Monica

The Shabbat between Rosh Hashana and Yom Kippur is called Shabbat Shuva, the Shabbat of returning, and it's customary for the d'var torah or sermon to focus on the themes of the season. This is the d'var torah I gave in our minyan yesterday.

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Early in the pandemic, when grocery-store shelves were sometimes empty, I started growing a few things to see if I could produce at least a little of my own food. I've always had kind of a brown thumb, but I'd managed to not kill a basil plant that had come in a farm-share box the previous year, so I was game to try.

I didn't grow a lot – more herbs than vegetables – but the cherry tomatoes I planted were extremely bountiful. Encouraged by that success, I planted more. Last year I found myself fighting unknown critters -- I got a few of the tomatoes but I found more that were half-eaten on the ground. Netting didn't help. Tabasco sauce didn't help. So this year I tried a different variety and a different location.

I got to keep three tomatoes. On the day I was going to harvest six more -- they'd been almost ready the previous day -- I found that something had eaten all the tomatoes and most of the leaves besides. The plant looked dead. I left the dejected remains in the pot for the end-of-season cleanup and stopped watering it.

A couple weeks ago I was pruning some other plants and cut away all the dead stems on that plant while I was at it. Then an amazing thing happened: it put out new shoots, then new leaves, and this week, three small tomatoes. That plant stood up to attack followed by neglect and came back strong despite it all.

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During the high holy days we focus a lot on our own actions and the things we have done wrong. We focus on making amends for our mistakes, on doing teshuva and turning in a better direction for the coming year. We try to make things right with the people we've hurt. These are all critical things to focus on, and I don't have much to add that hasn't been said hundreds of times before.

Instead, today I want to talk about being on the other side -- about being the one who has been hurt. We know what to do when those who hurt us do teshuva, but what about when they don't? Teshuva is hard, and we know it won't always come.

( Read more... )

My synagogue hired a cantor for the high holy days. (We don't currently have one otherwise.) He's a friendly fellow, obviously very experienced, and very "performative" -- which some people liked but isn't to my taste. (I felt like I was at the theatre.) Unfortunately it's not just a matter of taste; elaborate chazzanut that you can only listen to is fine in a traditional setting, where it's in the cantor's repetition of the central prayer, but the Reform movement did away with repetitions. When there's only one trip through the prayer, everyone saying it together, and it's being led in a way that precludes me saying it, that's a problem. After Rosh Hashana evening and morning were like that, I decided not to go back. (I later skimmed the video of the second-day Rosh Hashana service, which started as a minyan-style service but drifted, and it was more of the same.)

For Yom Kippur I went to Chabad, like I did last year. Night and day -- I felt included from the moment I walked in, I was able to focus on the kavanah, intentions, behind the prayers, the more elaborate melodies didn't impede my own prayer because they were separate from it, a lot of the singing was accessible even with unfamiliar-to-me melodies, and there was plenty of way-finding (page numbers, quick explanations, etc) so people didn't get lost.

All are welcome, all included, on Yom Kippur, the machzor (special prayerbook) says, even transgressors, even that guy. Even me. The incense burned in the temple had many nice-smelling ingredients and one bad-smelling one (forgot the name, haven't looked for it yet) -- and the incense was invalid without all the ingredients. A congregation that excludes someone on the day of atonement is doing it wrong.

In the Al Cheit (confession of sins, really more like errors or "missing the mark"), there's one the rabbi commented on that I think isn't in the Reform machzor -- "the sin I have committed before you with a confused heart". There've already been confessions about intentional and unintentional sins, but this one is a little different -- it's saying that we can act with the best of intentions but still miss the mark because of the information or context we (don't) have. Our increasingly-radicalized society (and I blame extremists at both ends here) will cast someone as a villain for stumbling or for being a little different, but God will understand and Jewish teachings are full of instructions to presume good intent and judge others favorably. It seems entirely fitting that the Yom Kippur prayerbook does so too, even in the midst of listing serious sins that are wilful and wrong.

We ask for relief from many things -- famine, war... mageifah, plague. Yeah, that jumped out at me again this year.

God wants praise from us messy, sinning humans more than from perfect angels, says the machzor.

The final service of the day, Ne'ilah, talks about the gates of prayer closing at the end of the day. The liturgy has this urgency to get one last prayer in before they close. The picture I've always had in my mind is of us petitioners standing outside, pushing our messages through as the gates close before us. The rabbi said that the Chabad interpretation (I don't remember who he said it in the name of, sorry -- long day) is that the people are inside the gates, which are closing so we can have some alone-time with God without the pressures of the world. Or something like that. I'm not sure this idea really matches up with the liturgy, but it's an interesting alternate framing and since the whole thing is allegorical anyway, having different perspectives 24-25 hours into a fast helped me.

Chabad sure does say a lot of psalms. I couldn't usually figure out why.

I felt so warm, so welcomed, so included. The rabbi knows my background, and he welcomes me anyway. Like the transgressor. Like the smelly incense. Like a member of his own community -- and maybe, someday, mine too. (There are barriers both theological and practical, but there are also barriers where I am now, so... who knows?)

Yesterday's d'var torah for the minyan (recorded in advance):

Ha'azinu consists primarily of Moshe's final poem, recited to the people before he ascends the mountain to see the land and die.

The language is very different from what I'm used to in the torah. It is not the language of events and facts and commands; it is the poetry of evocative images and allegory. It resembles the writings of the prophets -- which makes sense, as Moshe was a prophet too and these are his final words. Prophets give us words of admonition and words of comfort, and Moshe here does both.

The plain reading, the p'shat, of this text is a recounting of Yisreal's relationship with God. It's mostly focused on the negative -- God did all these good things and Israel rebelled and worshipped false gods and so on, and God withdrew. While it's mostly written in the past tense, it also predicts future events. And in the end there is a nechemta, a consolation -- that if the people return from those evil ways, God will be there for them. This was the case for the people Moshe was speaking to -- they were redeemed from the sins of their parents and granted entry into the land of Israel.

It seems possible to read this on another level, too. Moshe is at the end of a long life, the last third of which has been filled with contention and challenges. He, too, rebelled against God and cried out at the apparent unfairness of the punishment he received. But here, at the very end, it is clear that he has accepted God's authority, praising Tzur Yisrael, the Rock of Israel, repeatedly. He has returned to God, and when he dies God Himself takes Moshe's final breath with a kiss.

We usually read this portion on Shabbat Shuva, the Shabbat before Yom Kippur, when we too are focused on reflection of the past and aspirations for the future. We are especially challenged this year, when our our world, our country, our society, and perhaps our personal lives have seen many challenges. We face plague, violence, turmoil, corruption from our national leaders, personal losses, fear and uncertainty. But while we pray and confess in the plural, Shabbat Shuva and the whole season of repentance really call on us to take a personal accounting and not just a societal one.

There are two things I think are important about that personal accounting. The first is that it's important to look in both directions. We look back on the past year, on places where we missed the mark, and we try to make amends for the damage we've caused, try to set things right, seek and grant forgiveness. It's a mix of depressing, embarrassing, and cleansing. Sometimes we've strayed from each other and strayed from God. But then we look ahead -- teshuva is about returning to the right path, so what will we do differently in the coming year? What will we be more careful of? What hazards do we now know are waiting to trip us up so we should look out for them? What will we learn from the past, and how will we apply it?

The second thing is that we don't have to do it all at once. If we can repair one relationship, make amends for one thing we've done wrong, accept amends and forgive one person who has wronged us, that is progress. Don't let perfect be the enemy of good.

Our Yom Kippur liturgy includes a blanket forgiveness clause where we say that we forgive people who have wronged us, even if they didn't ask like they're required to. When I say that passage, I quietly insert "except...". There are a few people who have wronged me severely -- I'm not talking about passing slights here -- and until they do teshuva then no, I do not forgive them. I'm not holding a grudge; I'm just waiting for them to make amends. There were five people on that list last year, people I was waiting to see positive change from, sometimes for years, and this year I was able to remove three of them. It feels great to be able to make those repairs, which require both parties to help. Unfortunately there are additions to my list this year, all rooted in a single evil, hurtful source, but maybe someday they, too, will see the harm they're doing and want to fix it. It's not under my control, so there's no point in focusing on it and letting it pull me down.

Ha'azinu is, on its face, about Yisrael's failings and teshuva, its path. On another level, it's about Moshe's path too. And maybe on yet another level it's about us, our path. Looking back we see failures and rebellion and wrongs done and received -- but looking ahead, we see return and renewed relationships.

Israel returned, and will again in the future. Moshe returned. May we also be able to return, one step at a time.

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Adapted and reposted on Judaism Codidact.

The year 5780 began for me, personally, on a terrible note caused by evildoers at Stack Exchange Inc. I won't say more about that here (I wrote plenty at the time). As above so below -- the door to their teshuvah remains open should they choose to correct their transgressions, but I, unlike the Holy One, do not hold out infinite hope for sinners to mend their ways. There are more important things in life to focus on.

5780 was the (sob) first year of the global pandemic crisis. On top of the sickness, the deaths, the changes in daily life that come with any pandemic, we in the US saw reckless endangerment, needless deaths, and political profiteering to levels even those of us already worried about the authoritarian trends of the toddler-in-chief did not imagine. He knew. And he let it run rampant anyway. Because he thought, somehow, that it would hurt his political opponents and not his own supporters. Because that oath he swore on taking the office, those words about serving the people (all of them, not just red states) and upholding the constitution and suchlike, was just fluff to him, not a commitment. Having thrown the people under the bus, he's now in full sabotage-the-election mode, betting that he can get away with it as he's gotten away with so much more. At worst, he figures, someone will manage to sue him years from now and he'll pay someone off. I fear for our country.

I fear for our country in other ways too. The white-supremacist-in-chief emboldened bigots ranging from crowds chanting against Jews to attacks on houses of worship to vigilantes fatally "protecting" the public from unarmed demonstrators to police who kill and recklessly endanger black and brown people who are already restrained and thus not threats. (Whites, on the other hand, generally get the benefit of the doubt.) And it would be easy to say that the bigot-in-chief is responsible for all this and we have only to remove him from office, but that's obviously not true -- the roots run much deeper. Our society has work to do.

And that work involves nuance, discussion, hearing and trying to understand others' perspectives, working together with people who are different, acknowledging the humanity of every person. Too many on the far right and the far left believe that they are keepers of the One Truth and that anybody who doesn't commit 100% to their view of truth is an enemy to be disparaged, cancelled, or killed. People are complicated, and attempts to paint monochrome pictures, while enticing to crusaders seeking us-vs-them litmus tests, are failures if the goal is to solve problems rather than to triumph. Too few people are willing to consider positions that exceed the length of a catchy slogan, but that's where the work has to get done.

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But for all the trouble that 5780 brought, both personally and on a larger scale, it also brought some moments of personal light. Despite the pandemic, my family and most of my friends are healthy, Dani and I are still employed, and our companies both made the transition to working from home. Even when (I say "when" but don't attach a timeframe to it) it is practical for us to go back to our offices, I think I will do a mix, working from home several days a week and going to the office for direct coworker contact once or twice a week. (I think it's now clear that this would work and I don't expect much resistance.) I don't want to see people only in two dimensions; digital interactions are not the same. But they often suffice if mixed with other interactions, and working from home affords some flexibility (and saved commuting time) that I wouldn't otherwise have. I can go to the weekly lunch-time torah study at my synagogue now, for example, which was never practical from the office.

This year, for basically the first time, I tried growing food and herbs.
I did some things right, some wrong, learned stuff, and have had the benefit of fresh-off-the-plant food when cooking. One of the tomato plants died last month but the other is still producing. I learned that I need to be more aggressive in pruning basil. I learned that I do not have many places that get 6 hours of sunlight a day (what counts as "full sun") and that they move over the course of the season. I planted in pots not the ground so I can move things to chase the sun, but now, as the equinox looms, there is no full sun to be had on my property and I'm not going to move pots over the course of the day. Maybe next year I'll do something on wheels. Maybe I'll just accept a shorter season.

A couple months into the lockdown a friend gave me a sourdough starter. This, too, is something I never would have done in the Before Times. The schedule that sourdough calls for isn't compatible with the daily commute, which leaves weekends, but it's also not compatible with Shabbat. But if I'm home it's easy to tend over the day and a half or so that the process requires.

But my biggest personal silver lining from 5780 is the Codidact project. We -- most of the original people are refugees from Stack Exchange, but we have others now who knew not those evil times -- are building anew, learning from our experiences elsewhere, and doing things we were never able to do on Some Other platform. I'm doing feature design, community management, something like product management, and more. We've launched several communities, including Judaism, to my delight. We have work to do on both the software and community-promotion sides, and we still need to set up a non-profit entity so we can accept donations, but I'm truly excited to be part of this, to be helping to lead this, and with such a great team.

Onward!

Rosh Hashana, the new year and the Day of Judgement, begins tonight. We've been in a season of repentance for a little while, but we kick it up a notch now through Yom Kippur (the Day of Atonement).

One of the things we focus on in this season is repentance for errors we have made, intentional or unintentional. In Judaism, teshuva (repentance) isn't just about feeling bad that you did something; the process requires regret, making amends, apologizing to the ones you wronged, and endeavoring to not repeat those mistakes in the future. (The rabbis say that the true validation of teshuva is that you were in the situation again and didn't repeat the mistake. This is, obviously, the part of the process that is partly up to God.)

The problem, of course, is that you have to know you screwed up before you can fix it. If I have wronged or hurt someone, I would like the opportunity to do teshuva. This is not a blanket "if I've offended you please accept my apologies" post, because I don't know how I can do teshuva for things I don't know I did (or know I did but don't know were problems). Instead, this post is a request: if you are reading this, if I have wronged or hurt you, I ask you to contact me privately and give me the opportunity to correct the matter. If correction involves public action it will of course be forthcoming.

I want to screen replies to this post to make it easier for people with Dreamwidth accounts to respond, but I don't see where on the posting page I can do that. My email address is this journal name at pobox.com and DMs are open on Twitter. I'll be offline for the holiday for two days starting soon, but I will respond to anything I receive.

Thank you.

The high holy days went very well for me this year. It's hard to explain in words, but they did what they are supposed to do. I feel like I'm in a good place for 5777.

I co-led the Ruach service on both Rosh Hashana and Yom Kippur mornings again (with the associate rabbi). That went well, and I was particularly tickled by the person who privately asked me if next year I could do it all by myself. (She likes the way I lead.) I pointed out that it would be rather awkward for me to bring that up with the folks in charge.

We started this service several years ago because the sanctuary service, still being done out of Gates of Repentance which has many deficiencies, was hard for some of us to engage with. It's not about formal music; I'm all about some of the formal music of the season. But it sometimes felt like we were being performed at instead of being invited in. So we started this service to do things differently. This year we bought the new machzor, Mishkan HaNefesh, for the whole congregation (previously we had enough copies for the Ruach service, and previous to that we used draft photocopies). And we've just concluded our first year with a real cantor, who is working hard to make the sanctuary service more engaging. So, it is possible that in the not-too-distant future we could get to a point where we no longer need this service. Some (like my fan from the previous paragraph) might think that's a bad thing for me, but I'd actually be delighted to bring more of the congregation to the level that our smaller cohort strives for. We shall see. None of this has been discussed yet; it's just ideas kicking around.

On Sukkot morning I went to Chabad. I met the Chabad rabbi a few years ago when I took what would be the first of (so far) three classes that I've taken from him. He's friendly and welcoming and he encourages women to learn. So I showed up (unannounced) and I felt welcome. There was one other woman there at the beginning, and we got two more by the end, with maybe 15 or 20 men. (Kind of hard to see with the mechitza and some left immediately after.) Most of us went to the sukkah after for a little food and drink, and the conversation was friendly. I chatted with a woman who's a cancer researcher (i.e. she works, in a professional position) and we talked about technology and medicine and conducting clinical trials and stuff.

I only had one problem. Well, two I guess -- I can never keep up with Orthodox prayer; I'm just not that fast. So that wasn't unexpected. But the other was the language barrier. Not Hebrew; while I'm by no means fluent I do ok there. No, I mean that even though they were praying in Hebrew I found it really hard to follow because of pronunciation. There were times when I knew exactly what words I should be hearing, had the siddur in front of me -- and couldn't match up what I was hearing with what I was reading. I wouldn't have expected that to be the steepest learning curve...

(This isn't just about Ashkenazi versus Sephardi pronunciation; I've got a reasonable handle on that. Chabad seems to change vowels compared to other Ashkenazim, so that's two steps removed for me and my Sephardi pronunciation.)

This Chabad, unfortunately, doesn't have their own Friday-night services; part of the reason I'd gone was to scout for alternatives to what are often unsatisfying Friday services at my own synagogue. Bummer. But there will be other occasions to visit; I went on Sukkot because my congregation and another join forces for the festivals, alternating locations, and I wasn't interested in walking two miles each way to the other synagogue.

I've written before about the alternate service my congregation has on Rosh Hashana and Yom Kippur, the Ruach service. It's very much in the style of our Shabbat minyan -- musical, participatory, full of spirit, and way more traditional than the Reform norm. Originally my rabbi led this service, though a few times he had to leave early (to be at the main service) and said "Monica, take over" -- once with a new prayer book I had not seen before, with the high-holy-day-only special liturgy. (I love the trust he places in me but that one was "exciting".) Then last year he couldn't be there at all and asked me to lead it along with somebody else. The other person was, to put it mildly, quite problematic.

This summer we hired a new associate rabbi and she's been coming to the Shabbat minyan and enjoying it. My rabbi asked the two of us to lead this service. I'm very pleased that he kept me as part of this; it would not have been completely unreasonable (in our congregation) to say that when we have an actual rabbi, the lay person is no longer needed.

We'd only led one service together (a minyan service when the senior rabbi was out of town), but it turns out that she and I work really well together. It usually takes people collaborating on services a little more time to start developing the "hive mind" where things just go. (Yes, of course there's a lot of prep involved, and sticky notes in the book for who's doing what in places, but even with that, services led by people who aren't used to working together often don't look smooth.)

Rosh Hashana was last week and the service went very well. It flowed, it wasn't rushed, and we finished exactly on time. We got lots of compliments. Yom Kippur is Wednesday and I expect we'll have even more people then. I feel really good about this.

Also, chanting Unataneh Tokef on Rosh Hashana clicked for me. I don't mean musically (though that too); I mean the text. This is a grave prayer and I felt it in a way that I haven't felt it when merely reading or listen to it. Oh Rosh Hashana it is written and on Yom Kippur it is sealed: who shall live and who shall die, who shall be content and who troubled, and so on. Since Rosh Hashana I have attempted to do teshuvah for some specific things, and I hope that come Yom Kippur, when I chant this same text again, I will feel I succeeded.

( background; some of you may know this already so I'm cutting )

So that brings us to this year. Apparently my rabbi got a fair bit of flack for not being in the sanctuary for the entire service (we have another rabbi, and a cantorial soloist, by the way), so he said he would not be able to lead the "ruach" services and asked me to do it. (Frankly, I believe I'm the only layperson in the congregation with all of the skills needed to do so.) I consider this a great honor, and my rabbi prominently honored me on Rosh Hashana during the torah service, so that's nice. (Funny story there, actually -- below the line.)

We are using the draft of the new machzor (about which I wrote previously). Rosh Hashana went pretty well aside from timing; my timing was spot-on for the target they had given me, but the folks in the sanctuary were moving more quickly so we had to hurry at the end. It appears that we will also be short on time for Yom Kippur, so I've done my best to make it fit and trim optional parts. I've practiced all the unfamiliar parts for Yom Kippur, as I did for Rosh Hashana last week, and I think I'm ready.

And for next year, I'm going to ask for an earlier start. This service starts at the same time as the sanctuary service because that was the earliest the rabbi could participate (rightly needing a break after the first service), but if we can't have the rabbi anyway, why not start half an hour earlier?

(In case you're wondering how two services can start at the same time and yet the other gets ahead of ours -- it's because the sanctuary service, using Gates of Repentance, skips all sorts of stuff that ought to be in there, while this service (and the minyan out of which it grew) strives for something more authentic.)

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Here's the funny story: in recognition of my work with that service, my rabbi invited me to dress the torah (g'lilah) after it was read. There is another honor at that point, hgabahah, lifting the torah and turning around so everybody can see the text. This requires some coordination as you're holding the scroll overhead, from the bottom. The scroll we were using is also on the heavy side. But hey, I'm g'lilah; if the other person can handle that, the weight needn't concern me, right? The person who does the lifting then holds the scroll until it's time to return it to the ark.

So the other person was our associate rabbi. And he was helping to lead the part of the service right after this, so he couldn't hold it. So that meant me. That's still ok; just sitting there holding a heavy scroll isn't hard. Managing the prayerbook one-handed was a bit challenging, but I had that under control.

So, on Rosh Hashana we do the shofar service during the torah service (after the haftarah, for those who are curious). The shofar service is broken into three sections: a set of prayers and readings, then you stand for the shofar blasts, and then you sing s short song that's at a completely different place in this particular prayerbook. Then you sit down and iterate.

So as it turned out, I wasn't just holding the scroll in my lap. I got a bit of a workout! :-)

Also, did not prostrate during the Great Aleinu that fell during this time...

There is a prayer/song in the Yom Kippur liturgy called "Ki Anu Amecha", of the form: "we are your people, you are our king; we are your flock, you are our shepherd; we are your children, you are our father" etc. Last year for Kol Nidrei my rabbi asked me to write a short kavanah, or intention, to read at the service before singing this. (In a great display of trust of which I am quite mindful, he did not screen this before I read it in front of 900 people.) I didn't post this here at the time; I meant to post it before Yom Kippur this year instead. But I didn't, so here it is now.

* * *

The Avinu Malkeinu prayer describes what God is to us -- our father and king. Both of these are one-sided; there is nothing about our role, our place in God's realm. The caring father and the just king both act upon us, not with us. So after days of pleading to the frightening, distant Avinu Malkeinu, it is time to add new images to our conception of God. It is time for us to be actors and not just acted-upon.

Ki Anu Amecha adds the relationship that has been missing until now. God is still Malkeinu, but we are his people. Still Avinu, but we are his children. Now we matter, taking our place as partners with God. Further, our view of God is not limited now to Avinu and Malkeinu -- God is shepherd to our flock, portion to our congregation, and most powerfully, our friend.

Friend? I don't know if I'm ready for God to be my friend. That's even more intimidating than Avinu and Malkeinu -- a true friend knows me as well as, or better than, I know myself. I am flawed, broken, not the best person I can be, and it's all laid bare for a true friend. Can I stand up to the scrutiny of a divine friend? On this Yom Kippur I look more for the divine teacher or the divine shepherd. I am grateful that God offers us so many ways to relate to each other; if one does not resonate for me this year, another will. What is most important is that the relationship exists; in Ki Anu Amecha God reaches out to us as surely as we reach out to him, true partners in teshuva and atonement on this grave night of Kol Nidrei.

The eerie, plaintive voice of the shofar is a wake-up call, one that for me is muddled when in my congregation we have groups of people (mostly children) blow in what turns into a competition for who can hold t'kiah g'dolah the longest. People smile and chuckle and lose the meaning in it. This year, by some quirk of fate, every service I attended in Elul and for Rosh Hashana had but one shofar blower.

On Rosh Hashana morning I closed my eyes during t'kiah g'dolah, listening to the faint cry grow louder, stronger, more earnest with each passing moment. I imagined myself at the foot of Har Sinai, hearing but not seeing the divine shofar blast, taking in but not understanding the thunder and smoke as God prepared to speak. At Har Sinai and in services in my congregation both, I was in the presence of the awesome, fearsome God who could, in an instant, judge me for death or for life. Reflecting on my failings of the last year (and longer), I knew I had not truly earned the outcome I prayed for, but that somehow God might accept my teshuva anyway if I do it and mean it.

"Arise, you slumberers, from your slumber", the Rambam proclaims, "you are wasting your years in vain pursuits that neither profit nor save". I've read those words in our machzor every year, but this year they jumped out at me and then followed me home for more examination. The Rambam isn't talking about the relaxation and fun we all need in our lives, I don't think; he's talking about the pursuits that we put real effort into without gain.

Like a certain online community I've helped build over the last two years, only to see it go in a damaging direction while its custodians look on and do nothing. Perhaps I should have known that any "neutral" religion-related community would eventually be dominated by evangelical Christians who do not see their own bias. I've been trying to set the community back on its original course of respectful dialogue, but now I realize my efforts are ineffective. I could keep trying, but this year's lone shofar called me to re-evaluate this vain pursuit that neither profits nor saves. There are others who need my attention more, chief among them my own neshama, my own soul/spirit.

The Unetaneh Tokef prayer tells us that on Rosh Hashana it is written and on Yom Kippur it is sealed, who shall live and who shall die, ...who shall be troubled and who shall be tranquil. Last year it seems I was decreed to be among the troubled; this year may I merit to be among the tranquil.

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Related thoughts, and a discussion of site direction. And yes, this was the subject of my "sunk costs" post back in March; obviously I didn't manage to stay gone after I left.

Several years ago we added a service for the second day of Rosh Hashana. The other holidays are celebrated for two days outside of Israel and one day there, but Rosh Hashana is celebrated for two days everywhere. The Reform movement follows the Israeli calendar (holding that the reason for the extra day no longer applies), but many Reform congregations eliminate the extra day for Rosh Hashana too. Our rabbi decided (with support from other leaders) that if we say we follow the Israeli calendar we should really do it, hence the second day.

Our second-day service is more intimate than the first-day service, but is still a complete service. Members of the congregation share in leading the service and do the torah-reading. There isn't a big sermon like on the first day, but there's a shorter message. Over the years some people have told us that this is their favorite service, preferring it over the grand service on the first day.

As expected, turnout is rather lower for the second day. We started in a year where the second day fell on a Sunday and got about 50 people that year; on weekdays attendance is lower. Last year at this service we re-dedicated the chapel after renovations and got an attendance boost. This year, the second day was on a Tuesday.

We had about 80 people. Some were visitors from out of town who came with members, some I didn't know at all, and some sought us out because we're apparently the only local Reform congregation that does this. We got lots of thanks and compliments after the service.

One lesson I take from this: we have got to start advertising this. We offer a service that fills a void no one else is filling, and we do it well. We don't require tickets on the second day; anybody who hears about it is welcome to come. Next year I want to work a little on helping people to hear about it, like we did with our amazingly-successful children's service on the first day. (Last year we outgrew our space, so this year we rented space down the street at the JCC. As long as we were renting a hall anyway, we invited the community -- and got twice as many people as last year.)

Our second-day service is really pretty special. I'm glad we started it.

Technically the high-holy-day season began with the first day of the month of Elul a few weeks ago, but some think of it as starting with S'lichot, the recitation of penitential prayers that begins (for Ashkenazim) several days before Rosh Hashana. That was last night.

Until now I had only ever gone to Reform services for this, and this year I was feeling the need to experience something more traditional. My Orthodox shul of choice for such things is Young People's Synagogue, which I've visited a few times on Friday nights. They didn't publish a time for S'lichot on their web site, so I sent email to the president of the congregation to introduce myself and ask. I got a nice, prompt reply welcoming me and giving me the information I needed. He mentioned that Dan Leger would be speaking; Dan is a member of Dor Chadash who I know from the Tree of Life morning minyan (yeah, Pittsburgh is like that), so that was an extra bonus.

( would go again; in fact, will on Sukkot )

This was a really productive Yom Kippur, from the robo-call on the answering machine Friday afternoon about lashon hara (yeah, really) through Kol Nidrei last night and the whole day today. Parts of the liturgy newly resonated with me, I heard two excellent sermons (maybe more on that later), and the new morning service was a rousing success.

On that last: I was expecting 30-40 people, basically the minyan regulars minus some who'd said they wanted to be in the sanctuary, plus some curious others. We had 80 and had to send out for more prayerbooks twice. The room seats about 100; we may be in trouble next year. Lots of people complimented me on it and my rabbi said many kind things about me for organizing it. We had my rabbi for the first hour and had lots of spirited singing, just like in the minyan. We had only expected to have him for half an hour, so plans about timing went out the window, but it was obvious that he really wanted to be there and of course everybody wanted him to be there, so I think we need to see if we can make that easier next year -- maybe start half an hour earlier? Because of the extra time we spent in the opening section we had to rush to try to catch up with the sanctuary service -- which was complicated by the fact that they were making up for a late start by adjusting and ended up running early. So while we had intended to enter the sanctuary at the beginning of the torah service, we actually missed the first few aliyot. Oops. We'll do better next year.

Even with the responsibility of running things -- it can be challenging to really pray when you're also responsible for watching the clock and tracking the people who might need extra page cues and signaling to your assistant leaders about changes to make and so on -- I was able to really engage with this service, and it was a great way to start a day spent in the synagogue. This ended up being even better than just switching the two morning sanctuary services (my original request) would have been; the new service had a much higher lowest common denominator, in terms of fluency, and that's huge. I carried the high from this service through most of the rest of the day. (My mind always wanders during Yizkor, which is more about the dreary English readings in our machzor than it is about Yizkor itself, but the rest was good.)

I read torah at the afternoon service. I didn't manage to learn the special high-holy-day trope this year either, either for Rosh Hashana or for Yom Kippur (I read on both). Someday... (Nobody else uses it, but I want to try -- and maybe start a trend.)

( fast notes )

OT: LiveJournal could go back to the fixed-width, larger font in the main part of the "post" page any time now, ahem. Yes, I filed a bug report. (I compose in emacs and paste in, but it's still a pain to do edits like the addition of this paragraph.)