange. That's putting a positive spin on construction, I'd say.
• "unprotected contact", which seems to mean being within 15 feet of someone without wearing a full-body condom. (Well, mask, gown, and gloves; they don't seem to be doing the hats and booties.)

Yesterday afternoon Ralph and Char joined us for gaming. Ralph wrote it up already, so I'll just point to his journal for the details. Summary: Car Wars (new edition), Princes of Florence (Rio Grande), Cosmic Encounter (ancient and venerable edition), and Settlers of Catan. The first two were new to me, and I would definitely play them again (with some tweaks in the case of Car Wars).

Friday night I went to New Light for services. They are a small, friendly congregation that -- like my own and unlike some other local ones I've visited -- is not devoid of people approximately my age. I get the impression that they are thriving, not dying back. Several people noticed that I was new and made a point to greet me and introduce me around. I said to several people variations on "I walk past your building every week on my way to services so I finally decided to stop in", which I hope gives the impression that I already have a congregation and am not shopping, but that I would like to visit sometimes. (One person did point me at their brochures for prospective members.) This is a place I would be happy to visit from time to time, and they might become my standard second-choice preference.

There were about 35 people there, I'd guess. Someone told me that this was a bit low; the rainstorms we were having probably kept some people away. They have about 85 or 90 famlies, I'm told. There was a nice little oneg shabbat where people actually sat down at tables rather than just milling around. This made it easier to initiate conversations with people I didn't know.

Service geekery ahead.

They did all of kabbalat shabbat, rather than just picking a couple of the psalms the way they do at Tree. They had various members of the congregation lead English readings (from the floor -- it's a small place so that works). One of the members of the congregation gave a short talk. (I never found out if the person on the bima leading services was their rabbi or just a lay person. I didn't get to meet him.) They put the talk between kabbalat shabbat and ma'ariv, which probably makes more sense than where it's usually placed around here, which is during ma'ariv before aleinu. They did the silent amidah but did not do a chazan's repetition. I noticed that I was one of the last people to finish and they waited for us stragglers. They did mostly different melodies from the ones I know. They had mixed seating and some of the readers were women. (No idea if they give aliyot to women, as I wasn't there Shabbat morning.)

I went to Shabbat morning services at Holy Blossom (a 15- to 20-minute walk from Debby's house in Toronto). I had intended to go for Pesach morning and Friday night, but there were logistics issues and I didn't. But I got there for Shabbat morning.

With a name like "Holy Blossom", I was kind of expecting some sort of new-age earthy-crunchy-granola-type service, but it wasn't. It's a huge Reform congregation (somebody said 2500 families), and congregations that big tend to stay pretty near the center of their movements, I would think.

[Jewish geekery ahead.]

The service used the "old" Reform siddur (blue Gates of Prayer), with God referred to as "he" and no apologies made. The service had both more and less Hebrew than I expected -- some parts were Hebrew that we never do in Hebrew, and other parts that I'm used to in Hebrew were English instead. The Torah reading consisted of most, but not all, of the parsha, not the very short excerpt that many Reform congregations do. It included Haftarah (again, some Reform don't). They read Song of Songs, which I thought was only done for the Pesach service and not for Shabbat, but I just checked the luach (the what-to-do-on-each-shabbat guide), and I was wrong. So they did that right. They also did the full hallel (or at least as full as it gets in Gates of Prayer, which I think is actually pretty close to complete), and did not abbreviate it.

There was a bar mitzvah. At my home congregation, the bar mitzvah reads as much of the Torah portion as he's learned, and that's it. Here, the bar mitzvah hadn't learned the whole thing, and they had someone else read the parts he didn't.

Also at my own congregation, the bar-mitzvah service is centered around the bar mitzvah and his family. Not so here. Yes, he read Torah (and sat in the congregation, not on the bimah, the rest of the time), and the rabbi said a few words to him, but the parents did not address him during the service, there was no elaborate ceremony with getting the whole family on (or in front of) the bimah (I've seen this), or any of that. A Shabbat service with a bar mitzvah, not the other way around. Refreshing.

They had a cantor, who was about 70 (I'd guess) and tended toward what I've heard described as "old-school performance cantoring". He wasn't leading us in prayer and song; he was singing, and sometimes we could sing along (though it wasn't clear if we were "supposed to" -- I did anyway), and other times it was too elaborate and unpredictable and we had to just listen. The cantor did the lion's share of the service; the rabbi did small bits (and gave a sermon). The rabbi looked to be pretty young -- mid-30s, maybe -- and I wonder if there's an age-related dynamic going on there between the two of them.

Random people-watching: most men who wore tallitot wore the full-sized ones, not the little ones that have become popular of late. I saw one woman wearing a tallit. (I didn't take mine -- I don't unless I know that it will be ok where I'm going.)

(Aside: my tallit belonged to Dani's grandfather, who died about 35 years ago. It is the smaller variety. So this isn't only a recent phenomenon. I don't know what it means. It's even possible that this tallit goes all the way back to his bar mitzvah and that he never wore it again except maybe for Yom Kippur; Dani's family isn't observant and doesn't tend to go to Shabbat services.)

Anyway, Holy Blossom was an interesting experience, especially for the religious anthropologist in me. I didn't get to meet the rabbi; I knew that Debby et al were waiting on me for lunch, and the service ran somewhat longer than I had expected (forgot about Hallel, didn't know about Song of Songs). So I didn't stay for the kiddush.

Next time I'm in Toronto I'll probably go someplace different; Debby said there's also a Conservative shul within walking distance.