Monica

The book I'm using for biblical Hebrew started with perfect (past) verbs, drilling in patterns of usage that seem to be pretty consistent most of the time. (Yes, of course there are irregular verbs; every language has 'em, I assume.) And so far we've only covered one of the seven binyanim. (I don't have the vocabulary to translate that directly; examples are reflexive versus causitive versus "just plain did it". It's the difference between "write", "dictate", "correspond", "be written", and others.)

Now in this one binyan (pa'al) that we've been using so far, there are two things that tell you how to read the verb: suffixes and vowels. Both of these are very consistent; for example, "malachti", "shalachti", and "zacharti" are all first-person singular verbs. (I ruled; I sent; I remembered.)

So I was feeling like I got this, so far. Then we hit imperfect verbs. It looked straightforward at first; there are prefixes and sometimes suffixes, and the text introduced a vowel pattern. I dutifully memorized the chart -- and then got to the part where it said there are three different common vowel patterns in this binyan. I don't yet know if there's a pattern to it, but they haven't stated one yet.

Now I had thought that the vowel pattern is how you tell which binyan the word is in -- if one of those vowels in, say, "shalachti" changes, then it means I'm not in pa'al any more and the meaning has changed somehow. But if the imperfect tense includes three different variations within a single binyan, how many variations are there going to be by the time we get all seven binyanim?

Recognition is easier than generation; in time I assume that I'll learn to recognize any of the three variations as imperfect pa'al. Generation is a completely different problem, though; at this point I have to assume that I'm probably not going to spell correctly much of the time.

I eventually internalized perfect; I'll internalize imperfect too. I was just surprised at how much more complex it appears to be right at the beginning (when, I presume, they would simplify if they could).

I can translate the first sentence of my next torah portion. Yay! Ok, it's not a long sentence. And it's from B'reishit, which seems easier to me. And I had to fill in one noun by inference -- but nouns are much more a matter of vocabulary while verbs are a matter of grammar, so that's fine.

Biblical Hebrew has two tenses, perfect (think "past tense") and imperfect (think "present and future tenses", and yeah, you get to figure out which by other cues). There is also a grammatical construct (vav conversive) by which a perfect verb is flipped to imperfect and vice-versa. I wonder why that exists. It's used a lot in the torah to transform imperfect to perfect (I haven't seen much going in the other direction). Hebrew has a perfectly-good (err) perfect tense; why write imperfect tense and then flip it so much? Or is there a difference of nuance between perfect and flipped-to-be-perfect?

I was listening to a Carlebach song recently called "Ivdu et Hashem b'simcha". In "ivdu" I recognize the noun "eved", which means "servant" or "slave", so I assume this is something about serving God with (b') joy (simcha). Now first off it's probably modern rather than biblical Hebrew, and second it's probably not past (or perfect) tense because that's not the kind of stuff Carlebach is likely to write songs about. So it's probably present tense or maybe a comamnd form. I only know perfect tense so far, and only one of the seven binyanim (err, that's too complicated for a parenthetical note), but "ivdu" seems to have the markers for third-person plural, which is about the last conjugation I would have expected here. Second-person plural (imperative or predictive) or any first-person would make sense here, but third-person, not so much. I guess eventually I'll learn other tenses and other binyanim and all will become clear.

In retrospect this sounds kind of stupid (as in "you mean you didn't already know that?"), but... this weekend I identified a mental block I've been having. It can be summed up thus: I inadvertantly expected the core parts of words to fall on the beat.

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I met with my rabbi today and we talked about the Sh'liach K'hilah program. We talked a lot about writing eulogies because I mentioned it early (new content from last year) and because I said I didn't think I did a very good job with mine. He gave me a lot of good advice there, some of it much more general than eulogies.

We talked a little about delivery, especially when working with a set text (not notes). It's fine -- even not uncommon -- to go ahead and write in stage directions to address your weaknesses -- "slow down", "breathe", "look up", etc. Color highlighting can mark phrases that ought to be emmphasized or places where you specifically want to pause. No one else will see your copy; do whatever works.

I mentioned the challenge of the text-study assignment (I characterized it as "working with people you don't know at all, with different backgrounds, to produce something quickly"), but we didn't really get into it. Another time, maybe. Or maybe I've learned all I can from that experience already.

We talked about next steps within the congregation. He's still a little unsure of how to handle Friday-night services; he said he'd be happy to have me read torah, so maybe I'll start with that. We talked about kabbalat shabbat with no resolution; I said that there's only one Shabbat in the next several months I'll be away and he has but to name a date. We got interrupted while we were talking about this and didn't get to finish, so I'll follow up.

I did not get a chance to ask about further study (much); I haven't asked his opinion about Melton, Drisha, Hebrew College, and others. I'd like to hear his thoughts on those. Next meeting, then.

I did ask (on the way out the door) about Hebrew. He mentioned a publisher called EKS as a good source. I mentioned courses at Pitt; he thinks they start with modern and then go to biblical and you can't just jump into biblical there. But, he said, you really have to learn the two together anyway; you can't do just biblical and be effective. So he thinks a two-pronged approach would work: learn modern at JEI and biblical with him, replacing our talmud study with Hebrew study. The next round of courses at JEI should start in September, so I'll see what they have to offer. The course I took there several years ago didn't work for me, but it's been several years and maybe that style of teaching will work better now.

Edit: Ok, I thought EKS sounded vaguely familiar. I actually have one of their books. A friend and I started to work through it a while back. Time to pull it out again.

For a while I've been compiling a mental list (which I should turn into a written list before it rots) of tips and tricks for leading services. I mean to someday share this list with my congregation's other lay leaders (after running it all by my rabbi). These tips come from learning on the job (a lot), observing my rabbi (a lot), formal education (a little), and watching other lay leaders (a fair bit). This weekend I observed something kind of related that I don't want to lose track of.

What I noticed was that the rabbi sprinkled his talk liberally with Hebrew words, some well-known and others that could be understood from context even if you didn't previously know the words. He never used the language in a way that would leave an uneducated listener completely in the dark, but he also did not shy away from using Hebrew. I like this, a lot, and in my experience the Orthodox do this a fair bit in general. It's something that Reform Jews could learn from.

I speculate that Reform leaders, wanting to be as open and accessible as possible, shy away from this for fear of losing people. And there may be some merit in that fear, as members of Reform congregations are less likely to have gone to a full-time Hebrew school and thus been able to absorb more of the references. On the other hand, it's not as if I had that experience or have become fluent, and I can generally follow these conversations. Given a statement like "when Moshe brought the luchot down from Mount Sinai and saw the people worshipping the golden calf...", don't most people understand that "luchot" is "tablets"? That's the sort of context I'm talking about. That, and sometimes people use a term and immediately translate -- "Nadav and Avihu made an aish zarah, an alien fire, on the altar...". This just makes the educational aspect a little more explicit.

As with everything, context and audience matter. When my rabbi and I talk he uses a lot more Hebrew than he does when giving a sermon, for instance. When friends and I are discussing some bit of torah or halacha the Hebrew terms fly, though I wouldn't do that when talking with random members of my congregation. But I wonder if we don't shy away from Hebrew a little too much. It's happened in the liturgy already (and Hebrew is now coming back into favor in the last couple decades), and that avoidance helped to move Hebrew from "normal" to "strange and foreign". But maybe we should be pulling small bits of the language back into the normal lexicon of synagogue discourse, not just in worship but in conversation, as a way of making Hebrew seem less foreign and scary to folks.

We ended up talking a little bit about the Hebrew/English balance at services and the use of transliteration in the siddur. Some rabbis apparently hold the view that transliteration is a crutch that keeps people from actually learning Hebrew. I suspect that's not quite right.

I dislike reading from transliteration, and avoid it except when urgent even if it means I won't be able to say every word (due to being slow). On the other hand, when I was just starting to attend services and didn't know anything yet, I was really grateful to have it. I was able to use it to jump-start my participation, yet I did not lose my motivation to learn to read for real. I commented on this to my rabbi, who said something like "yeah, but you taught yourself trope too -- you're not typical". Actually, though, I suspect I am typical among that subset of the population that will learn to read anyway. It's just that most people will apparently settle for transliteration -- but if it weren't there they'd sit in silence, not say "gee, I'm not getting any help here; I better learn the language". Or so I theorize. (Data welcome.)

The real issue there, I guess, is that most people don't want to learn to read a foreign alphabet at speed. I'd rather give them some tools for participation than write them off. (And just to clarify, I'm pretty sure my rabbi shares that view. He's not the one who said transliteration should be eliminated.)

But I'd also be thrilled if I, personally, never had to rely on transliteration again. :-)

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In other news, I met with our cantorial soloist last night to discuss that service at the end of July. She is quite happy to have me doing most of the music, with other committee members doing some, and she said she would like to see more of this. So we'll be sort of a test case or something, to see how the congregation reacts. The subs are already mostly lined up for her maternity leave (which is going to be very short, because she wants to be back before the high holy days), but she pointed out that next summer there will be an opportunity to do more. No, she's not planning another kid (or if she is, she didn't share that information), but the congregation has managed to clear next summer of b'nei mitzvot, so services during the summer can be less formal and more experimental. (Next year's class is small, so we are taking the opportunity to do some sanctuary renovations.) I'd love to see more lay people being more involved in things like this.

We also talked about the trope class I want us to have in the fall or winter, and she's going to do what she can to make it happen. The lines of responsibility are a little fuzzy here, and we both want to make sure it doesn't fall through the cracks.

Someone wrote, on the Reform movement's worship mailing list, about some liturgical issues he would like to see us do differently. Someone posted a very critical response. This is (most of) my reply. I'll summarize, not quote, the other poster here.

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[About a mis-translation of Hebrew into English.]

If [teaching a certain principle] is the goal in the siddur text, then we should change the Hebrew. I think what bothers the original poster, and what certainly bothers me, is the disconnect. If we mean it when we make a change to the liturgy, we should make the change completely -- Hebrew and English. But changing the English without changing the Hebrew sends the message that (1) we don't think anyone will be sufficiently skilled in Hebrew to notice, and (2) it doesn't really matter what we say in the Hebrew. If that's the case, then you may as well ditch the Hebrew entirely; it would be more honest than what we do now. (I am not advocating that. Hebrew is our sacred language and I would not like to see it decrease in our services. But it can be frustrating to be completely unable to rely on the siddur to tell me what the Hebrew says. Mishkan T'filah does a much better job of this, which I applaud.)

[Summary: my issues are important; yours are trivial matters of ritual]

In your opinion. Some of the matters that you dismiss, such as kashrut, are every bit as important to some of our congregants as the matters you consider important are to you. The Reform movement isn't just about being free to "not do"; it is also about being free to "do". And it's perfectly reasonable for members to expect some minimal support when they decide to "do", like not being served meat-milk mixtures at congregational dinners and like finding the restroom lights already turned on on Shabbat.

[Go back to the Conservative shul you were raised in; don't expect us to adjust to what you prefer]

I am not the original poster, but as someone who seriously considered a Conservative congregation before signing up with Reform, I will tell you why I am a Reform Jew and why people like me are not going to just go away. The differences are much more important than choosing a congregation or praying a certain way.

I am a Reform Jew for theological and philosophical reasons. I am a fairly observant Jew because my study of our texts and our tradition tells me that these mitzvot are important, to us and to God, but I would be completely out of place in a Conservative or Orthodox congregation because of how I got to that state. You, of course, may come to different conclusions; Reform is fundamentally about personal autonomy (with study), while the other movements are not. But as I said above, sometimes the answer, after study and consideration, is to keep, not reject, mitzvot, whether this be keeping kosher or not kindling fire on Shabbat or praying daily or whatever. I do not expect my fellow Reform Jews to come to the same conclusions I've come to; their practice is not my concern. I do, however, expect to be able to participate in a Reform congregation without compromising my own values -- otherwise, the congregation does not really support that personal autonomy that is central to the movement. Reform ideology requires tolerance of observance.

Now this means that there are things I have to refrain from doing, but that's my problem. Throughout most of the year I can't accept an offer to light candles on Friday night, because our services start at 8pm year-round. If I attend a congregational dinner, I'll stick to vegetarian/dairy dishes, because the meat won't be kosher. If the congregation were to pick up and move five miles down the road, I would reluctantly attend elsewhere on Shabbat. And so on. And if I want to pray daily in a minyan, I should expect to go elsewhere; most Reform congregations can't support a daily minyan. That's ok.

Just as those who keep mitzvot have to accept responsibility for working around hurdles, those who do not must also try to avoid placing stumbling-blocks. I do not ask you to observe mitzvot you don't find compelling -- but I do ask that you be sensitive to others' equally-valid decisions to observe. This is not "expecting the temple to adjust to what you prefer"; rather, it is expecting the temple to be sensitive to what you need, to the extent this is feasible. It is also expecting the temple to stand behind the fundamental principles of our movement.

Kol tuv,
Monica

Erik (the orange cat) bites his nails, but he won't let me clip them without a fight. That can't be efficient; consider the cross-section of a cat's tooth and the shape of a nail, versus the parameters of a tool designed for the job. Silly cat. He looks so industrious when he decides to shorten his nails, and I could solve that problem for him in just a few seconds.

When you save a web page in Mozilla, by default it creates a directory and collects in it all the associated graphics and stuff, rather than just dumping the HTML for the page. Handy!

The provider of my shell account and web space will host (and register) a vanity domain name for very small amounts of extra money. Just small enough that I'd go for it, if I could come up with something interesting. But I lack creativity. I've occasionally considered grabbing "cellio.org" (we're an Italian family; of course it's .org :-) ), but it doesn't really excite me. I don't want to use something so hobby-centric that I'd be embarrassed to use it professionally, but since I'm not currently planning to use it for business, I don't really want to build a business domain into it. I assume that all singleton English words are taken by either real people or squatters by now.

The morning minyan started using a new siddur a couple weeks ago (new daily version of Sim Shalom). I noticed that it uses a very handy typesetting convention that the Reform siddur (Gates of Prayer) adopted a few years back: writing a certain vowel (qametz) differently when its pronunciation changes. I approve.

(Hebrew is mostly a regular language when it comes to pronunciation, but there is one vowel that is sometimes "ah" and sometimes "oh", depending on rules that are only partially articulated. You just have to know, in some cases. So now there are two siddurim that are using the same minor variation in typesetting to signal this. I find it extremely helpful, and I'll be very disappointed if the new Reform siddur (due out in 2005) doesn't continue it.)

According to the ad, next week's episode of "Mister Sterling" is the season finale. Who ever heard of a nine-episode season? I thought shows that started mid-year ran 11-13 episodes, not 9. I wonder what the prospects for renewal are. It's got some rough edges, certainly, but I enjoy the show.

And speaking of short seasons, I do wish they would get around to releasing "Wizards and Warriors" on DVD before my Nth-generation videotapes rot. It was only 8 episodes, and it was some of the funniest fluff fantasy I've seen. It aired long before most of us had VCRs (back when tapes were $8-10 apiece), and I still remember chipping in with some fellow college students to pay for tapes and shipping to get copies from a friend. (Hi Lee, if you're reading this.)

Mystery food of the week: I've encountered "buffalo mozzerella" several times in the last few years, and not at all before that. I was wondering today about the definition -- is it made from buffalo milk? Did it gain popularity in Buffalo NY? Does it have nothing whatsoever to do with bison? A google search suggests that it's made with buffalo milk; I didn't know anybody milked buffalo. This, in turn, led me to wonder if buffalo is kosher, as milk from a non-kosher animal is also non-kosher. (Remember, I'm a city kid who doesn't tend to know much about exotic species.) I gather from a second google search that buffalo is kosher but controversial for some reason; I didn't investigate. I would expect buffalo that has been slaughtered in accordance with kosher laws to be rare, but that's not an issue for milk. So ok, I can eat buffalo mozzerella. I'm glad to know that after the fact. :-)

Mystery food runner-up: today we encountered "Pittsburgh spots" on a menu. We had to ask which branch of the animal kingdom that relates to. It's a whitefish. The waitress said it was kind of like "Virginia spots", as if that would tell us anything. I assume they do not actually catch "Pittsburgh spots" in Pittsburgh; I'd be reluctant to eat anything that came out of our rivers. She didn't know why it's called that, though.

Last night at the shiva a member of Esther's congregation, who was also my calculus professor during my freshman year (he remembered me, scarily enough -- we'd run into each other a year or two ago), walked up to Dani and said something to him in Hebrew. The exchange (a few sentences) was going by too quickly for me to parse, though I did catch the word "Ivrit" (which means "Hebrew"). It turns out that Victor was asking Dani if he correctly remembered that Dani spoke Hebrew.

I think I know how to say "I don't speak Hebrew" in Hebrew, though I've probably got the verb conjugation or binyan wrong. (I don't think "binyan" has an English equivalent. Imagine that there's one verb that can mean either "tell" or "command" or "speak", depending on a grammatical tweak. A binyan is one of these forms.)

We had an On the Mark practice this afternoon, the first one post-kid (that would be lrstrobel and fiannaharpar's kid, not mine :-) ). Jenn didn't come because they couldn't get a babysitter, so we did some shuffling of stuff and pulled off a reasonable practice. Scheduling for the next little while is going to be tricky.

This is for the Hebrew-speakers out there.

I'm transliterating some Hebrew choral music for people who (mostly) do not speak the language. I'm fairly pedantic about pronunciation, though, so I don't want to overload symbols that can be confusing. Been there; done that.

The question is the shva. I have seen it transliterated as "e" (same as segol, or is it tzere?), which isn't quite the same sound. I've seen it transliterated as an apostrophe, but apostrophes are also used to indicate glottal stops, and I think I probably shouldn't use it for that reason. I am considering using a colon, which isn't overloaded with anything and has the advantage of resembling the Hebrew nikud (for the people in the choir who can take advantage of that knowledge). I am limited to the standard ASCII character set, and I don't want the singers to struggle with the text.

We're doing Sephardi pronunciation. I'm using "ch" for both chet and chaf because near as I can tell there really is no difference between them. I'm using "ei" for whichever of tzere or segol has the long sound (I don't know all the vowel names). I don't distinguish between tet and taf, or sin and samech.

Opinions? Other suggestions?

If you're in the SCA and interested in persona development, check out sca_persona. It's an interesting experiment.

Tonight was fiannaharpar and lrstrobel's wedding. The local SCA choir was doing processional and recessional pieces, combined with their church choir. It went well, and all reports are that we sounded good. The accoustics of the place helped; so did having about 30 singers. (Our choir has around a dozen; the rest were from their church.)

Ray and Jenn had asked me to sing a psalm (in Hebrew). I ended up doing Psalm 29 ("Havu l-Adonai...") I was worried that the melody I know (which seems to be pretty common around here) would be too boring/repetitive, but when I tried it out on Ray and Jenn they liked it so we went with it. It went well, and I got a lot of compliments at the reception. I am also pleased that I did not need to use a microphone to make myself heard in the largish room. (Accoustics, support, and, um, natural loudness at work...)

Dani helpfully pointed out that most of the people there didn't actually know Hebrew, so I could have sung anything I wanted and no one would be the wiser (except lefkowitzga, I pointed out). Don't worry, Ray and Jenn; I didn't listen to him. :-) (Actually, we had this conversation at the reception.)

I got to meet celebrin at the reception. It's always nice to put faces and names together! I also got to meet Alper, finally. (I hope we didn't scare him off.) I also saw sk4p there; he read Psalm 27 (in English) during the ceremony. I don't think I've seen him since Don's new year's party last year, so it was nice to see him again. rani23 seemed to have the food under control. (Thanks for the fruit and veggies to offset the sugar!)

Wednesday my rabbi and I started on Tractate B'rachot. It was great! My rabbi absolutely rocks. Maybe I'll write more about that later. Anyway, partly because of this tractate, I decided that it was time to re-read Donin's To Pray as a Jew (well, reread some and skim other parts), so I started to do that this afternoon. My rabbi is right: the part about the evening (ma'ariv) service originally being optional, and never requiring a chazan's repetition of the Amidah, is in there. I missed it when I first read the book about four years ago.

My rabbi is on his way to Jerusalem for some sort of solidarity mission. I pray he returns safely. I'm somewhat saddened to realize that if he were going to DC a week ago, I wouldn't have made that comment.

A co-worker gave me a shekel coin. She owed me a quarter, and this was novel enough that I took it as payment in full even though technically she owes me a couple pennies. I've never seen a shekel coin before, so I took a look at it.

I'm in that stage of vocabulary-building that's just a couple notches above "pathetic". But I look for casual learning opportunities. I figure that if there's enough context, I ought to be able to puzzle things out and maybe add a word or two to my vocabulary.

The first thing I noticed is that the front of the coin, below the "1", says (I assume) "shekel chadash". (Note: there are no vowels here, so I'm inferring based on the consonants. It's possible that the second word is something completely different; the word "chodesh" would use the same consonants, but that means "month" and that wouldn't make sense.) The word "chadash" means "new".[1] So if this is a new shekel, I wonder what it replaced. Yeah, duh: old shekels. But I mean, what was the change? Why are there new shekels and old shekels, and not just shekels?

The coin also has tri-lingual text around the edge. I see "Israel" (English), an Arabic squiggle (presumably a transliteration), and two words in Hebrew. The second word is "Israel". The first word is something of a mystery.

Near as I can tell (this text is really small), the letters are: het, taf, shin, nun (maybe gimel?), yud, tet. A noun would not be out of place here and the "ha" prefix means "the", so maybe this means something like "the state of Israel". (I know the word for "land", and this is not it.)

Unfortunately, that doesn't give me enough hints, and I can't make intelligent guesses at the vowels. So this is the point where I'll have to consult a dictionary for insight.

Oh well. I guess that wasn't a complete loss; I replaced some language curiosity with some currency-history curiosity. :-)

[1] If you've made it this far, you may wonder why the name of the new-year holiday does not contain the word "chadash". It instead contains "rosh", which literally means "head". So Rosh Hashana is literally "head [of] the year". (And yes, Hebrew infers prepositions a lot; the "of" isn't really there.)