Monica

Busy week, liturgically speaking. (And I'm just fine with that. :-) )

Tonight I knew I would be leading mincha, so while eating the blandest Thai food I have ever had (sigh) I mapped out the mini-sermon. No one else showed up, though; maybe people concluded that no rabbi means no service, though they oughtn't have. Shrug. So I got to daven at my own pace in my preferred language; that worked out fine for me.

Tomorrow night I'm the cantorial soloist at my congregation (yay!). This morning I got the one piece of sheet music I'd been waiting for; fortunately, I mostly knew the song already. So that'll be fine, I think. Saturday morning I lead torah study and then the morning service; that service nearly runs itself, so my role is to provide start pitches and come up with a question for the ice-breaker. Hmm; better not forget about the question.

And then there's the morning minyan I attend on Thursdays. A couple of the guys have been asking me for a while to lead that service; I'm working on learning it, but I'll admit I've been slacking recently what with HUC and all. And I hesitate to step on the toes of the guy who normally does it. This morning he asked me when I was going to do it. (They gave me the concluding prayers this morning, so I guess that prompted the thought.) We haggled, with me saying things like "we have to talk about page 31" and him saying "ok, you don't have to do the whole thing first time out", and we ended up deciding that I'll do the opening prayers (up through Barchu) next week. So there are a couple bits I should touch a few times before then, but I'm feeling pretty confident about that. We'll see how that goes.

Whee!

(We still have to find some way for my rabbi to actually see me in the service-leader role, so he can provide constructive feedback so I can get better, but that'll obviously have to wait.)

Wow. On Thursday I turned on the dehumidifier in our house, and in the first four hours it pulled more than half a gallon of moisture out of the air. I guess it was time. :-) (Today, it pulled over a gallon in approximately 7 hours. With AC running on the first floor.)

This Shabbat was the bar mitzvah of one of the regulars in our morning minyan. He is, in fact, the only pre-bar-mitzvah person (well, was) to come regularly. (He comes with his father.) They actually came to the early service and stayed until they had to go get ready for the late service with the family. And the bar mitzvah has said he's interested in reading torah in our minyan -- great! I picked up another reader last week too, so if both of them stick we'll be in pretty good shape.

On the way home on Saturday I ran into lyev, so I lured him back to our place to hang out for a while and eat. I'd prepared a low-key lunch -- just a pot of stew and fresh fruit. It figures -- I plan something more elaborate and get no guests, but I slack and I get someone. :-) Oh well. Lyev showed us a new translation of a 16th-century fencing manual, and demonstrated some of the moves. It looked nifty. Not that I know anything about fencing, but I could see how valuable a source this would be for those who do.

Tonight we hosted an SCA pot-luck dinner. The theme was fruit, and we had a good balance of dishes. (We knew we were running the risk of six fruit salads and five pies, but we decided to do it anyway.) I made a (supposedly) Moroccan dish with chicken and dates which went over well; I also made a pineapple kugel for the vegetarians. No vegetarians showed up, as it turned out, but the omnivores were happy to eat it. :-) There was one casualty: one of the guests took a turn a little too quickly on the drive over, and his car is now wearing the strawberry torte. Oops. I hope that cleaned up without too much trouble.

The conversation was very pleasant, and after most people had left a few of us decided to play a game of Merchants of Amsterdam. (It's a Rio Grande game, so in some ways it's like all the other Rio Grande games. But it's fun.) The one person who had never played before won.

Next weekend is the kingdom Academy in Stormsport (Erie). They're holding the event at a synagogue (on a Saturday -- wonder how they managed that?), and the person in charge asked me to coordinate a special track of classes on Jewish topics to which the congregation would be invited. It'll be interesting to see how that plays out. We have some good classes lined up.

Friday night the sisterhood led Shabbat services. (They do this once a year. Brotherhood did theirs last month.) While they mostly did a good job with the individual parts, the whole was extremely disappointing. ( rant )

Friday's email brought a short reading list for the sh'liach k'hilah program. I am pleased that the list consists entirely of books I do not already own. This makes me even more optimistic about the program teaching me lots of things I don't already know. I expected that to be the case, but now I have some evidence to support that belief. (They haven't yet sent a detailed curriculum description.)

Saturday evening we went to an SCA dinner on the theme of "travelling food". There were more desserts than non-desserts, which in retrospect makes sense. Cookies are an obvious thing to make. I should have made something main-dish-y instead of individual strawberry tarts. It was a fun dinner, and I got to meet some new cats. :-) From there we went to an impromptu party that lefkowitzga threw together around some last-minute guests from out of town. She's a great party host, and I had fun talking with some people I don't see as often as I'd like.

Sunday dinner was especially tasty this week. ralphmelton grilled steaks that were very good; we concluded that the spice rub called "Chicago style" that he got at Penzey's was especially good. (I don't know what's in it. Eventually I will send agents to Penzey's to do some shopping for me, as the local instance has no hours that are compatable with working normal hours and keeping Shabbat.)

Random food note: sponge cake grilled for about 30 seconds per side and then topped with fruit is really good.

Why I am considering staying in the Methodist Church, written by a committed member of the church who is a target of their discrimination. (Link via kayre.)

Thomas Jefferson on church and state, posted by dglenn in honor of the national day of prayer.

For Pittsburghers: Panim el panim, a discussion/panel with my rabbi, someone from the Islamic Center, and an Episcopal reverend. May 15, 4pm.

Tomorrow night's Shabbat service is another musical one. This will be the third; I really liked the first two. It looks like we are going to do this after the summer, too; Tuesday night we held auditions for an in-house band. Got a dozen people, which is great! (I wasn't there, so I don't know what skill levels we're dealing with, but I know we've got some good musicians in the congregation. I decided I'm too busy right now.)

This summer there will be one Shabbat when both rabbis will be away (and the cantor will be two weeks past her due date, so if she's still pregnant she'll probably be grumpy). So the worship committee will lead that Friday's service. Usually when groups (committees, brotherhood, etc) lead services, someone in the office assigns parts and mails out annotated photocopies ("tell them to stand here", "read this in Hebrew", "read this responsively in English", etc). That kind of bugs me, so at last night's meeting of the worship committee I said: Look, we're the worship committee; if we can't just lead a service out of the siddur, there's something wrong. So if you want to participate in this service and you don't normally come on Friday nights, you should come a few times in the next two months. At the next meeting we're going to look at the siddur and assign parts. I expected at least a little griping, but got none. Yay.

Seen while walking home Saturday: a car with blinkers on, being followed by two police cars with flashing lights but not sirens, all going about 30mph, and all running a red light at a busy intersection. If the police were escorting the car I would have expected one in front and one behind; if they were chasing the car, they weren't doing a very good job of it. There were plenty of places to pull over, so it wasn't a traffic stop in search of handy road-side. The whole procession turned a corner and I lost sight of them. How odd.

This weekend I read about a new (expensive) geek-appeal gadget, a robotic vacuum cleaner. It wanders around your house and automatically goes to the docking station to recharge or empty itself when needed. The review I saw said that it's slow -- its navigation isn't the greatest, so it might do a stretch several times before getting to parts it hasn't done yet -- but since it's the robot's time, the reviewer doesn't care. He was out running errands. :-) This sounds handy (though I do wonder how pets would view it). Now if they could just build the laundry robot, the shopping robot, and the kitchen-cleaning robot, life would be grand. (At $1500, I should clarify that this is wishful thinking, not a planned purchase.)

Shabbat morning we had another new torah reader (and new service leader, the mother of the torah reader). They both did good jobs and I think the mother, at least, will sign up to do this again (and even read torah). I am pleased by the progress our minyan is making, building participation one person at a time. We need to think about workshops or tutorials or something for people who lack self-confidence. (There are several people who I think would do just fine, but they don't think so yet.)

Today was the local SCA group's 12th-night event. It was a fun, low-key event, like many I remember from 20 years ago. This was the second year we've done it; I hope this establishes the tradition. :-) Free site (university), pot-luck feast, good mix of planned activities and schmooze time -- very pleasant and comfortable.

Mapquest says Pittsburgh to Cincinnati is a 4.5-hour drive (slightly under). Is that really right? I thought Pittsburgh to Columbus was close to four hours, and Cincinnati is a good deal beyond that. I thought Cincinnati would be 6 or 7 hours just from looking at a map.

My synagogue has each grade-school class run one service a year. This has been frustrating for me for a variety of reasons, but this year they made a change. Fourth and fifth grades are now having their services at the monthly "family" Shabbat service, rather than the primary congregational service, and all classes are being split into two services. (Some classes have 50+ kids, and that was just too crazy.)

Last night was the first of these modified services, and it went very well. It was much less chaotic, the kids got to do more, and it was more of a service than a pageant for the parents. And the younger grades, which are more problematic, are doing their services in a more supportive (for them) and less annoying (for the rest of us) environment. It's a win all around, I think.

When there's a bar or bat mitzvah (which is almost every week), that person participates a bit in the Friday service (kiddush and v'shamru). The girl who was bat mitzvah this Shabbat is really good -- good Hebrew pronunciation, good singing voice, and, most importantly, good kavanah. She seemed to really connect with the words she was saying; she was leading, not just performing. At the oneg I told her how impressed I am and that I hope she'll continue to be involved -- confirmation, youth group, etc.

This morning's service went well. For the second week in a row I successfully wound the torah scroll to the right point before the service; I'll learn my way around yet. :-) (Usually the rabbi does it, but both times I was there first and I guess I'm sort of the quasi-gabbai or something now, so I took a crack at it.)

Three of our upcoming Torah readers specifically signed up for their own bar/bat-mitzvah portions. Two are students (so this was fairly recent). None of them have committed to doing more than the one portion, but I hope at least some of them decide to stick with it. Right now I've got five people (including myself) who are "regulars", and several people who are doing it once and then will decide. (I'm not counting the rabbi, who reads in weeks without b'nei mitzvah. I think there are four of those in the next six months.) I'd like to have about eight regulars.

On my way to services Friday I ran into someone on the street who said "hey, aren't you a cantor at [congregation]?" I said I had led services there occasionally but now they've hired a professional (who, I said, is good), and he said flattering things about my work. That was pleasant. (He doesn't belong there either and goes only occasionally, but seems to have hit several of my services purely by accident.)

I've been reading a book called The Kiruv Files, about Jewish outreach. More about that later, but one observation now: one of us, either I or the Orthodox rabbis who wrote it, has a fundamental misunderstanding of Reform Judaism. The book takes a few swipes at Reform, predicated on the assumption that "all halacha is optional for you guys" (so therefore you can change the rules to suit your whims). Um, no. That Reform does not accept the system of halacha handed down to us, wholesale, and that Reform insists on personal autonomy, does not mean that we get to ignore it all. Many Jews do, of course (and not all of them call themselves Reform), but serious Reform Jews can and do accept some halachot as binding -- just as binding as traditional Jews do. This is why I do not work on Shabbat, why I keep kosher, why I pray in certain ways, and why I do or don't do bunches of other stuff. The problem, to the outsider, is that a different Reform Jew will have a different set of binding halachot.

Thursday night's board meeting included the quarterly financial review (budget vs actuals). The reports are getting clearer, in part due to requests from me. :-) And I see that a couple of our newer board members are very concientious (and nit-picky) in reviewing these things, which makes me happy. I'm in my last year; someone else has to be as anal-retentive for me, for continuity. :-) (I'm also on the nominating committee for the next round of board members, which should be interesting. That was announced Thursday.)

Tuesday lyev and I had a small dance workshop (no one else could make it) in which we reconstructed Belfiore (15th-century Italian) from first principles. It turns out that there is one ambiguity that I hadn't remembered from the last time I looked at this (with Rosina): do the three dancers start side-by-side, like in Petit Vriens, or in a single-file line? We had assumed the former, but one of the figures is difficult that way and there are references in the text to dancers "above" and "below" others (where we are not talking about vertical displacement with respect to the floor). We only had two dancers so couldn't try a complete implementation, but I can see the single-file line working. Eventually we'll be able to give it a shot, or lyev will get the Thursday dancers to try it. And I should check our notes from Joy and Jealousy now; I didn't want to do that before because it's actually been long enough that I've forgotten and this way I could come to it without (obvious) preconceptions.

Tonight we went to a restaurant that was so dimly lit that I actually had to take the menu to the front (lobby) area so I could read it. Argh! I'm not surprised by dim light from fancy and/or pretentious restaurants, where I guess the assumption is that you don't need to see your food and candles are romantic, but -- Outback? C'mon! I guess I should be on the lookout for a flashlight small enough to carry in a pocket; I think they make such things targetted for shining a light on your door locks at night; I would imagine that's designed to be fairly small.

You know, I never noticed this detail about the story of Noah before: he doesn't take isolated pairs of anything. He takes seven pairs of each kosher species (which I already knew), and he takes two pairs of each non-kosher species. Not one pair. Somehow I had always read this as "two, one male and one female", but that's not what it says.

Another detail: as a kid I wondered why doves hadn't died out, given that Noah sent one out and it never returned. But, of course, he had backups. Did we just not read very carefully in CCD, I wonder?

Of course, this doesn't take into account any animal births that occurred on the ark. They were in there for close to a year, not just the 40 days of the flood, so who knows how many bunnies came out? I wonder if this is addressed in the talmud somewhere.

Comment from someone Friday: he hadn't been able to really envision anything as big as the mabul (flood) until this week's news from California. I hadn't thought about it in those terms before.

( Shabbat )

I'm currently thinking of November 8 for the party.

I'm having fun with the Small Worlds project (that six-degrees-of-separation experiment). Tonight I got a new target, instantly knew whom to send it on to, and decided to try my luck again. And I instantly knew whom to send that one on to, so I tried again. That's when the site told me "no more targets for you". Oops.

None of my chains have reached targets yet; the longest chain so far is four people (not counting me). I have seen no targets living in Europe, though a couple in North Amaerica and some in places much more remote. How peculiar. Only one target has sent me to Mapquest to figure out where the heck that country is.

Tonight we went to an SCA pot-luck dinner. I needed to make something that could be served cold (Shabbat issues), and when browsing a cookbook I came across an allegedly-Turkish recipe for stuffed peppers (vegetarian) that specifically said to serve them cold, so I decided to try it. (Yeah, peppers aren't SCA-period, but the host had already announced he was serving chili. We don't always strive for authenticity.) They came out well and were popular; I'll have to make them again. I used red and orange peppers; I loathe green (bell) peppers. Because there was also an informal "hot food" theme going, I also stuffed a couple jalopenos and some other small hot peppers. (They were mislabelled in the store, so I don't know what they were. But definitely not the advertised banana peppers.) The stuffing is rice with onions, raisins, pine nuts, dill, mint (that surprised me), tomato, oil, and lemon juice (and salt and pepper). I realized after I'd made them that this was not dissimilar in principle from stuffed grape leaves. Mmm, grape leaves. I've never made those.

Shabbat services went well this morning. Today's torah reader did a good job with both the reading and conducting the service. We went longer today (she gave more of a drash and also read haftarah); some people complained that it was too long (violated their expectations), so we'll have to see how this works out over time. I won't be there next week (SCA conflict), alas. I feel bad when I miss this minyan, and especially now when we're doing something new that I'm shepherding. I'll get someone else to collect data and feedback for me next week.

The new season of Enterprise is off to a reasonable start so far. I hope they can actually pull off this story line convincingly; we know (because it's Trek and because this series is a prequel) that the good guys will ultimately succeed in reversing the Xindi attack on Earth. Now from what we know so far, the Xindi are operating from the vantage point of several hundred years in the future. Thus, they ought to already know what happened when they took on the Enterprise. It must be the same timeline, because if tinkering with the past creates a branch and an alternate reality, nothing they do can change the future they come from. I just hope the authors have spent more time thinking about this than I just have. :-)

We're up to "Acts of Sacrifice" in the B5 reruns. When the episode started I found that I remembered it entirely for its silly (non-arc) plot, and not for the serious (arc) plot. I enjoy watching Andreas Katsulas (G'kar); even under all the makeup and prosthetics and stuff, he can convey oodles with just a look sometimes. And everything comes through a lot better on a 32" TV and a DVD than it did on a 25" TV and videotape.

Wednesday I studied with my rabbi. Later I hope to write more about that -- in particular, the theology behind what the talmud calls "affliction of love". (Briefly, the idea that God gives you challenges because they'll make you better.) I have complicated feelings about this.

A few days ago I received email from a local gentile who's interested in converting to Judaism. (She found me via a mailing list.) She's been reading for a while but hadn't been to services and was nervous about doing that (this sounds familiar), so I invited her to join me for services and dinner.

She's a very nice person. Sounds like a seeker -- she's been thinking about this for years and isn't doing it because of a dating situation or the like. The more she learns the more it resonates for her. She got a lot out of the service, and I think she'll be back. I pointed her at other congregations in the area, too. Sounds like she really likes what she's seen of my rabbi, though; I wouldn't be surprised if she ends up with us.

Dinner was pleasant, and she and Dani also get along well. I'd like to invite her for a holiday -- maybe Sukkot, as she probably isn't ready to build her own sukkah yet. She's been to a few Pesach seders with friends, as it turns out. And if she decides to give our Shabbat morning service a try (she sounded interested, but not this week), I can also invite her back for lunch.

Yesterday there was no bar mitzvah, so we got to have a torah service and the rabbi didn't have to leave partway through study. After the service and study, some of us stuck around to discuss the new format, particularly implementation details. The plan is to do torah study first, so we can guarantee half an hour of the rabbi's time, and then do the service. The rabbi will leave partway through the service (if there's a later service for a bar mitzvah), right around the time the torah service would start. So we need minyan members to be able to complete the service, including reading torah. We have enough volunteers to get this off the ground, and I'm hoping we'll be able to get more, including supporting those who want to learn but aren't ready to just jump in.

We decided to switch in two weeks; we have someone who can learn a short torah portion in that amount of time. (We're not going to do the entire portion.) By virtue of having the foresight to bring a list of dates and torah portions, with room to add names next to them, I seem to have ended up as the person who keeps track of these things. :-) We're doing some delegation, though; the person reading torah in a given week is responsible for leading that part of the service (not just doing the reading itself) or recruiting someone, and also for assigning honors (aliya, hagbah...). That way I don't have to keep track of a bunch of different people for each week and worry about what happens on weeks when I'm not there. I call it distributed problem-solving; one of them called it "making my life easy". These are not contradictory. :-)

Tonight for the first time the choir sang "Hashkiveinu" all the way through and approximately correctly. Yay! I really like the sound of this piece; the chain of suspensions at the end is especially cool. Rossi had some odd ideas about harmony in places, but this one works.

Sunday dinner featured a small grilled turkey with rosemary and apricot coating. (Ralph says there was also garlic, though I didn't detect it.) This worked really well! I wonder if I can simulate this in an oven, perhaps with chicken. (Though this turkey was small enough that it wouldn't produce ridiculous amounts of leftovers.)

After dinner we played a variant of Carcessan (which I've probably misspelled) called, I think, Hunters and Gatherers. I've only played the original game once, so while I recognized the game system, I didn't really know how to play. I wasn't doing a very good job with long-term strategy, though I was doing ok with short-term tactics.

Sunday afternoon we went shopping to replace the wall-to-wall carpet in the basement guest room that destroyed by the rain invasion a couple weeks ago. First we went to Home Depot, who advertised installation services, but it turns out they don't install indoor-outdoor carpet, only the regular kind. So we ended up at a carpet place, where we ordered the carpet and someone to make it all fit, which is supposed to happen sometime next week. It's an L-shaped room with some cabinets and stuff to work around, so there was no way we were going to do this ourselves. They have a fixed price for carpet plus installation, based on square footage of the piece of carpet you have to buy (which is larger than the space it goes into, especially in this case). Charging for installation for the part of the space they don't install into seems wrong, but they didn't ask about complications like cabinets so it probably works out in the end.

Saturday night we went to a party hosted by friends who had recently returned from a trip through wine country with, shall we say, excess potables. I had a red that I actually liked and that wasn't ridiculously sweet, though I failed to record what it was. (I can find out, though.) There was much good food, including several very nice cheeses. I'm going to have to go in search of good cheese locally. And, of course, much good conversation as well.

I spent some of Saturday afternoon continuing to work through the Torah portion. I'm pretty comfortable with about two thirds of it. I hope to get the rest soon. The rabbi wants to hear me chant it before he leaves for camp and I have an appointment with him next week for study anyway, so that would be an obvious time.

I'm not fluent in Hebrew, but I know some words and of course I read through the portion in English. As it turns out, the trope often provides additional clues for emphasis, significant words, and so on. It's pretty nifty. Not surprising, of course, but this is the clearest example I've seen so far. This is an action sequence, which works better for that sort of thing than the laws of the sabbatical year. :-)

Friday night was the first service with our new cantorial intern. She's good, and very friendly. It sounded like she was a little nervous; I assume that will pass. At the oneg Phyllis (the administrator) introduced us and she recognized my name; fortunately, that was only because she'd been told I was the chair of the worship committee, and not because of some nefarious reason. :-) (We'll be working together on two upcoming services.)

The fireworks were on Friday, but on Shabbat I have other places to be. I would have liked to go to Ray and Jenn's party, but the logistics just didn't work out. Some other time.

I was recently appointed the chair of the worship committee at my synagogue. This is really the rabbi's committee in many ways, because any decision about what happens on the bimah is ultimately his, but the rest of us act as advisors, a sounding-board, a source of proposals, and implementation gophers. Next week the rabbi and I have a meeting to brainstorm about the broad agenda for the next two years.

There are several small matters that I would like us to change in how we conduct services, and I finally realized that they have a unifying theme.

But first, back to basics: why do we have worship services? ( Read more... )

I don't think there's anything surprising in what I've just written. Now, what are the implications?

I realized that all of the issues I want to discuss can be cast as community-building. Specifically:

• I want to restructure Friday-night b'nei mitzvah so that they are more like our conventional Friday services. They need to be less about the family and more about the congregation.
• I want to integrate the grade-school children into regular services instead of having special services (e.g. the 4th-grade service). I think it's important that they be part of more than one service per year, and right now those services, like b'nei mitzvah services, are different in a way that drives some of the community away.
• I want to give congregants -- members of the community -- more opportunities to participate in services, thus becoming stakeholders. Specifically, I want congregants with the skills to serve as substitutes when the cantor isn't available. (But, also, I'm thinking of adult Torah readers here. We've talked about that but never done anything organized about it.)

Our regular Shabbat-morning service has a strong sense of community. Our Friday-night service has a bunch of regular attendees, with much variation week to week. I think we can do better with the Friday service, which to most people is the congregation's regular weekly service (singular). (The morning group is small but dedicated.)

I'm hoping that, by taking small steps over time, I can actually nudge things in the direction I want them to go. I'll have a better idea after our meeting.

Friday night there was a bat mitzvah at services. I would be really, really happy if the congregation would institute two rules for Friday-night b'nei mitzvah: (1) no "parental greeting", and (2) the kid's d'var torah must be longer than the thank-you section. ( small rant )

Saturday morning one of our occasional attendees (a young man) told me that he's moving to Arizona in a couple weeks. It sounds like he's connected with the community there, which is good. I would be intimidated by moving, alone, across the country. I wish him well, and I told him to send email when he gets there.

Saturday night after dinner we went to lefkowitzga's to hang out and play games, including the longest hand of Uno I have ever played. I was getting droopy around midnight (and knew we'd be meeting my parents in the morning), so we left around 12:30 or so.

Today was my father's 65th birthday. Our anniversary was a couple weeks ago. So we all went out to brunch and each of us thought we were treating the other. It was pretty funny. They gave us a nifty cheese knife and a very good vegetable peeler (Cutco). Good tools in a kitchen make a big difference! We took the cheese knife (along with some cheese) to Ralph and Lori's this afternoon; the knife was excessive for the soft cheese we were bringing, but the geek factor of playing with sharp objects prevailed. :-)

This afternoon was the annual bunny melt (and high tea). It was much fun, and we had vast quantities of food. The cats mostly behaved, though one of them (I assume Louie, but I didn't see it) attempted a close encounter with the remains of the fondue and was tossed across the room for his sins. Or so I gather; I wasn't in the room at the time.

I discovered this afternoon that I am still having hardware problems. My CD burner won't burn, and reading from a CD in the drive for more than about 30 seconds (I was attempting a software install) causes the machine to reboot. More side effects of the meltdown, I presume. It's all under warranty, but I don't want to be without my machine for several days again. Given that it's followup from the last repair, I'd really like it if I could make an appointment for a specific time to get it looked at. In other words, I want to wait in line at home. I'll bet I can't, but tomorrow I will call and ask.

Tonight Dani and I watched two more episodes of B5 (first season), "Signs and Portents" (important episode) and "TKO". I didn't care for "TKO" the first couple times I saw it, but this time it worked pretty well for me. (I never disliked the shiva plot; it was the martial-arts plot that didn't do anything for me.)

I had a geeky moment with the former plot. There is a point where someone says she's going to recite the "mourner's prayer" in English instead of in Hebrew. Last time I asw this episode I remember thinking, on hearing the English, "hey, that's not the mourners' kaddish". This time I recognized it for what it was (El molei rachamim). Cool; I'm getting literate. :-)