Monica

Friday night: Shabbat services, and then to Ralph and Lori's party. It looks like we missed the neighbors and whatever relatives were there, but the friends and former coworkers were mostly still there. It was good to see the gang again, even if I did see many of them only last week at Larry's birthday party. Didn't get to talk to everyone as much as I'd like, but oh well. Deanna's hair lights were spiffy.

Saturday evening after havdalah and dinner at Zeb's (salmon in the salmon salad was a bit overcooked, the tomato bisque was excellent, and Dani spoke highly of the sausage lasagne), I headed over to Aya's Chanukah party. It was lots of fun, though not quite as musical as in past years. Rabbi Gibson and his family had to leave early (I think he flew to NY for our rabbi emeritus' funeral today), and Tom and Carol also left fairly early, which knocked out all our guitar players except for Bob, who was feeling self-conscious. (I don't know whether he's a beginner or out of practice.) Saw Norbert, a co-worker from Claritech who left during the layoffs. I think David wanted him but he quit to go work for Schwoo, which after the last few rounds of layoffs is down to about 15 people. Norbert is back at Claritech.

Saturday night: got mail from my shell provider saying they're going to move the main domain name (and thus web stuff). Email should be unaffected. Logged onto the new machine to explore and contemplate moving my mail so everything will be in one place, but reached no real conclusions. Same pine version, at least. Different flavor of Unix (openBSD instead of Solaris, IIRC). I'll defer the decision.

Sunday: boring chores (laundry and bill-paying). Another potluck dinner (local SCA household) that was fun. Steve brought smoked salmon; yum. Someone else brought really wonderful cheesecake. I took one look at the dessert table and decided I was *not* eating the meat. :-) Got home a bit too late to then head over to Ralph and Lori's for the remnants of Sunday dinner. Not that we would have eaten anyway (where would we put it?), but hanging out with folks is always fun.

Our Thursday-evening service (I won't use the word "minyan" because it usually isn't) is usually small. Tonight when I got there the chapel was dark and no one else was around, but I'd seen no notice of cancellation. So I turned on the lights and sat there until a couple minutes past the start time, at which point I figured that *I* would daven even if no one else came. About 10 minutes later the associate rabbi walked in about two sentences before the shift from comfortable Hebrew to uncomfortable Hebrew. I complimented him on his timing and suggested he take over. :-) (And hey, I got my own private mini-sermon!)

I talked to Rabbi Berkun this morning. My next time there for Shabbat evening will be January 4. Maybe I'll learn another psalm by then.

Tomorrow Susan (the friend from the net who came for Shabbat dinner a couple weeks ago) is converting. She invited me to a ceremony and then a party. (Well, there will be services in there, but Rodef's are short. And early.) I don't want to miss services at Sinai for a third week in a row (which would make four because of a conflict next weekend), and the congregational choir will be participating there tomorrow night and I like to be there for those. So what I'm going to do is to go to the ceremony and Rodef's services, then go to the party (across the street) until half an hour before Sinai's services, and then walk to Sinai. (It's about a mile, with some hill-climbing.) Rodef is about two miles away, but the ceremony starts around the time Shabbat does, so I can hop a bus down there. I should get to spend about an hour and a half at the party (and meet Susan's family). I hope this plan works as well in practice as it does in my mind. :-) But hey, conversions are cause for celebration, and this is actually the first such that I've been invited to. I'm looking forward to it.

Today was Thaddeus' wedding. It had the feel of an SCA event; they wanted to do a "medieval" wedding and invited guests to come in garb, and they arranged for some very good SCA cooks to do the food. It was extremely tasty, even though the cooks had to contend with more dietary issues than normal. Thaddeus is allergic to wheat, and Dana is lactose-intolerant, as are some other members of her family. This made the cake especially challenging, but they pulled it off. (Rice flour, they said.) Johan told me I should go ahead and eat meat, as the dairy was sparse and well-segregated. It's been a long time since I've eaten meat at an SCA feast.

The wedding itself started off with an exchange of gifts and each of them having to satisfy witnesses that they were suitable partners. It was schtick, but fairly well done. They said this was based on medieval (or renaissance?) Polish customs. This then led to a fairly normal wedding (with the traditional vows except for "obey"). There was a very short mass done for the benefit of the couple only -- that is, the couple got communion but no one else did, and it took about 10 minutes. Apparently this, too, is in keeping with whatever they were modelling the ceremony on. Aside from some verbal responses in which I did not participate, there was no congregational involvement. (Not like Isabella's funeral a few years back where I got broad-sided by the "let's all take hands and sing to Jesus" thing that made me bolt from the room. That was embarrassing; fortunately, the family concluded that I was overcome with grief and didn't bother me about it.)

The priest was Father Klukas (Robert's priest), who is a very cool person. He has a tasteful sense of humor that he applied during the wedding. (Rabbi Gibson is the only other person I've heard pull that sort of thing off during services.) Father Klukas has a degree in medieval history (or maybe medieval liturature, I forget now) and is very friendly with the SCA. A couple of times when we've had events at his church, he has done a historical mass (strictly optional attendance) as part of the re-creation. Pretty neat. (He preceeded them with short lectures about the liturgy of the particular period he was doing, and produced good handouts. In other words, he was definitely in teacher mode more than priest mode, though of course he was doing real masses.)

The modern Episcopalian (sp?) mass is very similar to what I remember of the Roman Catholic mass. There are extra words at the end of the "our father" prayer (I think Protestants do those too), and I think there were some minor wording differences elsewhere (less significant). I couldn't see whether communion included wine.

I find that masses can be interesting from a liturgical-anthropological point of view, when I am comfortable being present. (I was today.) We all know that Christian liturgy was derived originally from Jewish liturgy; it's interesting (to me) to see what they kept, what they changed, and what they discarded. At one point today I remember thinking "hey, that's the Kedusha"; it was very close to the text we say, until it veered off to talk about the trinity. (Christians will know this as the "holy holy holy, all the earth is filled with God's glory" part, if I'm remembering the mass text correctly.) At the time I couldn't remember clearly what had led off this section, so I asked Father Klukas later whether this was modelled on the Amidah (the prayer set that includes Kedusha), or if that part was just a noticable borrowing. He said the latter. It's times like this when it would be really handy to have a copy of the generic Catholic or Episcopalian text to refer to.

I also got an answer to a minor question: the bells that get rung twice during that service are there to get the attention of people who are either lost in prayer or just not paying attention. This apparently isn't much of an issue now, but was when masses went on for much longer and in Latin. The two points are at "this is my body" and "this is my blood"; I wonder if that is the point where they are actually consecrated (and, if you believe in transubstantian, are altered). I guess it makes sense that you would want people to witness that rather than being lost in their own thoughts at the time.

Earlier tonight (before dinner) I saw my friend Jan for the first time in about two months. (I know her from Temple Sinai, and that's where I saw her.) Her father died a few days ago, and this was the first night after the shiva so she came to services. (I am also frustrated that I didn't know this before tonight, or I would have tried to visit her, at least for the minyan.) Sigh. This has not been a good year for my friends in this regard.