Monica

Fascinating. According to this article (tweeted by R' Gil Student), Neshama Carlebach, daughter of Rabbi Shlomo Carlebach and a singer of whom I'm fond, went to the URJ biennial last week and decided (on the spot?) to join the Reform movement. Given her Orthodox background that's a bit of a surprise, though I always did wonder how she reconciled Orthodoxy's prohibitions on women singing in front of men with her career.

Perhaps ironically, while she feels drawn in by the Reform movement, I've been feeling pushed away from it in recent years. I could imagine the possibility of ending up Orthodox someday. I know of two factors at play right now, one in each direction, that prevent my serious consideration of the idea. And neither of them is theology.

What keeps me in the Reform movement and, specifically, my congregation, is my absolutely wonderful rabbi (and by the way our Shabbat morning minyan, which he leads, but not just that). Despite all the other problems that sometimes come up -- "entitlement" services that are more about performance than about worship, the disregard by many congregants for those of us who actually are observant, lowest-common-denominator practice, and others -- I, have a spiritual and learning home there, at least so long as my rabbi is leading things.

And what keeps me out of the Orthodox movements (there's more than one) is not theology but the limitations I would experience as a woman. Being told that I can never represent the community, never lead prayers nor read from the torah, never fully engage spiritually except in women-only groups -- I can't go there. So the article about Neshama Carlebach and the challenges she faced in that community struck rather close to home for me.

I met with my rabbi today and we talked about the Sh'liach K'hilah program. We talked a lot about writing eulogies because I mentioned it early (new content from last year) and because I said I didn't think I did a very good job with mine. He gave me a lot of good advice there, some of it much more general than eulogies.

We talked a little about delivery, especially when working with a set text (not notes). It's fine -- even not uncommon -- to go ahead and write in stage directions to address your weaknesses -- "slow down", "breathe", "look up", etc. Color highlighting can mark phrases that ought to be emmphasized or places where you specifically want to pause. No one else will see your copy; do whatever works.

I mentioned the challenge of the text-study assignment (I characterized it as "working with people you don't know at all, with different backgrounds, to produce something quickly"), but we didn't really get into it. Another time, maybe. Or maybe I've learned all I can from that experience already.

We talked about next steps within the congregation. He's still a little unsure of how to handle Friday-night services; he said he'd be happy to have me read torah, so maybe I'll start with that. We talked about kabbalat shabbat with no resolution; I said that there's only one Shabbat in the next several months I'll be away and he has but to name a date. We got interrupted while we were talking about this and didn't get to finish, so I'll follow up.

I did not get a chance to ask about further study (much); I haven't asked his opinion about Melton, Drisha, Hebrew College, and others. I'd like to hear his thoughts on those. Next meeting, then.

I did ask (on the way out the door) about Hebrew. He mentioned a publisher called EKS as a good source. I mentioned courses at Pitt; he thinks they start with modern and then go to biblical and you can't just jump into biblical there. But, he said, you really have to learn the two together anyway; you can't do just biblical and be effective. So he thinks a two-pronged approach would work: learn modern at JEI and biblical with him, replacing our talmud study with Hebrew study. The next round of courses at JEI should start in September, so I'll see what they have to offer. The course I took there several years ago didn't work for me, but it's been several years and maybe that style of teaching will work better now.

Edit: Ok, I thought EKS sounded vaguely familiar. I actually have one of their books. A friend and I started to work through it a while back. Time to pull it out again.

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 )

My rabbi has been in the hospital since Wednesday. (Ok, the congregation has been told; I don't need to keep that secret any more.) The associate rabbi and cantorial soloist covered Friday night just fine, and it was also a committee shabbat so there were a bunch of extra people with parts, so no problems.

Amusing moment: as I've mentioned before, our congregation reads one aliya (out of the seven that make up a full Shabbat torah reading). This year we're reading slishi, the third aliya. Normally we have one aliya, meaning that we don't subdivide the reading, but when there's one of these committee services they usually do three to give more people a chance to participate. So, they assigned those parts, probably weeks ago. Friday morning the rabbi looked at the portion and realized that it's only four verses long. You need three verses (and some other conditions) to make a valid aliya. Oops. So he read part of the previous aliya too. (Yeah, I didn't know there were any that are that short, either! I found out when I asked someone last week if he could read torah this morning, since the rabbi wasn't going to be there. He looked at it and said "yeah, I can do those four verses". :-) )

Normally when my rabbi isn't available the associate rabbi leads the informal morning service. I have the impression that he's not all that comfortable doing that, because this is an established group with established customs and he doesn't usually come to that service (so isn't clued in about those). We talked earlier this week and he said he would be perfectly happy to just be a congregant and let someone else lead the service, so we did that. This went very well, and when I asked him later if that was weird for him he said no, he's happy and he'd like to keep doing that. Sounds good to me. Today I asked my co-chair to lead; for next week we threw it open and got a volunteer. (Today's leader asked me to lead Ashrei for her, which we do responsively (so most people only know half of it). That's also part of the weekday morning service, so I've gotten quite comfortable with it.)

When I studied with my rabbi Monday I asked if I could visit him in the hospital, and he suggested I come Shabbat afternoon. Either the distance from my house to the hospital is closer to three miles than two or I no longer walk a 20-minute mile. I'm inclined to believe the former, because I know the distance to my synagogue and I walk it regularly. :-) Hey, good exercise. Yeah, ok, I spent more time in transit than actually visiting, but it was Shabbat afternoon. What other pressing matters did I have to attend to?

Next Shabbat I'm participating in a women's service (an annual event run by a local group). I'm reading torah, and if I pull this off it'll be the longest reading I've done so far. I think I'll pull it off. There's some weird trope in the last couple verses, but I'll get the words right at least and so far as I know they won't stop me for trope errors that aren't also phrase-boundary errors, so it should be fine. I believe I will be solidly middle-of-the-pack, skill-wise, among the seven torah readers.

We were supposed to study Talmud yesterday, but the combination of 9/11 and rabbinic obligations did that in. So we studied today. But neat as that always is, that wasn't the neatest part today.

( Lots and lots of stuff about prayer, obligation, and interpretation. )