Monica

Here we go again

2021-12-30T23:33:17Z

I was wondering when that would happen. My synagogue just sent email saying services this week are virtual only, and the committee in charge of reopening will meet on Sunday to decide what happens next.

Given the current wild spread of the omicron variant of Covid-19, I'm not surprised. Since we were already doing hybrid services, I'm a little disappointed that the in-person option is now unavailable for those who feel safe doing so. (Our requirement was always "fully vaccinated + mask at all times".) On the other hand:

It's been obvious all fall that it was getting worse, but the last week or so took rather an extreme turn.

(Graph is from Johns Hopkins.)

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Sukkot

2020-10-13T00:52:52Z

Well, I guess the silver lining in the pandemic for last week was that, since we're working from home, I had more meals in a sukkah than ever before. (There's no way to do that at the office.) And for bonus points, it only rained for one of the days! Neat.

Services were via Zoom. For both Sukkot and Sh'mini Atzeret (first and last days), both of which were on Shabbat this year, the Zoom setup actually worked -- cool. (There have been some other Zoom failures, where I set it up Friday before sundown and on Saturday morning I've been kicked out.) Even though it was all online, my synagogue continues to do combined festival services with another congregation whose standards are, um, not up to mine. And both times they had the lion's share. I'm done with that. Already I didn't go in person -- not even to my own, let alone to the other one that's a two-mile walk each way -- but now I realize the discontent runs deeper. I suspect we will still be doing this come Pesach in the spring, so, note to self, do something else.

It turns out that the hagbah that I recorded in advance was for our service Friday night, not Saturday morning. So I wasn't actually there (because you cannot cue up two different Zoom meetings on the same device). Oh well.

I miss the morning minyan. Even when it doesn't feel like a real service because of Zoom. This coming Shabbat should be back to normal, yay.

I bought some additional lights for my sukkah this year which, due to delays, didn't arrive until mid-week. The description said the lights could be chained -- which is true, but I had missed that they mean with like kind, through a special connection that is not a standard plug. So I'll need to remember to get some outdoor-grade splitter before next year; the idea here was to augment, not replace, my current lights.

Velcro cable ties make stringing lights really easy. Just sayin'.

And now, after a burst of holidays in the span of three weeks, we are back to "normal time" for a while.

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rising to the challenge

2020-09-25T03:42:56Z

Since March my Shabbat morning minyan has been meeting on Zoom, not in person. Since June I've been attending, sort of -- I join the call on my tablet (with a headset plugged in) Friday afternoon before sundown, and most weeks the minyan is there in the morning. (Sometimes Zoom fails in some way or other.) I don't turn on video or a mic; I am a purely passive consumer of whatever is set in motion in advance. It doesn't really feel like praying, but it's a form of contact with the minyan and it's the best we can do right now.

For the last couple months they've been trying to get more people involved in the service -- do a reading, lead this prayer, etc, as a way of building engagement. In the Before Times I was one of the torah readers (though recently I'd been backing off due to some vision challenges). Sometime this summer someone asked me if I would chant torah, recording it in advance so I wouldn't be violating anything, and I did that once. (I should note that it's not really a torah service, since there's no scroll and no in-person gathering. We read or chant the portion from Sefaria but without the torah blessings.)

Often but not always, the torah reader also gives a short talk. (They've been trying to mix that up too; some people are comfortable giving a talk but can't read torah.) I was asked to read this week and was told that someone else had asked to give the talk. Fine, I said -- I prepared the torah reading, only, and we recorded it tonight.

45 minutes ago I got email -- that person backed out, and do I want to do something, recording tomorrow? (If not we would just do without, or maybe a rabbi would improvise something -- no guilt involved here.)

It's Shabbat Shuva, the Shabbat before Yom Kippur. There should be something. So I started mentally outlining (not ashamed to reuse some old notes either), said yes, and started writing. I have a draft now, which I'll make another pass over tomorrow morning. It'll be an adventure!

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a Shabbat story

2020-06-21T20:09:36Z

My synagogue, like everyone else, shut down in mid-March. They've been holding Shabbat services over Zoom; most Reform Jews don't care about using computers on Shabbat but I do, so I haven't joined. But I miss my minyan, and also we've been preparing for my rabbi's retirement (all those celebrations went out the window too), so, um.

A couple weeks ago the Conservative movement put out a detailed analysis of the issue. Their conclusion (and yes I read the supporting documentation, all 35 pages of it) was that, basically, passive computer-based stuff you set in motion before Shabbat is ok under these specific exceptional circumstances (do not extrapolate beyond COVID). Starting two weeks ago I've used my tablet (intentional: battery, not wall current) to join the Zoom meeting before Shabbat. I left it sitting there with a headset plugged in, with my video turned off and mic muted. (Even remembered to disable my password lock so I could see the video feed.)

People tried to interact with me that first week, but I didn't want to interact with the software on Shabbat to unmute and apparently they couldn't do that remotely, so oh well. I had a conversation with my rabbi about this, saying I'd talk if I didn't have to do anything but I did so I couldn't.

This Shabbat was my rabbi's last as our senior rabbi, after 32 years with us. It was, as you'd expect, a very emotional service, and I'm glad I could attend even in this limited way. (Better, of course, would have been for us to all be together physically, but that is not within our power.) I knew that someone in the minyan was organizing a thing at the end where each of us would say just a few words (the request was to share something fun, not teary), but as usual I didn't expect to be able to join in. Only during the service did it occur to me that had I gone to the home of another willing participant, I might have been able to passively benefit from others' use of Zoom. But I don't know how kosher it would have been to set that up in advance even if I'd thought of it.

So there I was, sitting in my living room with my tablet on the chair next to me, listening to people share stories... when my cat walked across the tablet.

And unmuted me.

And somebody noticed and said "hey, Monica unmuted", so I explained about the cat, who they declared to be a "Shabbos cat" in the nature of the "Shabbos goy".

And then I ad-libbed a response (everyone else had had time to prepare), and I felt like I was part of the goodbye for a rabbi who has meant a great deal to me.

Thanks Orlando. I don't know how you did that, but I'll take it.

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gaming outreach?

2018-09-30T20:59:13Z

My congregation is trying to increase community-building activities beyond conventional religious activities like services. For example, we're¹ going to start a vegetable garden and use the produce in cooking get-togethers. (We already organize meals for people in mourning, with a new baby, dealing with illness, etc; we're now planning to do more joint cooking alongside the individual cooking that already happens.) A few other plans have been announced recently.

Noticably absent from these plans so far is gaming. I've already talked with the other boardgamers I know in the congregation and we all agree this would be a good thing to try. So now I need to pitch it to the powers that be and, if successful, the congregation. That is, I need a brief and catchy way describe the class of games that are popular at BoardGameGeek and Origins and GenCon, the EuroGames and rail games and worker-placement games and card-drafting games and so on, without implying "classic family games of yore" like Monopoly and Trivial Pursuit.²

Even if most of the actual "recruiting" ends up being one on one -- if we decide to start with "those who know" and expand gradually -- we'll still need to describe what we're doing in internal communications so that anybody who wants to can show up. Any suggestions for how to characterize these types of games when talking to people who don't know about them already?

(Yes, when it comes time to actually do it we'll lead with the gateway games, things like Settlers of Catan and Puerto Rico and Pandemic, and are prepared to teach and facilitate even if it means we don't get to play as much at first.)

¹ Exclusive "we"; gardening and I do not get along.

² Many years ago (before the other gamers I know were part of the congregation) there was an attempt at an afternoon of board games. I was one of four people who showed up; the organizer and the other two people (of my parents' generation), it turned out, really just wanted to socialize and didn't want to play anything outside of their (fairly narrow) comfort zone. I don't want to repeat that, so I'll need to somehow indicate (a) we're actually gonna play some games, and (b) you might not have played them, but (c) that's totally ok and we're not going to make you struggle.

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a few Rosh Hashana links

2018-09-16T19:39:22Z

Sunday evening our associate rabbi gave a sermon (video link) on how we use words to include or exclude. Readers of this journal will recognize the talmudic tale she includes. (So will lots of other people; it's kind of famous.) It's easy for discourses on this topic to be pat bordering on dismissive of real human complexities, but this talk was more nuanced. When she posts a text copy I'll add a link, but for now all I have is a video (~20 minutes).

Monday morning our senior rabbi spoke about pachad, deep fear (video link, ~21 minutes; text). I'm not going to try to summarize it.

I chanted torah on the second day. I didn't realize it was being streamed/recorded until somebody told me on Shabbat. Since it was, I'll share video evidence for anybody who wants to know what I'm talking about when I talk about chanting torah. (That's high-holy-day trop or cantillation, which is different from how we chant on Shabbat.) I decided fairly late to do my own translation from the scroll; by default my rabbi would have read it out of the book. It's not a hard translation, but word order is different between Hebrew and English, which is why there are some brief pauses in places you might not expect just knowing the English. (Also, I never really did settle on a good English word for rakiah; I've heard several.)

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authenticity vs. accessibility

2018-02-25T18:54:45Z

My synagogue had a Purim carnival for adults last night (the one for kids/families was this morning). I'd like to see more Purim activities that aren't focused on kids, so I went both to enjoy it (which I did) and to help encourage it (which I hope I did).

There was an expectation of costumes, so I went as Vashti and added a bit of modern commentary (see Esther 1, starting v. 10). The latter is where the dilemma came in.

Here's a picture:

And here's a close-up of that badge:

So, I was actually going to write גם אני on the badge, but on Shabbat afternoon it occurred to me that Vashti wasn't Jewish so would have no reason to write in Hebrew. So last night I asked Google Translate to help me out with Persian and used what it came up with. Modulo linguistic changes over the centuries (which Google Translate is not equipped to help with), this was more authentic and, I hoped, mitigated against people thinking I was Esther.

Some people wouldn't have understood גם אני either, but some would have. As it turned out, the hashtag was not sufficient clue on its own, even in a community that has talked about sexual harassment and related issues several times recently, so I ended up having to tell people that the text said "me too". Oops.

Were I to do it again, I suppose I'd add גם אני in parentheses after.

For people not familiar with the commentary: the rabbinic understanding is that when King Achashverosh commanded Queen Vashti to present herself to his buddies wearing the royal diadem, it meant and nothing else and that's why she refused. The guys have been on a drinking spree for seven days at this point, and the king is shown to be rather a dim bulb throughout the entire book.

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so much meaning in one capital letter

2018-02-06T04:13:25Z

My synagogue has been focusing (to varying degrees) on disability inclusion for the last couple years. They have recently taken to writing the word as "disAbility". I find it patronizing, trite, and a huge step backwards. It reeks of "special!", of having no expectations -- which to me is not validating but repelling. It replaces dealing with individual people, with all their complexities with feel-good promotional slogans.

Do not claim that my disability is some kind of special "ability". It's not. It's just part of how God made me, a thing I deal with and mostly manage pretty well, sometimes by asking for specific help, sometimes by acknowledging my limitations and not taking certain paths, same as everybody else. I don't obsess over my disability; why should you? I expect you to not place stumbling-blocks before me. I expect you to listen and do your best to accommodate when I make reasonable requests. I neither expect nor want you to make a fuss over me, to somehow claim that I have "different abilities", or to give me a free pass on things that are otherwise required of everybody. That's stuff some people do with children. I am not a child; do not treat me like one.

And even if my disability does somehow come with a special ability? (Technically I suppose it might.) If so, it's just an "ability". Not an "Ability", and certainly not a "disAbility". That just feels like spin, and ineffective spin at that. And that brings us back to "patronizing".

Don't. Just don't.

Surely in Jewish Disability Awareness Month, we can do better.

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#SaraiToo

2017-11-01T00:17:29Z

Our associate rabbi gave a powerful talk this past Shabbat for Lech L'cha, the beginning of the Avram (Avraham) story.

When I was five, my classmates and I were playing in the schoolyard as part of the afterschool program. We were running around and the boys decided that it would be fun to chase the girls around and kiss them. One boy started chasing me and, although it’s very possible that I was also giggling out of nervousness or as excess energy from running, I was clear that I did not want him to kiss me. Finally, he managed to grab my hand and kissed the back of it. I promptly burst into tears and ran and told the teacher. She took a couple moments to placate me, telling me that I wasn’t really hurt and that it just meant that he liked me. Then she went to the boy, yelled at him, and put him in time out.

The typical response to this story is to laugh at what little boys thought was fun and to tease me for overreacting to an innocent kiss---clearly I was at the age when girls think boys are gross and vise versa. Sometimes people feel bad for the boy who got in trouble because I was upset by something so minor. I often imagine the teacher struggling to hold in her laughter at the ridiculousness of the situation and thinking to herself that it wouldn’t be too long before I’d react very differently.

But this was also the first time I remember being kissed against my will. At five years old, someone else decided that my body was for his use.

Go, read the whole thing.

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a conversation snippet

2017-09-17T02:44:36Z

Tonight at our s'lichot service (something tied to the high holy days), a fellow congregant greeted me and said "I haven't seen you in hours!". (We'd both been there this morning.) I said "hours and hours!". He complained that I was getting carried away.

I responded by saying: "hours" means at least two; "hours and hours" therefore means at least four; it's been longer than that since this morning, so "hours and hours" is not inappropriate.

It was at this point that somebody standing nearby said "oh, that's where I know you from!". We'd both been in a talmud-heavy class a while back.

There are worse things to be remembered for. :-)

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inclusive kavanah

2017-06-11T21:06:03Z

My congregation hired a cantor two years ago, and wow did it make a difference. (Previously we'd had a cantorial soloist, meaning a good singer with an amateur understanding of liturgy, and we've had other such soloists at some of our services sometimes.) This difference really stood out for me at Shavuot a couple weeks ago.

I've encountered a few kinds of musical service leaders in liberal congregations. (Note: in many communities, especially more traditional ones, musical ability is a nice side-effect if you get it but not the driver -- somebody who's competent in the prayers and halachically qualified, who might or might not have a decent voice, leads the service. I'm not talking about that case.)

Performers. This happens when the primary background is singing, with leading prayers being secondary. Some give off the definite vibe of performing for the congregation -- their singing, posture, and everything else says "I'm on a stage". I'm not dissing people's motivations here; this is about what they've spent time learning and doing before taking the job and what they convey (to me at least). If you hire a professional singer, you shouldn't be surprised to get a performer. But I don't go to services to hear a concert.
Performers for God. These are people who understand before Whom they stand, who are focused on God more than the congregation, but it still feels like a performance. Again, not saying that's inherently bad -- in another religion you could put the "little drummer boy" into this category and that's generally considered to be a good role model -- but it still leaves the congregation as spectators, and that's a problem for me.
Pray-ers who share their kavanah (intentionality, focus). These are people who are obviously praying not performing, and you can see their emotions, their intentionality, etc. I've been told that when I lead services I "exude kavanah", and I think this is what they mean. Sometimes this can carry people along; we had a visitor once to my Shabbat morning minyan and after the service I said to him, "it was a privilege to pray near you" because it felt like his prayer amplified mine. Other times it's just that guy over there having kavanah for his prayer but what does that have to do with me?
Those who bring the congregation along in their kavanah. These are the ones who understand that da lifnei mei atah omeid, "know before whom you stand", has multiple targets -- God and congregation. They know that their role is in part to be a bridge. They're praying and facilitating others' prayer. I believe I have sometimes reached this level, but it's mostly instinct plus some coaching I've gotten along the way, not something I could explain how to do beyond being aware. Our cantor is in this category for me; her leading the service helps me, elevates my prayer, connects me.

(Yes I have told her, and my rabbi, this. Having done so, I'm now also trying to write it down.)

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