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Sukkot morning there was a bar mitzvah. I wasn't thrilled to hear that; usually that means the bar-mitzvah family takes over and the regular congregation feels pushed off to the side. So that's not a nice thing to do at a service that is the only option for the greater congregation. (On most Shabbatot we have two services, the one the regulars go to and the bar-mitzvah service that the family pretty much owns. I wish it weren't that way, but it is. On holidays we don't do that, though; there's one service.) However, it worked out; the bar mitzvah was very good and gave one of the best talks I've heard from a kid so far. I hope that was intentional -- that a particularly promising student was given the honor of having his bar mitzvah at a holiday service -- but I don't know if it was. They schedule those pretty far in advance, so he would have had to have been particularly promising two years ago.

Today Dani and I went to the Shadyside home tour. We've never been to one of these before. Other neighborhoods have them too (though I've never heard of one in Squirrel Hill). The tour consisted of seven homes, all of which are clearly objects of obsession for their owners. I had assumed the tour would consist of big impressive mansions (there are several in Shadyside), but it was a mix of mostly "normal-person" homes, though with often-impressive restoration work. One small house was obviously a bachelor pad; the "bedroom" was in a loft visible from everyplace except directly below it, with no curtains or the like. Not the sort of place you live with a non-romantic roommate, or your kids. :-)

Tomorrow we are getting a new furnace. It's the sort of thing you shold do every half-century whether you need it or not. :-) Seriously, we think our current furnace is running at about 50% efficiency, and the new one will be abut 95%, so that should bring some relief on the winter gas bills.

( Hebrew minutiae )

( Friday night )

( torah study )

( bar mitzvah )

All together, this was the longest torah portion I've learned (one chapter, 23 verses, one full column -- and it had the decency to actually fall out as one column, so I didn't have to roll the scroll mid-reading). I read different, overlapping parts Friday night and Saturday morning; I didn't read all that at once. I realize that to some of my readers this sounds piddly; a full parsha is generally three or four chapters (sometimes more), and readers routinely prepare that much. My congregation doesn't read the entire parsha -- never has, so far as I know. But still, this was a milestone for me.

I need to get some hair clips or something. Because I have medium-length hair and need to get fairly close to the torah scroll to read, my hair was hanging down while I read Friday night. It wasn't blocking my view, but a couple people told me that it meant they couldn't see my face. I wouldn't have thought that my face would be an interesting visual target at that point, but I guess I'm wrong. I think wearing a ponytail on the bimah would seem too casual and unprofessional, so I need to figure out something more decorative. I haven't got a hair-aesthetics gene, so this could be interesting.

I really enjoyed this stint in my rabbi's shoes, and I hope I get to do it again someday. I have high hopes that sometime this fall I will lead a Friday service when my rabbi will be there to see me.

This year, for the first time, my congregation is going to have services for the second day of Rosh Hashana. Our not doing so was the only way in which we veered from our policy of following the Israeli calendar, and the rabbi brought it up with the worship committee recently and we decided to try it. That the second day of RH is on a Sunday, rather than a weekday, this year will not hurt. :-)

Someone on the committee asked if we could do some "creative" readings instead of just repeating the previous day's service. "Creative" can be a code word for "fluffy" (usually is, IMO, but there are exceptions), so when the rabbi asked a subcommittee to make proposals I asked to be in the group. As I privately told the chair of the worship committee, my goal here is to keep things from getting weird. (I don't know if these particular people are prone to weird, but better safe than sorry.)

The subcommittee met for the first time last night. It's a good thing I'm part of it; some of the other members were all too willing to cut out required parts of the service and I was able to talk to them about what's core liturgy that we Do Not Mess With, what can tolerate variations, and where our machzor already made adaptations so we can make different adaptations if we like. I wish I had a more traditional machzor to use as a reference, though I don't wish it enough to spend money. Hmm, I wonder if I can borrow one from Tree of Life; I'll try to remember to ask on Thursday. The problem is that sometimes Gates of Repentance (our machzor) made changes -- they're clearly changes -- but without knowing what they replaced, it's hard to know how to react.

I think we'll be able to produce a service that's true to what it's supposed to be. I've mentally identified areas where I can give the other members free rein, which should give me karma points to apply to the parts of the service I really care about. We'll see. Of course, the full committee has to approve and the rabbi has final say.

We talked a little about the balance of Hebrew and English, and congregational reading versus readings by the leader. We were looking at something that's specific to the RH liturgy and someone said (without looking at it) that the congregation could read this in Hebrew. I said the congregation can be relied upon to read in Hebrew what is familiar, but I wasn't sure about this. On further investigation, we determined that I could read it but not confidently and quickly, and I'm apparently a sort of congregational canary: that I can read something doesn't mean anything, but that I can't is significant. Interesting; I didn't know that's how some people view me. :-) (I can read anything slowly, but I don't do unfamiliar text at typical reading speed yet.)

Amazon has this thing called "gold box", where they offer you slightly-discounted prices on products they think you'd like. Sometimes they're right; I've bought a few things that way. But I'd really like to send them a message: I will not buy (1) things I already own (and that I bought from you, so you should know); (2) a bike via mail order; (3) golf clubs; or (4) fancy-schmancy purses priced in the hundreds of dollars. (Heck, I wouldn't buy a purse priced in the tens of dollars.) Where on earth do they get some of these ideas? I had assumed paid placements, and maybe that's true, but I've been seeing the purses (or sometimes wallets, also around $200) for months, intermittently. Huh?

Our congregation is hiring an associate rabbi, and we're going through placement with HUC for someone from this year's class. The process was described as similar to assigning residencies for medical school: each employer produces an ordered list of students it would hire and each student produces an ordered list of jobs he would take, and then the matching is done and you find out who you got. I found myself wondering today whether the algorithm optimizes locally or globally. Suppose you have a student S1 who chooses congregations C1 and C2, and another student S2 who chooses C3 and C1, and suppose C3 doesn't choose S2 and C1 will take either student. Do they match S1 to C1 to give S1 his first choice (and it's just too bad that S2 lost out), or do they match S1 to C2 so that S2 gets a congregation, each student getting his second choice? Does C1's ranking of S1 and S2 matter in this case? I wonder if participants are allowed to know this stuff, or if they fear people gaming the system.

Links:

The Straight Dope on the number of the beast (history and humor). I particularly like "$665.95: retail price of the beast". I had previously heard "668: the neighbor of the beast". Link from cvirtue.

This was posted to lj_nifty: a map showing where your LJ friends are located (replace my user name with yours in the URL). As of this posting it only covers North America. It's also very slow at the moment, though it worked fine for me earlier.

The torah-study group reached the end of a book today. We don't do parsha hashuva; we (well, they) started at the first word of B'reishit (Genesis) 17 years ago, and today we finished Bamidbar (Numbers). So, as is traditional, we held a party. Everyone brought something and, hey, it wasn't all desserts. :-) I brought spinach quiche, which works fine at room temperature; I actually took them over to the synagogue Friday morning so I wouldn't have to shlep them today. They were completely gone at the end, so I guess people liked them. :-)

We should find excuses to have pot-lucks more often; we shouldn't have to wait for the end of D'varim. It was nice to be able to sit and talk with people for longer than the usual after-service chatting.

I spent some time talking with one of our regulars (also not raised in a Jewish home). She said very flattering things about me. We talked about studying talmud; she's currently taking a class she really likes, taught by Rabbi Schiff, who I've heard wonderful things about. The class assumes you've been through the Melton program; Melton is some sort of national two-year program that lots of people have good things to say about (including the person I was talking with, who took it about a decade ago). One of the rabbis at HUC this summer suggested I take it, but I missed it for this year so that'll be next fall at the earliest. From the description of Rabbi Schiff's talmud class, though, it sounds like I'd do just fine; the private study with my rabbi has given me some useful skills. So if that class comes around again, I might take it.

The person who coordinates torah readers for the morning service asked me if I could do Beshalach (in six weeks). I'm signed up to do Mishpatim (two weeks later), so I said I could do one or the other. (Actually, the fourth aliya of Mishpatim is short, but why push it?) But I want to check something first; the fourth aliya of Beshalach is Shirat HaYam, the song at the sea, and it has special trope. If we're only going to do it once every seven years (the way we divide up the portions), we should darn well do it with the special trope! But is my rabbi planning to do it himself? I'd be happy to learn it but happier to be able to hear him do it. So I asked the coordinator to check the rabbi's availability that week before I start to learn it.

I spent some time this afternoon working on biblical Hebrew. I'm working through The First Hebrew Primer, an excellent book for adults. There does not appear to be a second primer by these authors; does that mean when I finish this book I'll be able to read? Somehow I don't think it's that simple, so I wonder what the next step is. (File away to ask my rabbi when I get closer.)

Our congregation is currently looking for an associate rabbi, and I managed to get myself onto the search committee. I'm glad to be able to play this role, and I'm glad to have the opportunity to see this process up close. We conducted our first phone interview this morning; in some ways it's not that different from interviewing programmers. Sure, the domain is rather different, but either way, you want to try to figure out how the candidate goes about solving problems, how he works with others, and so on.

The user interface on my cell phone is worse than it first appears. Someone left me voice mail, which I listened to but didn't immediately act on. I figured I could always go back to the "recent messages" menu item to re-hear it. Nope -- no way to do that through that interface. The secret for getting to the voice-mail box is that it's on speead-dial #1 -- which is in the manual, but I shouldn't have to consult the manual for something like that. Putting it on speed-dial is fine, but it should also be linked from the menu that is otherwise about messages. Sheesh.

Dani brought home a book of poetry called Now We Are Sick. That, and that it is edited by Neil Gaiman (and Stephen Jones, who I otherwise don't know) should tell you something about the amount of twistedness in the content.

My copy of "Clam Chowder: Kosher" (new DVD) arrived yesterday. This is a collection of songs from several years' worth of concerts that they actually have publication rights for (mostly traditional, out-of-copyright, and self-written material). It's a good collection. That it was recorded from the back of the hall is obvious; the resolution isn't as good as you'd expect from settings where they can put cameras everywhere they want. But it's good enough. The only regret I have in watching it is that I know there were some fun "audience gags" at some of those concerts (I was there), but none of those were included. Some can't be becuase the songs weren't; for example, the Vegetable Liberation Front, or maybe it was People for the Ethical Treatment of Vegetables, showed up for "Carrot Juice is Murder" one year, but that song isn't on the DVD. On the other hand, I remember uniformed flag-waving folks parading in for one performance of "Ye Jacobites By Name", which is on the DVD, but that's not the version they used. One of the things that makes Clam Chowder special is the relationship they have with the audience; I wish that had come out more on the DVD.

On the original schedule he was going to read torah next Saturday morning. Last week I asked someone else to learn it on contingency (i.e. you'll probably get to do this but you might get bumped). (This is someone who explicitly volunteered to do stuff on short notice; we'd know a couple days out if he was going to get bumped. So it was a request for speedy work, not possibly-wasted work.) On Wednesday he told me oops, he'd forgotten about a commitment that would keep him away that day. So I started to look at the portion myself, because I can't ask anyone else to do possibly-wasted work. Fortunately, I'm now off the hook; I asked the associate rabbi if he could do it (he'll be there anyway) and he said yes. I'd rather have more than a week to learn a portion, even a short one.

This afternoon I went to a friend's baby shower. There seemed to be a "classic Pooh" theme going, and, of course (the baby being a girl), enough pink to set off allergic reactions. :-) It was a fun afternoon; it was nice that so many of her friends could be there.

There was one game (showers are required to have games, apparently). The hostess had taken the names of everyone who would be there and looked them up in some sort of "meanings of baby names" book. She grouped them in batches of ten or so and we were to match the names to the meanings. Of course, many of these so-called meanings are hokey rationalizations applied after the fact, not the origins of the names, but you expect that from a book that attempts to attribute meaning to every name. (Y'know, sometimes a Susan is just a Susan...) Anyway, I looked over the list and said to myself that hey, I know a lot of the relevant cognates in at least three source languages (English, Hebrew, Latin), but that even so, I didn't know half of these names. So I filled in the ones I knew and guessed the rest. I was surprised to get 29 or 41 right, which I gather was the highest score in the room.

No, I have no idea of the basis this source had for saying that my name means "advisor". I can't even get a language connection out of that one. I completely missed "Cara" ("beloved"), but could have gotten it if I'd made a logical leap from the madrigal "Matona mia cara". Duh. I was minorly proud for getting "Barbara".

Speaking of languages (sort of), my friend dglenn has a question about language structure and resulting expressiveness, with a geek twist that made me giggle. Hebrew speakers in particular might be able to help him out.

I had planned to go to a going-away party for a friend who's moving to the west coast, but I've been losing a fight against a headache all evening, and I don't think the noisy environment will help. I hope to connect with him before he leaves town. Worst case, he'll be back in a few weeks to arrange for packing and moving.