cellio | Entries tagged with pesach

(Gentile) coworker: When we realized that the pot-luck dinner was during Pesach, we decided to try our best to accommodate the Jewish attendees. So we kashered the oven, boiled the utensils, used a foil pan, etc... but I didn't kasher the drill bit.

Drill bit?

Spade bit, he said -- for coring the pears.

Some of you guys probably sigh when software geeks like me go off on something. What makes software geeks sigh? Hardware geeks. :-)

(Ok, ok -- it's clever, and he says you can do a dozen pears or apples in under a minute so it's efficient for large-scale prep. I suppose if I happened to have a drill lying around in my kitchen...)

Another coworker caught the last part of this and asked if wood is kosher. (That being the only substance the bit had been in contact with.) I said it's a plant, so I guess so.

(Yes, I know -- none of this addresses whether the drill bit -- or anything else in this story -- has been to a mikveh.)

* * *

Someone: Is there a market for kosher-for-Pesach pet food?

Me: Surely. But I handle the problem a different way. The food belongs to the cats, who are not Jewish.

Someone: You sold the food to the cats?

Me: No, they aren't valid buyers. I gave it to them.

* * *

Me to guest for Wednesday lunch: Any food allergies?

Guest: I can't eat gluten -- bread, noodles, oats...

Me: So this is pretty much the perfect time for me to invite you?

(I didn't ask what she does about the matzah that must be eaten at the seder.)

lefkowitzga and her family invited me to their seder Wednesday night. I'm really glad; it was a wonderful experience. We did most of the haggadah, we sang, we had stimulating conversation, there was excellent food... what more could one ask?

Gail, her parents, one other participant, and I had a meeting in advance to go over the haggadah, decide what would be sung and to which melodies, assign some roles, and so on. They were very open to doing parts I suggested that they don't normally do, and I think people enjoyed it. (It's important to me, but I certainly don't want to be a burden at someone else's seder.) So we did more of Hallel than usual, and we sang some other parts that usually just get read, and it was fun. We used the generically-named "Haggadah for Pesach" published by the CCAR in the 80s; I gather it's now been superseded, but this one worked well for us. And it has the benefit of having sheet music in the back, though not always the sheet music as we know it. :-) (They can't win: they can do the kindness of providing the assistance, but any printed version cannot account for the folk process.)

We had 16 adults and one child too young to ask the four questions. The teenager present didn't want to sing them, so we sang them as a group and he read the English. A few people brought supplemantary articles, poems, or teachings. One person brought a nifty set of illustrations on "Chad Gadya" from early last century, done by some famous artist (sorry, I'm not up on my famous artists) who was a contemporary of Chagall, if I'm not mixing up my references.

The only people I knew in advance were Gail, her parents, and (minimally) the other person who'd been at the meeting, but due to fortunate seating assignments that were surely intentional, I got to know some other folks by the end (and got to know that other person from the meeting better).

I gather that the seder ran a little longer than they're used to, though only some of that was the extra bits we added. More was the schmoozing, I think, and since schmoozing is a sign of a successful gathering, why fret? We started around 6:30 and I think I left around 11:15.

Thursday I had three guests for lunch, which was fun. (Tried for a few more but ran into conflicts. One couple will come on the last day of the holiday instead. I hadn't been planning for guests for that day, but now that I have some I will invite some more.)

Menu from lunch: chicken in a tomato sauce (with oregano, garlic, pepper), roasted veggies & potatoes (white, gold, red-skinned, sweet; plus carrots and onions), roasted asparagus, fruit salad, and these semi-cookie semi-candy toffee-like things I bought on a lark (never seen 'em before) that turned out to be a huge hit. Someday I will learn to make vegetable kugel, but this wasn't the day. (I figured people might be too loaded up on matzah to want farfel or the like.)

Tuesday I had received an invitation from a neighbor and former coworker to a second-night seder, but Thursday afternoon he called to say that his wife had injured herself and they'd decided against doing it. I hope she's feeling better soon. Some other time, then. (She edits her own haggadah every year and I enjoy reading siddurim, haggadot, and other liturgical materials. That's how I ended up with an invitation. I assume she'll save this one for next year.)

I didn't try to find another seder for last night; I don't observe a second day of the holiday so it's not necessary, and while I would like to broaden my experiences (I go to other synagogues sometimes too, just to see how other folks do it), walking around Squirrel Hill knocking on doors really wasn't appropriate. If I'd been seder-less on the first night, sure, but not for this. (Aside: most people who would hold a second seder also wouldn't answer the phone on a holiday.)

Shabbat will be quiet (no guests, no invitations). I'm leading services tonight, and there's no bar mitzvah tomorrow so our morning service can be leisurely.

Let me sing the praises of the disposable foil pan. Yes, it's wasteful, bad for the environment, etc; I get that. But because of disposable foil pans, there is an entire category of cookware that I do not have to have a duplicate set of for one week a year. That means I'm not shlepping heavy casseroles and roaster pans up and down the basement steps, storing them, etc. It is a marvelous thing to be able to cook for a dozen or more people without maintaining all the extra items I would otherwise need.

But alas, all is not perfect.

Dear manufacturer: I have certain expectations of even disposable cookware. I expect a pan called a "roaster" to be able to hold the weight of a roast, for instance. My pan of root veggies weighs considerably less than a roast, and is more distributed across the pan. And roasters, of course, should be able to handle fat -- juices from meat or, in my case, the oil poured over the veggies.

Your loss of structural integrity while I was rotating the pan was not welcome on this particular night. I already cleaned the oven once. :-( Yes yes, I know -- my oven sucks, and if I replaced it with a modern one maybe I wouldn't have to rotate my pans so things cook evenly. But, oh maker of the foil cookware, that should be my call, not yours.

Oh well. The oven is clean (again), maybe not as clean as the first time but good enough. Hey, it's not smoking. And my veggies are once again on their way.

The morning minyan has a particular person who always leads Hallel when it's included in the service (certain holiday seasons plus Rosh Chodesh, the first day(s) of every month). I lead the service on Thursdays, but if it's a Hallel day I turn it over to him at that point. A couple months ago he said "you need to start doing this"; I replied that I didn't want to usurp his role; he replied that I would do it next time. (Ok.) "Next time" is this Thursday, Rosh Chodesh Nissan. So I just ran through it; I'm comfortable with most of it, am unsure what melody to use in one place, and just plain don't know the melody he uses in one short place, but the world won't end if I just read that (and maybe I can get a quickie refresher before the service starts). Now, to see how this plan survives contact with the minyan. :-)

Err, yes, that does mean that Pesach is just over two weeks away. I'm looking forward to a seder with friends and singing. I should decide soon if I'm going to try to do something for the second night. (I don't hold it to be necessary, but it would be a learning opportunity. Hmm.)

Last week I co-led a workshop at my synagogue on a topic in prayer (the sh'ma and its blessings). Turnout was small and I felt kind of off the whole time, even though we prepared and I practiced. (The other person is a professional educator; I have no idea if she practiced, but if she didn't it didn't show.) I've received positive feedback from people who were there, but I still have the sense that I don't really know how to facilitate a discussion or teach an intimate class, though I'm a fine participant in either. (I don't know that I know how to present a lecture either, but I think I'd be on firmer ground -- but that's not what was called for here.) I'm not sure what to do about this -- the obvious answers being to teach more or teach less. (I'm leaning toward the latter but feeling like a bit of a coward for that leaning.)

Learning talmud with my rabbi and midrash with another of our rabbis continues to be quite nifty and engaging. For all that I can be nervous in a classroom (particularly if someone with superior knowledge is present), I really enjoy and hold my own in one-on-one study with people whose knowledge is vastly superior to mine. I wonder why that works like that. Sure, a lot of the comfort in one case comes from having studied with my rabbi (in various capacities) for more than ten years (!), but the other one is much newer so it's not just that. (I also wonder at what point I have the obligation to be the person with superior knowledge for someone else in a one-on-one setting.)

A previous entry has spawned a discussion in comments that I want to call out, because two days is forever in blog time and I have some readers who might be interested.

The magid (in many ways the main part of the Pesach haggadah) begins with the following declaration: "This is the bread of affliction that our ancestors ate in the land of Egypt. Whoever is hungry -- let him come and eat. Whoever is needy -- let him come and celebrate Pesach!" (This is known as "ha lachma anya", for the opening words -- which are in Aramaic, the then-common tongue, so that they would be understood.)

I, and most liberal Jews I know, interpret this pretty broadly; we would invite a Jew or a gentile who expressed interest. Some traditional readings say this applies to a Jew only, pointing out that "come and celebrate Pesach" was originally about joining in the korban (animal sacrifice), which is only applicable to Jews. But (as someone pointed out else-thread), you must include your servants under most circumstances, even if they're non-Jews, so clearly there is some room for interpretation here.

I have a lot of readers who are learned in such matters, so I pose the question to you: whom do you feel obligated to include per "ha lachma anya", and who else would you include anyway? What are the issues?

Personally, I would include anyone who asked out of apparent sincerity, Jewish or not. I don't really care if the person is a seeker exploring Judaism or just curious; if he wants to learn enough to show up, he's welcome. The only bar would be to someone who has made it clear that his goal is to harrass, or who somehow poses a serious threat to me or my other guests. (That's hypothetical, but I include it for the sake of completeness.)

I am also mindful that I was that outsider once, that then-gentile who crashed a seder at the last minute because I realized it mattered. So there's some amount of "pay it forward" in my reaction, but it's not just that. I want to be the kind of person who says "of course; we'll just add a chair to the table", and the kind of person who is approachable in matters of religion.

On Friday a coworker asked me how my Pesach sedarim had been and I said "eh", and she said something like "that's too bad -- mine was great". Hey, I thought to myself, I didn't know you were Jewish. She saw my puzzled expression: no, she's Roman Catholic, but several years ago she asked friends if she could join their seder because she was curious, and it was great, so she does it every year now. She described some of what they did and I was drooling inside. ("I thought of you!" she said. Rub it in. :-) )

Edited to add: let me be clear that everyone involved in the sedarim I went to acted with good will. These are good people; we just have some differences in approach that are turning out to be hard. Clear? (end edit)

The thought of "how come my Roman Catholic friend gets a more fulfilling seder than I do?", combined with a recent discussion in a locked entry, leads to this question: what is it that makes a seder fulfilling for me? What elements make me come away at the end feeling that I'd been at a good seder? (I encourage y'all to chime in.)

( Read more... )

We were in Toronto for a few days, so Shabbat morning I went to services at the Village Shul, which is run by Aish HaTorah. We don't have Aish in Pittsburgh, so I was curious. I understand them to be in methodology kind of similar to Chabad -- friendly outreach to people at various levels of observance -- without the chassidism and the strange moshiach stuff. So I figured I'd go there and see what it was like, and if it was horrible I had a backup a few blocks away.

( Read more... )

At the end of this morning's service the rabbi did some teaching of his own. (This isn't usual, but through logic that I'll explain if asked and punt otherwise, doing so was useful today specifically.) He brought the mishna about our obligation to remember the exodus from Egypt both during the day and at night. Some of this is in the haggadah; since my family skips that part I was glad to have it here. In short, the torah passage says "all the days", but if it just meant "the days" it could have said so, so "all the days" means day and night. (The torah, like a good technical spec, is not supposed to contain unnecessary words.)

This obligation is fulfilled in the liturgy in the paragraphs after the sh'ma ("I am the lord your god who brought you out of Egypt..."). This passage ends the paragraph about tzitzit (fringes), which (the torah says) we are to wear so that we will see them and remember the mitzvot. We don't wear tzitzit at night (because it says you have to see them; the mishna predates good lighting). So, the rabbi asked, why do we read about tzitzit at night and not just in the morning? He gave Rashi's answer, that we say that paragraph because of the exodus part (and I guess the rest just gets brought along).

I offered a different answer: if we need the fringes to remember the mitzvot, and we need to read about that in the morning even though we're already doing it, then how much the moreso would we need to read that passage at night when we aren't wearing them? To this the rabbi said that I grok talmudic reasoning. :-)

Google isn't turning this up for me, so before I do it myself: does anyone reading this have transliteration for Dayeinu, Israeli/Sephardi pronunciation, and if so could you send it to me? I don't mean the three verses everybody sings (hotzianu, shabbat, torah); got those a-plenty, thanks. I'm looking for the rest [1], for the folks at the seder who can't read the Hebrew.

[1] Actually, the subset of the verses that can be made to fit the standard repetitive kind-of-annoying melody, which is the only melody I have ever heard for that text.

Recently (to investigate something), I added a third-party tracker to some of my posts in order to see where the hits are coming from. This was meant to be temporary, but I've found it interesting to see just how big the internet community is, so I've continued to use it at times. So, I don't know who any of y'all are (and publishing on the internet means I might never know, and that's cool), but I'd like to say hello to my regular readers in Italy, Moldova, Switzerland, and Cambodia (!).

We are having weird modem luck. I thought all DSL modems were basically the same, but apparently not. Our old (bought in 1999) modem has started dropping signal -- it's eratic, but when it happens it lasts for a few hours. My DSL provider mailed me a new one (a level of service I did not expect) and it's reliable but universally slow. So our current mode of operation is to use the old one until it drops and then switch to the new one for a few hours. Weird. So I think we need to buy a new modem that is both reliable and fast, but since I thought they were all the same I now don't know what to look for. (We have basic DSL. Someday I hope they well run FIOS to our neighborhood and we'll switch.)

Recent conversation:
Dani: We're out of (book)shelf space in the library again.
Me: Maybe we should assemble that last bookcase we bought.
Dani: We're out of shelf space in the library again.
Me: You built it and filled it already? So we need to buy more?
Dani: We're out of wall space to put bookcases...

(I assert that he is incorrect on that last point, but it hinges on a dispute between practicality and purity. Or something like that.)

We bought some CFLs (in two different color-tones) to try again, and installed some in the ceiling fixture in the living room (the packaging contained no dire warnings about that, unlike the last one). Freaky white and bright, so some tuning is called for, but there might be a bigger problem: flicker. The switch is a dimmer, but we know CFLs don't dim so the switch is at max. (Truth to tell, we don't dim regular bulbs in that fixture, either.) Does the mere presence of a dimmer switch doom CFLs? That would be annoying.

A couple links:

A few nights ago I made these lamb chops, which I've made before and which are amazingly good.

The ten plagues, done in peeps (from someone on my subscription list, but I've lost track of who). Twisted! Funny!

The trip to Toronto was relatively benign. As I mentioned earlier, we spent some of it helping the family fight a computer problem and some of it at the ROM (open on Mondays, for future reference). Dani's mother seems to have decided we're the charoset experts and asked us to make it; we wanted to do it there, so we also had to find a store for ingredients.

Nomenclature: to me "grocery store" and "supermarket" have become pretty much synonomous. If I mean the small mom-and-pop store, that's the "corner grocery" or the "mom-and-pop grocery". Giant Eagle is a grocery store. (There is a new class of humongous stores (that are to real supermarkets as real supermarkets are to corner groceries); I don't know what these mega-supermarkets (humongo-marts?) are called yet.) None of this is true for Torontonians, though. A friend had asked us to look for "kinder eggs" (novelty candy), and when I asked if they'd have those at grocery stores I was told to go to a supermarket instead.

( seders )

Rabbi Sheshet said in the name of Rabbi Eleazar ben Azariah: he who despises the festivals (by working on them and not celebrating) is like one who worships idols. This is because the command to have no molten gods is immediately followed by the command to keep the festival of unleavened bread. (Pesachim 118a)

I probably won't be online much in the next few days due to Pesach. Chag sameach to those of you who celebrate. Happy Easter to some of the rest of you. Happy April to everyone else. :-)

My mother-in-law's seder has some singing, but mostly in Yiddish. This year (finally) I seem to have earned enough points with the family; I asked if we could add some Hebrew songs, offering to do the work (compiling and copying), and she said (via Dani) to bring a few. Yay. I'm going to make one double-sided sheet (including sheet music for some), on the theory that there's no sense wasting paper and this way there's a choice. Tiny steps... (At this seder I enjoy spending time with the people and I dislike the haggadah. At my father-in-law's seder, the haggadah is fine but the people aren't interested in doing most of it.)

At work we're about to get some expansion space, and they just published the new seating chart. People were given the option to stay put or take their chances. One of our neighborhoods (oh, did I mention that we have designated neighborhoods? that turns out to be fun, actually) is unpopular due to the way the space is set up. Every person there save one moved out. No one moved in. So the seating chart shows Beth amidst a sea of numbered spaces. There was some talk today of renaming the neighborhood; an early proposal was something like "Beth's Fiefdom" but I suspect that the latest will stick: "Bethlehem". If it weren't so close to Pesach I'd bring her a loaf of bread. :-) ("Bethlehem" is an anglicization of "Beit Lechem", which is literally "house of bread".)

San Francisco is about to ban plastic bags from grocery stores, saying that this will cut down on 1400 tons annually sent to landfills. I wonder how they came up with that figure. Do they catalog the landfills? Are they simply assuming that all bags produced go to landfills and wouldn't otherwise? Have they considered that some of those bags are recycled and, when not available freely, will just be replaced by other plastic bags in landfills? For example, I use them when scooping out the litter box, dog owners use them for a similar purpose on walks, and I know people who use them in bathroom trash cans instead of buying small bags for that purpose. I am not (in this entry) arguing against the policy; I'm merely questioning their data analysis. How do they know how much, if any, reduction there will be in landfills?

This article on Roth IRAs (link from patrissimo) seems to suggest that a simple money-laundering exercise lets one bypass the restrictions on using Roth IRAs. How odd. If that's true, it would be a way for people in higher income brackets to hedge their bets, which seems counter to the intent of the Roth. (Traditional IRAs are tax-free on the way in and subject to income tax on the way out, which makes sense if you think you'll be in a lower tax bracket when you retire. If you don't trust that tax rates won't go up, though, a Roth IRA is insurance -- you pay the income tax on the way in and nothing when it comes out.)

First, two quick seasonal links: Two-minute seder from

cahwyguy and Easturducken recipe forwarded by

dglenn.

Wednesday night we joined friends from my congregation for the seder. They have two sons; one's local (still in school) and the other came in from California with his wife, so that was nice. (I had not previously met the wife, who is fairly new to the family.) One couple was a work connection, and they brought the only youngish child (about 8), who was very well-behaved. There were a few other people from the congregation. All in all, there were about 15 people.

We did a little less of the haggadah than the last time I joined this family; I think the child's bedtime had a significant effect on that. But it wasn't a "hurry up and eat" seder by a long shot; it was pleasant and we had some good discussions. The food was excellent; they're Sephardi and one son is vegan and the other vegetarian, so we had food I'm not used to at seders -- which is just fine. :-) (They did serve gefilte fish, I think home-made; the sons just didn't eat it.) The freshly-ground horseradish was nicely zippy. Sliced (as opposed to ground) horseradish has a different kind of zippiness -- a slow burn leading up to a culmination that makes one ever-so-briefly wonder if that was too much.

We used The Open Door Haggadah (I didn't note who publishes it). It was new to everyone. It has some nice supplementary readings (midrash, talmudic notes about some parts, some modern commentary), and it actually includes sheet music for the songs. That sounds like a good idea until you find out that some people read music and others sing from memory of slightly-different melodies. Still, it all worked out, and I would like to have a reference copy of sheet music for the common songs even if I don't deploy it at a seder.

As we were finishing up the heavens opened and we got a spectacular, short-lived storm with a nice light show. It made me think about what it must have been like to be at the shore of the sea of reeds as that wind blew all night preparing to split the sea.

Thursday morning at services I was tapped to be one of the readers for Shir HaShirim (Song of Songs). Many congregations read this on the Shabbat during Pesach; I'm not sure why, but we always read it on the first day. It's lovely poetry, and I wish I'd prepared against the possibility of being a reader. Since this is the third festival in a row where I've been asked to be a reader for that day's special book (Ruth for Shavuot, Kohelet (Ecclesiastes) for Sukkot), I think I'll just adopt the practice of reading through each text sometime in the few days before the holiday and practicing parts out loud. That way I'll be ready for whatever chapters they give me. (I should perhaps clarify that we read in English. I don't yet read Hebrew cold in front of people.)

We didn't have an invitation for seder Thursday night, and Dani didn't want to make one (even just for the two of us), so we didn't. Shabbat morning many people were talking about the seders (plural) they had attended; I didn't realize so many in my congregation did the second night. Alas, none of the ones who do responded to the match-making call in the last bulletin. Most years, of course, none of this is an issue for us because we go to Dani's family, but if we find ourselves in Pittsburgh for Pesach in the future, I want to do things differently.

Pleasant surprise of the week: whole-wheat matzah is actually pretty good! Given that regular matzah is already dense and you would assume whole-weat would be even denser, and given that I don't care much for whole-wheat bread because of that, I didn't have high expectations. Nice to know; it's likely better for me than the regular stuff, after all.

During Pesach we are not permitted to eat, own, or benefit from chametz (leaven, but it's more complicated than that now). Traditional interpretations of halacha raise this as a problem for pet owners, because keeping your pets alive benefits you. So you have to find compliant forms of pet food, or send the pets elsewhere for a week, or perhaps sell the pets along with your chametz (I'm not sure if that works -- that would make you the custodian of someone else's pets for the week).

I think this interpretation of "benefit from" makes sense in the case of livestock (that you're ultimately going to profit from in some way), but I don't see it for pets. Pets aren't profit centers; they're family members -- you can argue about pecking order within the family, but that's another matter.

Still, I am mindful of the traditional problem. I can't change the food (one is on a special diet), and I'm not going to send them away or sell them, but I can still do something, without even invoking compassion or arguing about whether pikuach nefesh (serious health issues) applies to non-humans.

So, I hereby transfer ownership of the cat food in the house to the cats.

Pesach (Passover) begins tomorrow night. I finished getting the kitchen ready tonight after dinner.

We're joining friends from the congregation for tomorrow night's seder. This should fulfill my dream of a seder that doesn't skip major parts and where everyone wants to be there. (You'd think that wouldn't be hard, but the family seders are challenging that way.) There should also be a lot of singing, which is a bonus in my book (and Dani's).

I'm not sure if we have an invitation for Thursday night; I was expecting to hear today but didn't, so I guess tomorrow. (Or worst case, Thursday at morning services.) Perhaps ironically, Dani feels more strongly about a second seder than I do. I believe we don't need the second days of holidays now that the reason no longer applies. Dani has gone to two seders for about as long as he can remember, for family rather than religious reasons, so that's what he's used to. Still, I hope it works out, both for Dani and because it's a family I would very much enjoy sharing a seder with.

Random note for locals: the Giant Eagle in Squirrel Hill still had several bottles of kosher-for-Pesach Coke when I was there tonight. Why is this special? It's made with sugar, not corn syrup. I normally drink diet drinks, but I picked up one bottle because the sugar really does improve the taste. (The KfP ones are stamped on the caps in Hebrew.)

Dan Simmons recently published this story on his web site. It's part SF, part commentary on current events, part dystopia, but I enjoyed reading it. (I did see half of the ending revelation coming somewhat early; I don't know if that was intentional.)

I had not heard of the lost gospel of Judas until I saw the news stories a few days ago. I haven't seen the text itself, of course (only what's quoted in the news), but it sounds like it makes an argument that I made for years with teachers in the church I grew up in: if Jesus's execution and resurrection were required for redemption to happen, then wasn't it necessary for Judas to betray Jesus and for the Romans to kill him? Why get mad at either in that case? (It makes sense to get mad at the Romans for their cruelty, but that's different.) By the same logic, those who blame the Jews for killing Jesus miss this point. I'm pretty sure this was one of those questions that generated a note home from Sunday school.

My parents stopped by for a visit today. They brought a loaf of fresh, home-made bread. I'm so glad this visit didn't happen next weekend, during Pesach. :-) (It's a small-enough loaf that we'll finish it before Wednesday.) We haven't seen them in a little while, so it was nice to visit. They report that my neice, who is in Italy for the semester, is a little homesick, but she's also taking the time to explore the country so it doesn't sound all bad. She did ask a friend who was coming to visit to bring her some peanut butter. Who knew that you can't find peanut butter in Florence?

Pesach prep is mostly under control. I've cleared out most of the chametz that I'll be selling (except what we need for the next couple days), and tomorrow the cleaning fairy comes to scrub the kitchen, and then I can bring up the other dishes and stuff. I'm really fortunate to have a large-enough kitchen (not that it's large, but it's large enough) that I can stuff all the current dishes, pans, etc into certain cabinets and then just close them up for the week. Much easier than shlepping it all to the basement.

I have a transliterated haggadah published by Artscroll that I will never use. (I don't need the transliteration and I have other Artscroll haggadot for the core content.) If any of my friends could make use of this, let me know. It won't arrive in time for this year, but you'd have it for the future (maybe even second night this year, depending on the speed of the postal service). Note that as with all transliterations published by Artscroll, it's Ashkenazi pronunciation.

For the last several months, during torah study, my rabbi has been explaining more of the grammar in the Hebrew. (Mostly basic stuff, but more than he used to.) More recently, he's been prefixing some of these comments by addressing me. This week he asked "does anyone other than Monica know...?". We haven't actually had a Hebrew lesson together, but I guess I'm making progress that's visible to him. Nifty -- though I'm a little boggled that he might consider me the most knowledgable of the people in the group, as there are at least two who (I think) know way more than I do.

( The talk I gave this morning )

( commentary )

I wonder how subcutaneous fluids are processed. If my cat isn't eating/drinking enough I can give him fluids, which don't enter through the mouth, but they exit the normal way -- which means somewhere inside the cat they enter the GI tract. My vet probably already thinks I'm weird, so I may as well ask her. :-) (What actually prompted this is the observation that, it appears, a dose of fluids can stimulate his appetite, almost as if the fluids were clearing out some blockage or something -- but how could they? And anyway, there shouldn't be any blockages; he had a blocked bile duct a few months ago and they both cleared it out and installed a much-larger bypass.)

We have an invitation for seder for the first night, from a fellow congregant. This is good; Dani knows the family, so he won't be among strangers, and they like to sing, and they're the sort of people who don't race through the haggadah to get to the meal. So everyone's happy -- yay! Second night is odd: as a Reform Jew I don't see the need for two-day yomim tovim, and Dani is secular, but he's used to two nights from his family (necessity of parental divorce) and I don't mind, so I may yet try to find us something. (I said "well, there's always Chabad" and he said "let me know how that goes for you", so I guess not that since the point would be to do something for him.) He's still opposed to just holding one ourselves.

My rabbi will be leading a trip to Israel at the end of this year. I'm thinking seriously of going. I'd like to see some of the place, and I'd love to do it with my rabbi -- so there'll be, y'know, some religious content, as opposed to just being a tourist. I'll have enough vacation time to do it, since most of the fall holidays have the decency to land on weekends this year, and a bonus I'll be getting at work removes any doubt about being able to afford it. It sounds like this will be a family-friendly but not family-obsessed trip; i.e., I won't feel like e fifth wheel. So I don't see a down-side here, and I think it would be an exciting experience.

Short takes:

This comic reminded me of some cats I've known...

Hold my beer, a look at washroom multitasking (not safe for work), from brokengoose.

We "always" go to Toronto for Pesach. This year Dani's sister and her family will be spending Pesach elsewhere, which would complicate things for us. First, that's who we stay with when we go up there; second, I predict a lot of bored twiddling-of-thumbs were we to go up this year, as each parent (they're divorced) has seder preparations to worry about and (in one case) a lot of other relatives to deal with. We spend a fair bit of the time with our hosts when we go up, and that seems to work well for everyone.

Dani's sister suggested that we could take this opportunity to do something different, and I'm inclined to agree. Dani is, in principle, willing to not go for Pesach (if we then go some other time when everyone's there, which is fine -- the sister has a round-number birthday this year, so maybe for that). The problem, though, is what to do for the seder(s).

A large part of the appeal of staying home is that I could -- for once -- lead a seder myself. But Dani is opposed to the idea of us holding a seder. That means going elsewhere, if I can't persuade him to change his mind -- and if he's already giving in on not going to Toronto, I don't want to push him too far on that. My preferences for a seder are: (1) includes all the parts; (2) consists of people who want to be there; (3) is participatory. (The ones we usually go to fail one or more of those criteria, but you make exceptions for the sake of family relations.) Dani's preferences seem to be (1) people he knows and (2) not extremely religious.

I'm not sure what this will end up meaning yet.

But hey, I learned something: Dani does consider the seder important; it's not just a family thing. I didn't know that.

I talked with Dani's sister tonight. She mentioned that she and her family will be going to Israel for Pesach (one of their children is there for a year). Everyone else will still be in Toronto for the holiday, but this somewhat changes the dynamic. This is, potentially, an opportunity to do something other than going there.

I wonder if Dani would be willing to stay in town and we'd hold a seder. I wonder if I'd find people to come if we did. I suppose the safe thing would be to hold one on the second night, assuming that (1) a first-night invitation would not be a problem and (2) some of those folks would come on the second night.

Or Dani might conclude that the other in-laws need to be paid off with a visit. Don't know yet.

Shabbat was also the last day of Pesach (a holiday), so our informal minyan didn't meet in favor of a holiday service at the later time. After the service another regular pointed out to me that while all our other services have gradually changed over the last few years to include more Hebrew, less repetition (in English), and more-accessible music, our holiday service has stayed pretty much the same all along. She's right, but for something that only happens a few times a year I'm not sure how much I want to worry about it. Because this service has Yizkor (memorial prayers), this service particularly attracts a demographic that doesn't show up often otherwise. They're older and more inclined toward "classical reform"; for a few days a year I can just wait for this portion of the congregation to gradually fade away.

There are special torah readings for the holidays (that is, we break the weekly cycle). The last day of Pesach gets the end of the exodus story, with the scene at the sea of reeds. It struck me during the reading that this passage is a pretty good argument for human authorship of the torah. Think about it: God persuades Paro to pursue, interferes with their ability to do so, performs a miracle, and when the Egyptians try to give up and flee, recognizing God's obvious superior might, God picks them up and flings them into the sea, wiping out every last one of them. That sounds pretty vengeful (contrary to the famous midrash about God reprimanding the angels for rejoicing), and it sounds like just the sort of wish-fulfillment fantasy an underdog would write. Mind, I am not actually making this argument (I have different non-orthodox beliefs about that), but it struck me pretty hard during the reading. How odd -- it's not like I haven't heard/read this passage many times before.

Saturday afternoon/evening we had an exciting D&D game. There's some stuff in the game journal about it. I'm way behind on my own entries there; must catch up soon. What made the game especially fun was the good role-playing and scene-painting from everyone there. It's neat when things click.

I don't keep extra days of holidays so Pesach ended for me last night. This morning I had french toast. Mmm. :-) (Random food aside: does brisket, already cooked and in sauce, freeze well?)

This afternoon we visited with my parents. For our anniversary they bought us a Pomerantz Wine Pro cork remover that is a joy to behold (and to use). They found a nice bottle of kosher wine to go with it too; I didn't know that stores in their area carried anything but Manischevitz. I test-drove it tonight with a bottle of Lindeman's (lambic ale, capped and corked and a real struggle for me in the past), and the cork came right out with no effort on my part. Woot! (I did have to use a cutting board to raise the short lambic bottle to a suitable height, but that's fine.)

Notes to self for next year:

Use fish, a lot, to make up the protein deficit (waa! no soy!) without driving calories through the roof. That much meat, cheese, and egg is bad for you.
But not tuna salad. I mean real fish, several times during the week. Fresh fish freezes.
Eat more fruit. Fruit doesn't have to come in cans, you know; there's this place called the produce aisle.
Eat more veggies too. Buy a microwave-safe casserole for this.
There's a vitamin-balance problem, but I don't know how to fix it when the balanced breakfast drink is off limits.
Baby carrots are not the only convenient raw veggie -- just the most convenient one. 400% RDA on Vitamin A is probably bad for you, even if it's only a week.
Maybe you shouldn't eat matzah after the seders. It's not required, and there are other delivery systems for cheese and jam. Ok, maybe not jam, but you shouldn't be eating much of that anyway.

Monica

strange Pesach conversations

Pesach (so far)

the conveniences [sic] of modern life

random (Jewish) bits

let all who are hungy come and eat

what makes a good seder?

trip to Toronto

visit to Village Shul

a little talmud

Pesach favor?

random bits

Pesach

parsha bit: Pesach

Pesach

random bits

Pesach

Pesach and pets

Pesach

random bits: SF story, gospel of Judas, family visit, Pesach, Hebrew

sermon: Shabbat HaGadol

random bits

Pesach

Pesach

weekend

Pesach and nutrition

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