[Written Thursday, 5/31.]

In this week's parsha Miriam and Aharon criticize Moshe over his Cushite wife and Miriam gets tzara'at, "leprosy". (Aharon gets off. I'm not sure why that is.) The torah is short on details. Tonight our associate rabbi used this as the basis of a nice little drash on prejudice and dealing with the stranger in your midst.

Something he said in passing clicked with a midrash I read last night to send my thinking in a completely different direction. According to this midrash -- and you should note that for many midrashim there are equal and opposite midrashim, so take them with a grain of salt -- Miriam had been talking with Moshe's wife, Tzippora, when Eldad and Medad broke out in prophecy. Tzippora, according to the midrash, said something along the lines of "ouch, I pity their poor wives", and went on to explain that since Moshe became a prophet he'd been neglecting his obligations to his wife -- he was busy serving God and Israel instead, one gathers. Miriam said "oh, this is terrible" and went off to chastise Moshe for the way he treated his wife, and got punished. It's a different spin from the common interpretation that the criticism was about the marriage (to a non-Hebrew).

This, in turn, got me thinking about the obligations and effects of leadership. At least in the Reform movement, congregations tend to expect an awful lot of their rabbis. My rabbi works way more than the conventional 40-hour week, and he has to be on call pretty much all the time. He takes work home at night. None of this is unusual (again, in the movement -- I can't generalize). Do we, collectively, expect our rabbis to neglect their family obligations in favor of congregational obligations? Is that really fair? Is it just par for the course, or can we do something about it?

Again, speaking only of the Reform movement, there's a lot of resistance, from both congregants and rabbis, to letting lay people do some of the work. I don't know how we get better about that so we don't burn out our leaders. Moshe ended up appointing 70 elders to help him, but it wasn't his idea. How do we get more help for our leaders, and how do we get that help accepted? No answers, just questions.

That's not really the direction I expected this to go when I started writing, by the way. I was just going to comment on the load we place on our leaders and stop there.

Originally posted here: http://www.greatestjournal.com/users/cellio/955.html

I was discussing my decreased involvement in the SCA (over the last decade or so) with a friend who suggested that I've shifted my social allegiance from the SCA to my synagogue. This is something I've thought about before and I want to record a comment I made in that discussion.

Certainly the degradation of the SCA over the last decade [1] has made it easier for me to find time for my synagogue. The SCA began its descent for me in 1994; it wasn't until 1998 that I even started showing up at my synagogue. I've thought a lot about how these are related, actually, and I think that had the SCA not gone the way it did I would still be involved in my synagogue but I would not be in a leadership position and I'd probably be a less-regular attendee. (Not infrequent, mind, but that I wouldn't have had a problem skipping Shabbat services to go to an event.) My synagogue has replaced the SCA in providing leadership opportunities, which have accompanying time commitments -- but, interestingly, I don't actually socialize a lot with the synagogue people outside of the synagogue context. I'm much more likely to go out to dinner and a movie (or whatever) with my SCA friends.

[1] We were talking about increasingly-obstructionist policies at the corporate level and their effects on the rank-and-file participants. The modern incarnation of these problems began with a major policy change, founded on false premises, in 1993. I spent a chunk of 1994 investigating those false premises, along with several other members, lawyers, and a judge.

I talked with my rabbi today about my leading services at the other shul. He already knew that I've been going there for shacharit for years (not every day); I told him that this was because of ties to a particular group of people, not to that synagogue or movement in general, and if that minyan were to disband I would not seek out another. I'm committed to my movement, my synagogue, and my rabbi; I just don't see a conflict with also participating elsewhere in small doses. (My synagogue does not have a daily morning minyan.) I then told him that I'm leading that service once a week, that this was because they had asked me (I didn't initiate), and that I'd said "no" for a good long time before agreeing. I asked if this was a problem for him. (I also apologized for not coming to him about this much earlier.)

The discussion went in two main directions. There were the liturgical questions -- how do I feel about praying for the restoration of the temple sacrifices, resurrection of the dead, and so on? I work around the first [1] and am comfortable viewing the second metaphorically, so those aren't problems. We are going to discuss the liturgy more next time, when I actually remember to bring a copy of that particular siddur along.

The other part of the discussion had to do with appearances. How large is this minyan? Could I be seen as being the leader of the group in general, which has implications beyond the service? We concluded that there is not an issue here; I'm one of several people who leads (and I'm not the main one), I'm on a short leash liturgically, I'm not doing anything else in that congregation, and the group is small (we usually have a minyan by Barchu, but usually not by Kaddish d'Rabbanan).

We also talked about my motivations and whether this fits with my educational path; everything appears to be fine there after discussion.

So everything's fine, but I really should have had the clue to talk with him when it first came up. I find it really hard to initiate conversations sometimes; with luck I'll get better at this. I really feel close to my rabbi, but there's also this professional arm's-length separation that prevents us from just being friends who talk about things. I wonder how I can change that.

( footnotes )

D&D Thursday night was exciting. We are in the middle of a fight with our arch-rivals, a pair of high-level vampires. We ran out of time before we ran out of vampires, so we had to freeze the combat until next time.

Shabbat services were good. My rabbi seems to be mostly recovered from his surgery, so things are back to normal. He's moving around more easily and has more of his energy back. Friday night he gave an excellent sermon (that doesn't summarize well).

Saturday morning we had an interesting discussion at torah study that started off with the observation that we all reflect on the people as a whole. This somehow morphed into the question of how a congregation handles notorious members (or attendees). If a Jew who's accused -- but not yet convicted -- of heinous crimes shows up at services and asks for an aliya (saying the torah blessings -- an honor), do you give it to him? ( Read more... )

I'll be chanting torah in a few weeks, so I spent some of Saturday afternoon working on the portion. Let me just say that the third aliya of Sh'mini looks like it could be the poster child for weird trope combinations. I had to consult Trope Trainer for some of them; the book and class weren't enough. I'm just sayin'.

Saturday night was Ralph and Lori's annual St. Patrick's Day party. This was fun, and it looks like the hosts got to spend more time enjoying the party this time. (I believe they expressed a desire to have "only" too much food, as opposed to the vast quantities of food they've had in the past. This worked.) Several of the Claritech gang were there, though some past regulars were missing. We met some of Ralph's coworkers and didn't scare them away. There were people playing music, but not much gaming this time. (Well, we left around midnight and I think some gaming started later.)

We hosted Sunday dinner to allow Ralph and Lori to recover. As sometimes happens, I had a dessert I wanted to make and worked backwards from that. The dairy dessert dictated a non-meat meal, so I opted for spinach lasagna to prove I can make things other than fish. :-) (Note to future self: the recipe in Easy Kosher Cooking works well, and much much better than the one on the side of the noodle box.) As long as you're making lasagna anyway you may as well make extra, so I now have a pan in the freezer to donate to the synagogue food stash. Dessert was a gingerbread pineapple-upside-down cake, so I made a tossed salad with fruit (including pineapple) for foreshadowing. Ok, ok -- I had leftover pineapple. I wasn't sure how much garlic bread to make, but seem to have made exactly enough. It was a nice relaxing evening of pleasant conversation, and a good wind-down from the weekend.

This week is the final session of the trope class. Our numbers have dwindled and I don't know what's going on there. David (the teacher) told me to bring the torah portion I'm working on and we'll go over it. Sounds good to me.

Purim is in a bit under two weeks. estherchaya and sethcohen and beckyfeld and Harold invited Dani and me down for Purim and Shabbat, and I'm glad that Dani decided to go with me. It's been a while since I've seen most of these folks; it'll be nice to spend a weekend visiting. And, well, eating and drinking, 'cause you have to on Purim. :-)

This morning's roads were not nearly bad enough to justify the traffic conditions. The CD I was playing in the car looped. My normal commute is about 15 minutes (20 on a bad day). Feh.

I'm currently trying to learn to chant a torah passage that, if I'm successful, will be the longest one I've learned. This is true for most of the readers in this service (the annual local women's service), and they've told us to do as much as we can (so long as it's valid) and we can fill in the rest from a chumash if necessary. But I'm really trying to do it. And I've got good motivation: <geek> near the end of my section is the following trope sequence: pazeir pazeir t'lisha-g'dolah </geek>. That's fun! This is frilly show-off stuff, if I can just get there. :-)

I think the next president of my congregation likes me even though I've been a thorn in his side on some policy things (nothing personal). By law I'll be stepping down as worship chair in May, and I'm not currently on the board, so he wants to make sure that I have a leadership position I'm satisfied with. I told him that completing the Sh'liach K'hilah program and putting that learning to use, especially in worship contexts, is my top priority -- but that in the meantime he should put me on the budget committee so I can do my nit-picking early. :-) (If he was hoping I'd say "so, tell me about the executive track", he'll just have to be disappointed.)

Monday I got mail from Amazon UK saying that my copy of Blake's 7 (season 2) had shipped. It arrived today. I'm impressed! It's not as if I paid for any sort of expedited shipping; I just got lucky. Pity that I have other things I need to do in the next couple days, like work. :-)

Tonight's dinner featured grouper sprinkled with black pepper and cumin and pan-fried (use a non-stick pan and you can skip the fat). The recipe suggested a side of corn with bell peppers (I used red), green onions, a little cumin, lime juice, and honey. (The recipe called for cilantro too, but alas there was none to be found last night.) There was more cumin in the fish than in the corn, but Dani thought the corn was too spicy (and ate the fish without complaint). How odd. I liked both, and they did work well together.

A quick aside: one of the articles I came home with is "Music in the Synagogue: When the Chazzan 'Turned Around'", by William Sharlin (CCAR Journal, Jan 1962). It asserts that when the chazzan (cantor, prayer leader) faced the ark (and thus had his back to the congregation), prayer -- both his and the congregation's -- could be more heart-felt, private, and perhaps spontaneous. However, when the chazzan started facing the congregation, everyone got self-conscious. So how do you find seclusion for prayer in that kind of situation? He raises the question but doesn't answer it. I'm not sure I accept his premise; it sounds plausible but I haven't thought a lot about it yet. But he could be right. I certainly did notice on Friday night that I wasn't sure what to do with myself, physically, during the silent prayer at the end of the Amidah, when I was facing the congregation.

On to outreach...

The instructor stressed that "outreach" really means two things to her -- ahavat ger, welcoming the stranger, and kiruv, drawing (everyone) near. Our goal should be to build welcoming communities in general, recognizing that we have a diverse community with different needs. She also scored points with me by saying we need to not neglect the knowledgable, committed Jews in the process, or assume that everyone is a family (with kids). Data point: the NJPS survey in 2000 found that only 20% of Jewish households consisted of two parents plus kids; we (she says, and I agree) under-serve 80% of our households. (She talked about some programs that the Reform movement encourages to aid in all this; we received literature. :-)

We also received some good checklists on the theme of "is your congregation user-friendly?". Some of the points are excessive in my opinion (e.g. they suggest that your yellow-pages ad include a map), but others are things we could definitely be doing better on.

During the conversion class we looked at two texts, Avram's covenant with God and Ruth's conversion to Judaism. I noticed two interesting things here. First, with Avram God is the priority; with Ruth it seems to be more about peoplehood, with God as a side-effect. Second, Avram is given some assurances by God; Ruth is making a leap of faith with no real basis for predicting the outcome. (Will she be accepted by these people?) At least Avram had an invitation. So I guess it makes sense that Ruth rather than Avram is the model for conversion, because most of us don't receive divine invitations to do anything these days, but Avram's story makes a better source in setting priorities IMO. Yeah, we're also a people, but I think God has to come first or what's the point? (I realize this view is controversial with some.)

I found the CCAR guide on conversion to be largely familiar, which isn't surprising. :-) (The guide post-dates my conversion but had clearly been in progress for some years. My rabbi didn't follow it, but he did a lot of the same things and surely had input into the guide.) The format is clever: they have the core guidelines in the center of the page, with commentary, alternatives, and suggestions for implementation around the outside. It sort of resembles a page of talmud, which can't have been an accident.

According to the guide there are six questions a would-be convert has to answer affirmatively before being accepted. (This is a necessary, not sufficient, condition.) My rabbi used those same six but added a single word to one of them when I had to answer them; he added the word "exclusively" to "if you should be blessed with children, do you promise to raise them as Jews?". I approve of his addition. While I'm all for being as welcoming as we can to interfaith families, I have seen too much evidence that a child raised with two religions ends up with zero, and if you aren't ready to raise your hypothetical children as Jews, perhaps you need to rethink whether you'll be able to keep Judaism alive in your home in other ways.

I note in passing that the CCAR resolution on patrilineal descent -- which doesn't quite say what many people think it does -- also requires an exclusive religion for the child. I wonder how widely this one is enforced; the class on education and curriculum brought up the problems of dealing with kids who alternate between your Sunday school and the church's, or who celebrate both Christmas and Chanukah. Of course, sometimes doctrine and poltiics are at odds with each other.

Sunday consisted of wrap-up. The group that did the morning service worked in a theme of departure/ending, opening with the song Lechi Lach and ending with T'filat ha-Derech and using some related creative readings in the middle. They did a nice job. After breakfast and the service review, we were told to go back to the chapel for the wrap-up session.

The chairs were arranged in a circle. The instructors talked to us about our roles as leaders in our congregations and how we weren't just there for ourselves but to take things back. They thanked us for participating, and then gave anyone who wanted to the chance to talk. While this wasn't what they apparently intended, we ended up going around in a circle.

People mostly talked about how much they had enjoyed the past week, and some people highlighted specific things they had gotten out of it. For the most part people spoke personally and from the heart; this wasn't pro-forma thanks. Real friendships were formed in that week, and that touched people.

When it got to me (about three-quarters of the way around, so I had some time to think), I said roughly the following:

I've long been an analytical, academic type of person. When I found myself being drawn to Judaism, fairly early on I figured I'd better read the manual. (This got a big laugh.) So I read the Torah, and then much of the Kitzur Shulchan Aruch, and signed up for classes in Hebrew and Talmud. Later, I started connecting with the community -- and I'm part of a very close community now, but it took years to get there. So when I applied to this program, I thought I was going to college for a week. I was completely blind-sided by the community that we developed here in only a week, and I am thrilled to have had the chance to draw closer to everyone here.

(Remember, I never had the camp experience that many people did as kids. And while I've been part of communities that bonded, it never happened so quickly. Our annual shabbaton is an immersion experience similar to this, but that's with people I already know. These were strangers.)

The organizers are supposed to be creating a class mailing list for us so we can stay in touch between now and next year's session. They also distributed a roster with contact information. One of the members of the group is going to set up a web site and share all the photos he took, and I imagine that other people will send their photos to him too. It should be interesting to see how things develop now that we're all home.

After the formal wrap-up (and before lunch) people stayed around the chapel to say individual good-byes. More than half of my classmates praised the insights and questions I raised in class. Since I am someone who values intellect and is more comfortable with that than affect (I find it hard to really connect with people sometimes), this touched me. It's one thing to be praised as standing out among a random community; it's another among leaders.

Leigh (the cantorial student) told me I have an obvious talent for cantillation and I should stick with it. I told him there's no risk of me giving that up and I'll be back for year two of his cantillation class. (I also told him my Hebrew name. He approved. :-) )

During lunch we met some of the incoming second-year students, and I met someone I've corresponded with briefly. I'm looking forward to comparing notes with her when she gets home -- and picking her brain about what to expect in the second year.

The advance materials for this program said that we were committing to two summer sessions, two mid-year weekend sessions, and unspecified other coursework (with internet-based options). Also monthly (or better) meetings with our sponsoring rabbis for mentoring. This week they told us that they are relaxing all of that; basically, they said, we're all smart, motivated people and rather than micro-managing our educations, they're just going to offer stuff and we'll come to what we want. I'm a little surprised and disappointed by this; while I certainly don't need to be micro-managed, I had hoped for more support and guidance for next steps. For example, what internet-based courses? Perhaps this is one of the things they're planning to use the class mailing list for; they did tell us that we won't lack for information about upcoming opportunities. So, we'll see.

This also means they've left the sponsoring rabbis kind of dangling. I asked specifically what is expected of them now -- because as part of my application, both I and my rabbi signed a contract to do what was then specified, and we take our commitments seriously. They basically said to work with our rabbis and let them guide us. Um, ok. I'm happy to let my rabbi guide me, but I suspect he may have wanted more guidance in turn from the program. On the other hand, he's an experienced rabbi, we already meet regularly, and we have an excellent relationship, so this will probably work out in the end.

The drive home was uneventful (getting onto the highway was trivial compared to getting off :-) ), and I made better time getting home than getting there (a bit over five hours). I wonder how much was traffic, how much was tailwinds, and how much was my car's desire to go faster than might really be called for. (Seriously, this was my first road trip with the new car, and 70 in it feels like 60 did in the old car. Fortunately, I realized this on the way out and paid attention.)

The cats decided to forgive me rather than shunning me for abandoning them; getting home at dinner time probably helped. Dani told me that Embla actually demanded petting from him, which is pretty surprising. She must have been really lonely!

Short takes:

I haven't stayed in a college dorm since, well, college. And my college dorm room was somewhat unusual (the dorm was a renovated mansion). The rooms were adequate (at least they had individual AC), with a shared bathroom. I see now why they offered information about local hotels. I think being on campus is more important than being more comfortable, but wow. Twenty-year-olds handle dorm mattrsses much better than forty-year-olds do. :-)

Almost all of my classmates were apparently older than me, some by a couple decades. There were a few other people roughly my age, and one who might have been in her early 30s. (Have I mentioned that I'm bad at ages?) This is not the demographic I expected. It was around 2:1 women to men, by the way. About a third of the group were raised in Orthodox or Conservative homes and about a quarter were (declared) converts, so this was not overwhelmingly a group that grew up in the Reform movement.

The food was very good (and kosher, for the person who was asking about that). They brought in an Orthodox caterer (so yes, she stayed on campus during Shabbat), and she was very friendly. She said some nice things at the end about Orthodox and Reform Jews working together -- though we have differences to be sure, we also have a lot of shared values. And while it's hard to say for sure, I think she may have gained a new appreciation for the idea that Reform does not equal dismissive of tradition.

I don't think I had previously noticed that in the torah scroll the entire story of Bilaam, from the first solicition for his services through the talking-donkey episode through the curse attempts, is one long paragraph -- no breaks. It spans several columns. It's usually my job to roll the scroll to the correct place before the service, and I usually navigate by the whitespace (not being particularly fluent in Hebrew).

Saturday's mail brought an anticipated wedding invitation. I was surprised by a Saturday-morning ceremony; I thought they were doing afternoon or evening. And I will have to decide how I feel about a reception on Shabbat that's being held in a restaurant, rather than a privately-rented hall where there are fewer issues. Hmm. They're friends and I really want to be there for them.

Saturday night we held a party for tangerinpenguin, who will soon be leaving town. While there were several people who couldn't make it due to holiday-weekend plans, we still got a bunch of people and, as far as I could tell, everyone had a good time. Someone made a nifty cake, in the form of an open book with a jungle motif, in honor of his new employer. Saturday was a hot day and we don't have central AC, only window units; we did the best we could to keep the place habitable but found myself thinking "the engines canna take more of this, captain!" a few times. :-) Realizing that we couldn't possibly know all of Chris' friends, we made it open-invitation -- and still only got one person I didn't know. Also got a few people I hadn't thought to directly invite, so I'm glad we took that approach.

It's been a very hot and muggy weekend. I emptied the dehumidifier three times yesterday, which is a record. (It's rated for 40 gallons/week and the tank is about a gallon and a half, so we're still nowhere near capacity. There's a scary thought!) I was rather insistent that we were going to run the AC in the bedroom last night. Dani objects to open bedroom windows and ACs/fans, saying they're too noisy, but that resulted in unacceptable conditions Saturday night. And, y'know, sometimes I should get a turn at comfort.

Sunday we joined ralphmelton, lorimelton and her parents, mrpeck, and two others who I think are not LJ-enabled for an early dinner before some of them headed off for fireworks. Someone referred to Ralph as the grill-meister, and I have to concur. I do not have the grilled-meat clue, and I am envious. :-)

(We didn't go to the fireworks, not being big on crowds and noise. We watched two more episodes of B5 instead, but they were ones without fight scenes, so we can't say we watched a different kind of fireworks.)

Wednesday night is the next meeting of the worship committee. The rabbi can't actually make it (double-booked), but in this case that's ok. The single agenda item is to teach the committee about the structure of the Friday service in some detail and then assign parts for the service we'll be jointly leading at the end of the month. In my opinion members of this committee should be fully conversant with the service and able to lead it from the siddur without lots of extra annotations like "tell them to stand here", and some people couldn't do that when we led a service last year. So I'll try to teach them, and we'll see how it goes. This is certainly material I can teach on my own, so if the rabbi were going to be there I'd defer to him but there's no need for him to come.