Monica

Friday night I led services with our cantorial soloist. Both she and I were pleased with how it went, and I got several compliments afterward. I hope I will have more-frequent opportunities to do this.

One oddity, though -- somehow we picked up about ten minutes! I asked afterward and the consensus of people I trust to tell it to me straight is that no, I was not rushing. We do know that my rabbi is more prone than I am to fill in extra explanatory bits and the like; this is not a criticism of him by any means (it's not excessive or anything), but more a comment on my comparative lack of skill and tendency in this area. I just don't ad-lib as well, and he's done this about a bazillion times more than I have so he's had more practice.

It is possible that some of the time came from musical choices. Not clear. And we did start on time, because I'm like that. This doesn't always happen.

Saturday morning I led both torah study and the service. (The lay torah reader had a sore throat, so while she would have led part of the service normally, she asked me to do it.) The second rabbi was there for this and he seemed pleased with the job I did. Another member of the minyan plays guitar and led some of the singing; I'm happy to see her be more involved. The torah reader asked the rabbi to read haftarah (I think on account of her voice). I hadn't heard him read before; I really enjoyed listening to him. He read more expressively than I'm used to.

After I prepared for discussion of the post-flood rainbow, we didn't actually get there. This is the nature of Jews studying torah sometimes. :-) (We spent the entire half hour on the three or four verses immediately preceeding that part.)

Sunday was my congregation's annual mitzvah day (yes yes, every day is mitzvah day, but they organize a bigger community-service thing once a year). I've had bad luck with projects in the past; that a congregant is enthusiastic about some project does not automatically make him well-organized (cough). The best-run project I've been on, the one where I actually felt like I was doing something positive instead of twiddling my thumbs for the sake of PR, was run by Habitat for Humanity, but we don't do that any more. (And then Habitat for Humanity went over to the dark side so I don't support them any more.)

This year, as in the last few years, one of the projects was with the Humane Society, so I signed up for that. I thought we'd be doing things like walking the dogs and cleaning the cat kennels and whatever else needed to be done. But it turns out that their insurance company has been having words with them about fly-by-night volunteers, so we weren't allowed to do any of that because we haven't been through their formal training. Instead, we joined volunteers from the Pittsburgh House Rabbit Club in exercising, socializing, and generally playing with the shelter bunnies.

They had a large room set up with several low fences, each area enclosing either one or two bunnies with enough room to do stuff. There were about twenty bunnies total, many of them larger than my cats. They tended to be shy, but if you sat in the pen with them and offered toys, they would often come around. The senior bunnies, a pair of large, mostly-white bunnies with a few black splotches, were very mellow. (They had the run of the walkway between all the pens.)

This all reminded me of Stuart, the Dutch rabbit I had as a pet for about six months. I can't seem to find any pictures of him (hmm, I know I took pictures...), but the second one on the Wikipedia page is pretty close, except that Stuart was a stray, not a grand champion.

I hadn't been looking for a bunny in particular. I had just bought a house and so could finally safely have pets, but I hadn't done anything about it yet. Then someone on a local newsgroup was rather urgently trying to find a new home for a bunny, so after bringing all the might of rec.pets to bear on the problem, I decided this had promise. I wasn't interested in keeping him in a cage for the rest of his life (they're both smart and social), but Usenet told me that bunnies could be litter-trained. You know what they say: go not to Usenet for answers, for they will say both 'yay' and 'nay' and 'try another newsgroup', but I tried anyway. I ultimately failed in this task, but I was able to find someone else who already had litter-trained bunnies who was willing to add him to that colony. I did miss Stuart, but he was much better off with other bunnies, probably moreso than I had realized at the time. I didn't know until Sunday just how social they are or that some of them come in bonded pairs that must not be broken up. I also learned that the Humane Society hosts "bunny blind dates", which are mandatory if you already have a bunny and want to add another. Good idea. They also do this with dogs (optional there, I think), but they forbid it with cats -- the person telling me this explained that no one involved wants the amount of trauma that would bring. :-)

So I don't feel like I contributed much to the Humane Society on Sunday (continuing the pattern for mitzvah day), but it was kind of fun and it brought back memories of the pet who preceded the cats.

This week was my congregation's annual shabbaton. I want more shabbatot like that. :-)

( Friday night )

( some Saturday activities )

( Pirke Avot and a question about Rabbi Akiva )

What I really love about the shabbaton is that it preserves the sense of Shabbat past the end of the schmoozing after the morning service. It's a full Shabbat, which I rarely get. Except in the winter I often find Shabbat afternoons hard; in the summer Shabbat doesn't end until 9 or 9:30 (or later, a couple times), but my community pretty much disbands by noon and we haven't really gotten the "lunch and songs and torah discussion for a few hours in someone's home" meme going. (I invite people occasionally and need to do more, but I'm not critical mass. And a couple people, including my rabbi, are allergic to cats, sigh.) So Shabbat afternoon usually feels pretty isolated and restrictive for me; I'm not finding that joy I'm supposed to, many weeks.

I've discussed this with my rabbi in the context of his desire to start summer Shabbat services (on Friday) even earlier for the sake of families; if Shabbat already drags for me when why would I want to add an hour or two to it? During a break at the shabbaton we talked some about this and I asked if he thought we could have the occasional gathering in the synagogue after morning services -- either brown-bag or someone organizes food in advance. He seems open to the idea (but doesn't want to organize it, which I wasn't asking him to), so I'll see what I can do about that. We could eat and sing and discuss things like Pirke Avot. :-) We do have a monthly beit midrash in that timeslot, but people who aren't interested in the day's topic leave, so I'd like to create something more open and free-form on some of the days when we don't have the beit midrash. We'll see what happens.

My congregation's talent show was last night, and I thought it went really well. We had 14 performers (some individuals, some groups), three of them kids (two piano players, one violinist). A trophy was awarded by audience vote, and the ten-year-old violinist, who played really well, got it. I'm glad. Populace-vote systems have all sorts of problems, but fortunately, no one was really treating this as a competition and the winner performed very well, so it wasn't just that he was a kid. I'd estimate that there were about 200 people there, which is more than they were expecting. This was announced as our "first annual" talent show and the organizer confirmed later that yes, she has been asked to do this again next year. Yay! Maybe next year I'll get that Rossi quartet together. Or compose another song. Or both.

Material covered a pretty broad range -- show tunes, Yiddish songs, blues, jazz piano, baroque, old-timey banjo, and original poetry. One performer is a pro (someone said he sings with the Pittsburgh opera) and it showed. He didn't do operatic style (which I loathe -- can't understand the words and the vocal qualities are grating, though less so with basses I guess). He sang a couple of Frank Sinatra songs, very well.

My performance was very well-received; lots of people praised my singing, and I got lots of positive feedback for composing the song myself. ("I didn't know you composed music, too!" "Well, it's been mostly renaissance dance music and the like until now." "Um, ok." :-) ) The pianist told me he would like to play this again. I said that he is much, much closer to the decisions about what music gets done for services than I am and I hope he understands that it would be awkward for me to push at all. So we'll see. I also made sure he knows that transposition is a matter of a few keystrokes. (I'm betting that our cantorial soloist would want a different key.) The pianist also agreed to (later) give me some feedback on a few parts he found a little awkward to play, which I would definitely like to get. I had sent the music in advance with an invitation to do that, but he and his wife had their first child a few months ago so I don't imagine he's had any cycles to spare for that. (I asked if he is getting to sleep through the night yet and he said heck no.)

The pianist described the style of the song as "American" and "Reform" (he didn't elaborate), while a fellow congregant thought it sounded "renaissance". I'm not sure what it is, but not that last. :-) I would enjoy doing renaissance-style Jewish music, but that pretty much means choral works, not soloist stuff, so there are additional hurdles there. (We have a choir, but would they do work written by a congregant, or would that be all kinds of awkward if people didn't like it?) I wrote a singable (not "artistic") piece for solo voice and piano because (1) I could perform that in this show (I wrote the piece for the show) and (2) it has the best chance of future adoption. If it never gets used again well that's life, but I wanted to at least have the chance. The opportunities for a regular congregant like me to sing on the bimah are practically nil, so writing material that others sing on the bimah is as close as I'm going to get to sharing my work beyond one-offs like this talent show.

I understand that the show was being recorded; I hope to get a copy of that. Meanwhile, if anyone can point me to a summary "idiot's guide" to Garage Band or Logic Express toward the end of combining a MIDI piano track and my voice, I'll see what I can do. (I've played through the tutorial videos that Garage Band offers and worked through some Logic Express exercises from a book, but I'm not really getting it yet, and nothing has talked about real-time recording as opposed to just using samples.) I don't have good equipment, mind, but my USB headphones also have a mic that's at least Skype-grade. This would be so you could hear what it sounds like with the words as opposed to just MIDI instruments.

I have book lust that I can't immediately satisfy. Imrei Madrich is a copy of the torah text that shows the root of every word. Because it's not always obvious, and it would be a big help. Google found me someone who wrote about it on a mailing list, but I haven't found anyone who's selling it yet. I guess I'll call the local Jewish bookstore and see what they can do for me. (Do any of you know this book? Should I be looking for it under a different name?)

Apropos of that, I love studying with both of my rabbis. It is so cool that I get to do this. With one (known as "my rabbi") I'm studying talmud (and occasional other stuff), and with the other I'm reading midrash in Hebrew and not completely sucking at translation. :-) (Though I still have a long way to go.)

Speaking of my congregation (sort of), we are having a talent show in January, and the song I'm writing/arranging for it seems to be going well. kayre rocks for giving me some really great feedback on the piano part. I was also trying to get a quartet together for a Salamone Rossi piece (the organizer encouraged me even though I'm doing the other thing), but altos (among congregants) seem to be particularly elusive at the moment, so that might not work out.

Also speaking of my congregation, we sell Giant Eagle gift cards at face value and get a cut. (I know other congregations do this too.) If you're local and inclined to help us out in this, and we see each other frequently enough for it to work out, I would be happy to turn your check made out to the congregation into gift cards. Just ask.

Speaking not at all about my congregation now, a question for the "Stargate: SG-1" fans out there: do we eventually get an explanation for why almost everyone on various distant worlds speaks English, or am I supposed to just ignore that? The conceit is that many of these folks are humans who were taken from Earth, but that was thousands of years ago. Just wondering, since this show doesn't bother with the conceit of a universal translator. (Which is fine, since the show that did didn't always use it correctly. :-) )

This summer my congregation is starting Shabbat evening services earlier than normal. I'm not sure why this idea is popular, but ours isn't the only place doing it. (I don't mean not waiting until sunset when sunset is late; I mean moving the start time earlier than it is during the rest of the year.)

Personally, I find summer shabbatot long already (Saturday afternoon into evening is a long haul), so I'll only add 2+ hours onto the beginning if there's something in it for me. "Something in it for me" can mean a real d'var torah or sermon (aimed at adults, not dumbed down for kids), or a significant role in conducting the service (hard to get), or a new experience. So while I've gone to my congregation a couple times (once to support my rabbi in something, and once because our educator rabbi would be leading), I've also been seeking out new experiences elsewhere.

I've been to Tree of Life for their monthly music and to New Light (a 5-minute walk from my house), both Conservative. This week I sought out Young Israel. I had the impression that they were on the liberal end of Orthodox and that there might be singing and others my age. I'm not sure why I had those impressions.

Not knowing the lay of the land I dressed conservatively (I would never wear long sleeves in summer otherwise). Good call; black hats were the norm. Their entry way had only one door into the worship space (no separate women's entrance) and the women's section was on the far side, so I quietly opened and closed the door and tried to be unobtrusive while making my way over there. (Mincha had already started.) I saw no obvious place to get a siddur on my way past and didn't want to disturb any of the men standing there. (None of them looked at me.) On the women's side I found assorted books, which might have been people's personal copies, but there was no one there to ask. So I picked up an Artscroll siddur from on top of a bookcase and joined the service.

The service -- the remainder of mincha, then kabbalat shabbat, then ma'ariv -- was very matter-of-fact. There was a little bit of singing during kabbalat shabbat (not as much as I've seen at other Orthodox congregations). Mincha started at 7:30 and we were leaving the building by 8:30. I felt like I'd had a decent prayer experience personally, but didn't feel part of a community. No one greeted me as we were filing out, though someone did on the street half a block later.

I know that the conventional gender roles in the Orthodox community mean many women don't come Friday night, and if you want to meet a community you go Saturday morning. I have a place I'm very happy with for Saturday mornings, and I can't see anything currently that would cause me to skip that for someone else's regular service. (If there were a simcha involved for a friend that would of course be different.)

So far this summer, aside from the kallah, my Friday-night experiences have been "eh". They would have been "eh" if I'd gone to my own synagogue every week, so I haven't lost anything, but it's still a little disappointing. (On the other hand, it's confirmation that my own congregation is well above average when it's in "normal mode"...) Does anybody in this city celebrate Shabbat, as opposed to just getting through the service, at an hour that doesn't have one leaving the building with the sun high in the sky?

(Yes, I know you're allowed to accept Shabbat early. Coming out of ma'ariv into sunlight feels weird to me, and as I said before, I'm reluctant to add a couple hours to Shabbat this time of year.)

Oh well. There are still a few weeks left in which to explore.

There is a national lecture series, live telecast from NY (with Q&A opportunities from the remote locations), for which my congregation will be the local provider. The first lecture is tomorrow night: "A Moral Courage Conversation", with Christiane Amanpour (CNN) and Irshad Manji. Text study (Jewish sources, accessible and open to all) at 7:15, lecture at 8:00, Temple Sinai. (Speakers later this year include Rabbi Telushkin, Seinfeld, and Al Gore -- quite a mix.)

From the flyer:

Christiane Amanpour is CNN's chief international correspondent. Her coverage of the Gulf War, genocide and natural disasters around the globe have made her one of the most recognizable international correspondents on American television. She has earned numerous awards including an inaugural Television Academy Honor, Emmys, Peabody Awards, George Polk Awards, an Edward R. Murrow award and other major honorary degrees. Irshad Manji is the Muslim reformer whom The New York Times calls "Osama bin Laden's worst nightmare."

There is an admission fee. I'd like to see the series do well, so if you are local, know me, and want to come, let me know by 5:30PM tomorrow and if you're among the first 4 or 5 people to ask, I'll give you a ticket. (This will be implemented as "your name will be on a list at the door"; we don't have to connect with each other in advance.) Or just show up, buy a ticket, and support my congregation; that works too. :-)

On Shabbat mornings, in addition to the service, we have torah study. Rather than trying to cover the weekly portion (badly) in too little time, this group started with the first letter of the first book (B'reishit) 20 years ago (and a few months), and every week we pick up where we left off. Sometimes we spend weeks (occasionally months) on a passage before continuing. The beauty of this format is that we can stop and explore things when we want to.

Yesterday we finished, and had a big party (called a siyyum). We also started right back in at the end, because you're never really done. :-) I can tell that my rabbi is really pleased by the progress the group has made, and we got congratulatory letters from assorted important people, including Rabbi Eric Yoffie (head of the URJ). (Yeah, yeah, someone must have solicited those letters else how would the like of Rabbi Yoffie even know, but still... nice.)

Our newest rabbi coordinated the festivities, and he asked five congregants (one per book) to speak. I was the first one he asked, so when he said "pick your favorite book" I actually could, though the decision wasn't immediately obvious. (One favorite?) His instruction was: five minutes, talk about something in the book that speaks to me, involve specific text, and leave them with a question to discuss at the individual tables. Here's what I said:

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I bought a new calendar today and, to my surprise, among the candle-lighting times on each page it lists Pittsburgh. (Usually we don't make the cut.) While looking at this I noticed that sunset in September is moving by about 12 minutes per week, but that in March it only moves by about 8 minutes a week. Shouldn't it be symmetrical? (The delta for sunrise and sunset changes over the course of the year, with the widest swings being at equnoxes and the smallest ones at solstices. I grok that; I don't grok that they don't match.)

Friday night I saw something unusual at services: a man lit candles and a woman made kiddush and there was no special occasion dictating that. For all that egalitarianism is a core principle in my movement, I don't think I have ever seen a woman make kiddush in our sanctuary before, unless there were special circumstances (sisterhood service, a bat mitzvah, etc). Gee, maybe there's hope that someday I will be offered that honor after all. (There's still another barrier: there is a strong meme of giving that pair of honors to a couple. This was violated this week, too.)

Yesterday morning after services our newest rabbi (hmm, I need a shorthand notation for him -- the others are "senior rabbi" and "associate rabbi") talked with the group about adult education. He wanted to know what we want to learn, when we want to learn it, and how we want to learn it. It was a good discussion; I wish im luck in distilling down feedback that, in aggregate, meant "all of it". :-) He seemed a little surprised by the idea that, actually, we'd love to learn on Shabbat -- ideally right after services, but late afternoon leading into havdalah would be acceptable to some. I hope that idea bears fruit. (Of course, he was asking the group of people who self-selected to stay around after services for the discussion... but every option doesn't need to appeal to every congregant, only to a critical mass. And we also discussed the idea of giving the same class multiple times, in different kinds of timeslots -- a teacher's dream, but for some reason we don't tend to do it.)

At the end of the discussion he said something interesting, so after it broke up I asked him "did you just imply that you're available for individual study?" and he said yes. Heh. I'll be in touch.

Short takes:

I assume that everyone has by now seen Jon Stewart on election hypocrisy. You might not have seen Language Log's discourse analysis on Karl Rove.

(I have not posted about the election; it's not because I don't care, but because there's so much as to overwhelm and lots of other people are already posting good, thoughtful pieces.)

I recently found myself in a discussion about internet discussions and used the phrase on the internet nobody knows you're a dog. I later went looking for the cartoon; it shouldn't surprise me that it has a Wikipedia entry, but it did surprise me a little that Google suggested the phrase after I'd typed only "on the internet". That real-time search-guessing thing is good sometimes. (I also went looking for a recipe for a dish I ate last night at Ali Baba's, and when I'd typed only "mujdara" it offered two completions, "recipe" and "calories".)

Speaking (sort of) of internet discoveries, this article from Real Live Preacher taught me about the Caganer, a figure we don't often see in nativity scenes these days but apparently quite normal in times past.

This article on using the internet for identity theft (link from Raven) didn't have anything new for me, but it's a good summary to give to people just getting started. It did remind me how annoying I find the canned security questions used by most banks -- things like "mother's maiden name" and "city of your birth" were way too easy to crack even before the net was ubiquitious. (And the ones that aren't tend to be non-deterministic, like "favorite color".) Fortunately, in most cases your bank doesn't really care about the answer; it's just a password. So lying adds security at little cost, assuming you can remember the lie. (What do you mean my first pet wasn't named "as375m~@z"? :-) )

This summer marks 20 years for my rabbi with our congregation, so there was a celebration this past weekend. It was fun, and I could tell that he was touched. Yay!

The organizers arranged for Debbie Friedman to come in. She was his songleader when he was a teenager, and he's fond of both her and her music. She joined our cantorial soloist, choir, and band on Friday night, and gave a concert Saturday night. The concert (with associated sponsorships) was a fundraiser for the congregation, and from the turnout and size of the ad book it looks like it was effective. (Of course, I don't know about the costs.)

I don't know how this has been for other converts, but my education did not cover Jewish fundraising (beyond the JNF), and it's different from what I was used to before. When the letter about the ad book came, I thought "I have nothing to advertise" because I don't own a business (unlike a lot of my fellow congregants), so I didn't send anything in. There was an option for "greetings", but that didn't register. When I saw the book Saturday night I understood -- it's more like a memento (think college yearbook, perhaps). A lot of families bought display ads that said "mazel tov" or "thank you" and then just had their names, and some people wrote little testimonials. Oh drat; I would have written something if I'd had the clue that this was appropriate. My rabbi is fantastic, and is largely responsible for my being (1) a member of this congregation and (2) a Reform Jew, and if I'd known I would have praised him in print. Now that I know how this works, I feel kind of bad that I didn't do something as an individual. (The morning minyan bought an ad as a group, so I was part of that. And they listed my name on the committee even though I didn't really do anything.)

The other fundraising aspect, at least, I grokked. You could buy a concert ticket, or you could make a (specified) bigger donation and also attend the dessert reception, or you could make an even bigger donation and also attend the pre-concert "meet and greet", or you could make a big donation and also attend a private function (held a few weeks ago) with the rabbi's family. I usually avoid hoity-toity dinners and the like; I neither enjoy playing dress-up nor want that big a chunk of my donation to go toward paying for the food. (It also feels a little immodest to me -- I'm not criticizing anyone else, just talking about how it would make me feel to participate.) But the concert add-ons felt different to me; they were just little receptions, not a multi-course formal dinner and all the trappings. I actually paid more for the evening than the price of the gala dinner I wouldn't go to a few years ago, but it felt more appropriate to me. Now, it turned out to be fancy desserts and elegant appetizers and wine beforehand, but ok. It didn't trip my "ostentatious" sensor.

But all that aside -- my rabbi seemed to really enjoy the weekend, and he was clearly touched by things people said, and his parents and other family members were able to be there with him, and those are the important things.

Very occasionally we have a bar or bat mitzvah at the Friday-night service. Perhaps ironically (given the d'var torah I just posted), this week was one of those. With a couple small exceptions, it was pretty much spot-on what such a service should be.

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