Entries tagged with my secondary synagogue

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two years

Say their names:

Joyce Fienberg
Richard Gottfried
Rose Mallinger
Dr. Jerry Rabinowitz (who ran to the fire)
Cecil Rosenthal
David Rosenthal
Bernice Simon
Sylvan Simon
Daniel Stein
Melvin Wax
Irving Younger

May their memories be for a blessing.

They were good people. I miss them.

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Yesterday at my synagogue we had just finished the torah reading and held a baby naming for a young family when the first cell phone rang. Some people carry cell phones on Shabbat and sometimes forget to silence them; you shrug and move on. Then the second one went off. Then the first one went off again. Then more. People started checking to see what was going on. And we learned that a nearby congregation, the one I attend for weekday services, was currently under attack and the killer had not yet been caught. Not only were we scared, but we all know people there -- one of the members of my weekday morning minyan was there with me yesterday (for the baby-naming), and we exchanged horrified looks. We locked the doors, hastily finished the morning service, packed up the nice kiddush spread that the family had prepared to celebrate their daughter's naming, and waited for news. (All of the staff and some others have had active-shooter training -- that we should need such things is terrible in itself -- so we looked to our rabbi for guidance.)

We couldn't get any police guidance (they were understandably busy). We heard that he'd been caught and waited long enough for that report to be disputed, which it wasn't. Eventually we had to decide whether to stay put or disperse. Most of us concluded that hey, we're in a synagogue so maybe we should get the hell out of here, and left. I asked somebody for a ride home to minimize my time on the streets. We made sure nobody walked home.

Later I heard more details (answering the phone seemed prudent that day), that the killer was a white-supremicist monster on a "Jews must die" rampage, and most horribly, that he'd succeeded in killing eleven people and wounding half a dozen more. Almost certainly that list included friends -- it seems plausible that the people who show up to a weekday morning minyan regularly would also be the ones who show up on Shabbat on time, and the murders were early during the service. Nobody knew who, though, and that was very tense.

There were phone messages from out of state before I even got home, and calls from out of the country soon after; I guess it's not surprising that this would be international news but, wow, that was fast. I made a judgement call, apologized to God, and posted a short entry here and sent a one-word tweet ("safe") to ease the concerns of people I know all over the world who would be worried about me. Yeah, the Internet is truly global and we form real communities and real bonds. (Last night I asked on Mi Yodeya whether I violated a biblical or rabbinic prohibition, and today I asked if, theoretically, a Jewish court could execute a non-Jew. I guess one of the ways I process horrifying events is through study? Today I learned.)

There was a vigil last night in the center of Squirrel Hill. The crowd was huge; I later learned about 3000, which is a lot for the intersection we overflowed. The police had blocked off streets and there was media there. Somebody organized that in about four hours, wow. I looked in vain for friends from Tree of Life and, specifically, the weekday minyan, but it was a large crowd and it was dark and I didn't find anybody. I sent email to my closest friend in that minyan and got no reply all night. Email and blog comments and tweets and direct messages and chat pings rolled in all day and evening. I didn't know what to tell anybody -- do I need anything? don't know! -- but I felt very comforted.

My minyan friend sent email this morning, thank God, and officials announced the names of the victims who, yes, included other minyan friends. (Aside: there is a special circle of hell -- I don't believe in hell but let's postulate it for the sake of this sentence -- for news services that write headlines like "names of victims announced" over articles that contain no names of victims. Took me three tries.) Some synagogues cancelled activities today and others said we will stay open and not let murderous terrorists win; of course everybody is clamping down on security. Tree of Life is closed and roads around it are still blocked off by the police; another congregation has already invited them in.

I heard that Trump said that if the synagogue had had an armed guard this wouldn't have happened. Victim-blaming, really? First, almost no houses of worship have armed guards so far as I know, and we for one cannot afford one even if we thought that was a good idea (we hire police for the high holy days only), and I don't know that a police officer with a pistol (or similar) could stop a rampaging neo-Nazi brandishing an assault rifle anyway. It'd just be one more body.

They caught the murderer, which means there will be a lengthy investigation (of the "alleged" killer, as if anybody denies it!) and trial and many appeals before, maybe, he gets the death penalty he deserves. It's times like this when I'm glad we still have a death penalty, even though it is often mis-applied. Part of me wishes that, when he was shooting at the police officers and SWAT team, somebody had blown his brains out on the spot. He doesn't sound like the sort of person who will be in any way moved by having to look the families of his victims in the eye and hear their testimony. If he claims insanity (despite the obvious premeditation) then he's a rabid wild animal who needs to be put down in the name of public safety, and if he doesn't claim insanity then he's an evil monster who ceded his rights to endless appeals of the obvious the first time he pulled that trigger.

I am sad and angry and shocked.

I don't blame God for what happened even as I say baruch dayan ha-emet, blessed is the true judge. God gave us free will and the evils humans do to each other are on those humans, not God. The rate of those evils has been going in the wrong direction for quite some time in our country and our world, sometimes organically and sometimes urged on by demagogues in power (White House I am looking at you), and I feel pretty helpless about that.

For those of you who don't know the neighborhood, somebody linked to this description of Squirrel Hill that's pretty spot-on. We're all connected here.

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Thursday bits

Finally, I am done tinkering with my d'var torah for tomorrow night. I better be; I have to format and print it before Shabbat. I had some trouble with this one, partly because it's longer than the Shabbat-morning mini-drash and partly because my rabbi will be listening. But I'm really, really looking forward to leading servces in front of my rabbi tomorrow!

Our associate rabbi has returned from Jerusalem. The US campuses of HUC ordain rabbis in May, but for some reason Jerusalem does it in November. He's been our associate rabbi for a few months, but now he has the title officially. I saw him tonight and he looked very happy.

This morning the rabbi (at the other shul) asked if I've been to Israel, based on my Hebrew pronunciation. I'll take that as a compliment. :-) (Mind, no Israeli would ever think that.)

I spent a few minutes this morning playing computer consultant for that rabbi. You know what usually follows "you know something about computers, right?", right? Yes, "I have this problem with my email...". It happened with his predecessor too. I should make cards -- "rabbinic software consultant since 1998". :-) So I was able to configure Outlook Express to read his AOL mail for him -- not that I previously knew anything about AOL or much about Outlook Express, but informed instinct counts for a lot. He probably now knows mor than he ever cared to about IMAP and SMTP, but his email works. :-)

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morning minyan

I've done better torah readings, but this morning went ok. I was tripped up when I mis-remembered trope for one word, which had a cascading effect on the next few words. So I had to be prompted, but I got through it. Initially (a few years ago) I learned this portion by rote; now that I know how to read trope I did it "right" this time, uncovering some errors in my initial learning of it in the process. So I guess it's not surprising that something like this happened. I still got lots of apparently-genuine compliments.

There was a fascinating (to me) discussion at breakfast. There is a light breakfast after services every morning -- usually just bagels and bread, cream cheese, and drinks, unless someone sponsors a fancier breakfast. The process of getting the bread/bagels has been a pain for various reasons, and today someone (a regular, not a visitor) proposed a change: getting bagels from a new bakery that is better in quality, cheaper, more conveniently located -- and not under rabbinic supervision. This last point had not even occurred to the person bringing up the subject as something important; when others pointed it out he went on an anti-kashrut rant. ("What could be treif about a bagel?" "Well, this place sells sandwiches, right? So maybe they sliced your bagel with the same knife they just used to slice the ham?" "You're being too picky." And so on.)

Other people pressed that line of argument with him, but I brought up a more fundamental issue. This is a Conservative congregation. That means they, as a congregation, are bound to a certain interpretation of halacha. It doesn't matter if every member of the minyan eats treif at home; the congregational meal must be in accordance with that halacha, both for appearance and to support the needs of any visitor who actually keeps kosher. (I think, but am not sure, that failing to keep a kosher shul kitchen is one of the issues (along with performing an intermarriage, and I'm not sure what else) that can get a Conservative rabbi censured.) So if that halacha says a bakery must be under supervision, you have to follow that. Bottom line: you have to ask the rabbi and follow his ruling.

The person I was arguing with seemed to be of the belief that "kashrut is silly, so we don't need to worry about it". He failed to see the difference between decisions about personal practice and decisions about communal practice. At one point he brought up other Conservative deviations from the Orthodox interpretation of halacha, like allowing women to lead services, but I pointed out that this isn't the same thing at all: the Conservative movement has a process, which they followed, to determine that women can lead services. They didn't just get up one day and say "we don't like that restriction, so we're not doing it". That same process produces an understanding of kashrut, which must be followed in the shul.

The rabbi was not present, by the way. (I would of course have deferred to him if he were.) I didn't mean to be "speaker for the rabbi", and I said a few times that he needs to consult the rabbi about the kashrut rules for the shul. But when exactly did I, a Reform Jew, become a spokesman for Conservative Judaism in a Conservative shul? *boggle*

(I should clarify that I am not trying to malign or question this community as a whole. I assume that most people present agreed with me but just weren't putting it into words.)

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Thursday the rabbi rebooted

At morning services the rabbi asked me if I could help him fix a problem with his Mac. From his not-very-technical description it sounded to me as if he had somehow corrupted a shortcut on his desktop. I decided it would be easier to pay a house call than talk him through it on the phone, so I stopped by after work.

Now I'm not a Mac person. Tried 'em when they came out in 1984, had one on my desk at work a few years later (1989?), even ported an application from X-Windows to Mac once (1990), but I don't really know how to use them, never looked again when they became more mature, and never became one with the UI philosophy. I figured I could puzzle it out on my own, but with him looking over my shoulder while I did so I feared leading him down too many bad search paths that he might internalize.

So I chatted briefly with a co-worker who uses a Mac. He showed me how to get a file browser and that what windows calls a shortcut the Mac calls an alias. Most of my instincts were correct. In an oh-by-the-way manner, he said that if the mouse has one button rather than two, you get right-click by control-clicking.

I am so glad he made that off-hand comment! The Mac in question does in fact have a one-button mouse, and the odds that I would have guessed that key combination are low. I would have instead concluded that Macs only have one mouse menu.

So fixing his problem was in fact trivial; I deleted the old shortcut (not gonna try to fix what I can easily recreate), found the application, and created a new shortcut. I watched him reboot and then use it successfully. Mission accomplished in just a few minutes. I explained what I was doing at each step (and he didn't know about control-click either); I wonder how much he'll internalize. (His kids convinced him to get the Mac, from what I understand. But they're all away for the summer.)

I realized on the way out that I missed an opportunity: I should have told him that the price of computer consulting is rabbinic consulting, and gotten him to give me pointers to some responsa I've been wondering about. Ah well; maybe later. :-)

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Behar

This morning David (the Torah reader at ToL) asked me how the portion is going about 10 seconds before I was going to approach him about it. I said I was having cognitive dissonance learning two portions at the same time (too many cases of "same words, different trope"), but we both realize that my chanting this one is completely optional. Probably what we will do is I will chant the first two aliyot, which I learned last year and can restore easily, and I won't try the third (the new part, and longer than the other two put together) until next year.

I'm a little disappointed in myself for not anticipating (and somehow working around) the problem, but I do think I'm doing the right thing. And I'm not making anyone else's life more complicated; David had to prepare the portion anyway because it gets read four times [1] and I'm only doing one of them.

Emor (the portion I'm chanting part of this Shabbat) is doing just fine, however. If I can just remember the correct syllable to accent on one word where I'm sometimes getting it wrong, everything will be just fine. And the "checkers" (who follow along in a text to make sure the reader doesn't make any mistakes) probably won't stop me for that, or trope quirks, so it'll be fine. (They would stop me if I actually used an incorrect word.)

[1] This Saturday at mincha, Monday morning, and Thursday morning all get the abbreviated portion that I'm talking about. Then on Shabbat the entire portion is read.

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(no subject)

I was invited to Tree of Life's annual meeting tonight because they wanted to thank me for my occasional leading of Shabbat services. That's cool. I figured they were just going to have us stand up and have our names read or something, but they actually had award certificates for us so they called us up in front of the room. There seemed to be an official photographer who was taking pictures of everyone who was called up for any reason; I wonder where those pictures will end up.

On the way in Rabbi Berkun joked about charging me dues and I said something about reciprocity agreements being about more than just high-holy-day tickets. :-)

(The high holy days are the only time of year that most congregations limit attendance for services, because they're so crowded. Most of the time, if you belong to a congregation but are going to be somewhere else for those particular services -- out of town, for instance -- you have your shul send paperwork to your target shul and all is fine. The rest of the year, you can just show up anywhere you like.)

For the most part, of course, I didn't really know the people at the meeting tonight. Some I recognized from the morning minyan, and a couple from other things, but mostly not. Fair's fair; most of them presumably had no clue who I was. Still, even if it was just a minor blip on the radar for most people, it was nice that they think enough of me to formally say "thank you".

Tree of Life has a 15-member board of trustees and installed five new members tonight. So they, like Sinai, appear to turn over a third of the board each year. (They also do three-year terms.) They actually "installed" the new board members and officers, having them repeat an affirmation and all that. At Sinai, they held a vote and then said congratulations.

After the meeting there was a muscial performance that turned out to be something of a roast of the outgoing president. I wasn't expecting that. It was all in good fun, but I think I would see it as disincentive to take the job. :-)

Tomorrow night is Sinai's annual meeting. (What is it with annual meetings in late May?) I should really attend, being a board member

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weekend

Shabbat was pleasant. It's actually been a few weeks since I've been to my synagogue for Friday night -- last week was the shabbaton, the week before was an SCA event, and the week before that I went to a different synagogue. Saturday morning was its usual fulfilling service. We ended up talking at Torah study about Christian/Jewish differences on the subject of intermediaries, motivated by the discussion in Leviticus about the temple priests making attonement for you after you bring the korban.

Saturday afternoon was an On the Mark practice, the first one with our new members (Ray and Jenn). We had previously had a meeting, but this was the first time we actually made music. I think it's going well; there are all sorts of interesting possibilities with the current members and repertoire. I hope that Ray and Jenn will speak up if there's something in the repertoire that they really don't like; I worry about the steamroller effect. I need to remember to actually send out detailed email with the to-do list for next time; I didn't do that last time and I needed to.

Sad commentary on the technological age: it appears that the most effective way for me to keep the repertoire list up to date is to use index cards. Yes, actual physical paper. I used to keep the list on the computer, but we don't have a computer at practices, so I'd print it out, start scribbling on it, never quite get around to making updates, and then decide that the accumulated scribblings were the permanent record. Which works fine until you've added so much stuff that you no longer have an organized list. (This isn't just a list of titles; it's title, who plays/sings what part, what keyboard settings we use (if the keyboard is involved), what key we do it in, etc.) (No, I don't have a Palm or equivalent yet. I'm waiting for some improvements to the user interface.)

On Saturday we also got a call from Marion, who was in town with her husband Fred at the last minute. We got together on Sunday afternoon. It was good to see them again. Fred is still allergic to cats, but he seemed to be coping pretty well with Erik's desire to curl up on his lap. (Cats always gravitate toward those who least want their presence.) They of course knew about the cats in advance, so maybe this involved drugs.

Fred was delighted that we had a good solid storm while they were visiting. We even went out on the front porch to watch it. He says they don't get real storms in Seattle.

After they left Dani and I headed off to Sunday dinner at Ralph and Lori's. Dinner was tasty and the games afterwards were fun. I would have had more fun if I had realized that my allergies were kicking into gear before we left; I sneezed through dinner and some of the gaming before discovering that Lori and I take the same prescription allergy medicine. Things got better after that.

The allergies are being weird this year, in part due to the random warm days early on and in part due to it never getting and staying cold enough last winter to kill everything off. I have summer allergies, not spring allergies. Except this year. But it's random; I haven't taken any more allergy medicine since last night, and I'm fine.

The folks at Tree of Life would like me to attend their annual meeting next week (even though I'm not a member there). They're doing something to thank their guest cantors and random other people who've helped out over the last year. Cool.

Current Mood: bouncy

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this morning

This morning I chanted Torah at Tree of Life. It went very well, and I feel great about it!

When I got there they asked if I wanted to lead the entire service, but I declined. (I'm a little shaky on a couple parts -- can follow but not necessarily lead. Maybe I can do this in six months to a year.) I don't know how many people knew I was going to be chanting Torah; I think it was a surprise to most of the congregation. It certainly seemed to be a surprise to the rabbi.

They gave me the first aliya, so I just walked up there with David (the regular Torah reader) at the beginning of the Torah service. (I took the opportunity to whisper in his ear that I was relying on him to actually find the beginning of the parsha in the scroll for me, which he had already been planning on.) The first aliya went, I believe, perfectly, both in terms of text and in terms of trope. For the second aliya, I had a little trouble finding my preferred starting pitch, and ended up doing it about a third higher than I had intended, but I did it correctly. But it didn't match the first one, and I'm picky about my own music. It's probably not a flaw that anyone else would really call a flaw, but I noticed.

David did the third aliya. I plan to learn that one for next year so I can do the whole thing, but it was too much to bite off for this year. (Initially David wanted me to just learn one, but when I nailed that one pretty quickly he gave me the second -- but too late to then tackle the third, which is much longer than the others.)

I stayed up there after this part of the service and led the concluding prayers (Aleinu etc), which they offered after I declined doing the entire service. That part I can do!

I got lots of compliments on the Torah reading, which made me feel all warm and fuzzy. I'd like to do it again sometime (before a year from now, I mean). David asked me if I wanted to come back and do it Shabbat morning, but I'll be at a Shabbaton. I wonder how he would have handled it, given that I don't know the entire first aliya for Shabbat? (The first aliya for the Shabbat reading is subdivided into three smaller aliyot to make up the weekday reading.)

Now I get to do it again at the Shabbaton on Saturday, except I have to remember to combine these two aliyot into a single one. (Minor trope change -- not hard but I have to remember.)

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my secondary synagogue

(no subject)

I called Rabbi Berkun to schedule my next service there, and he's actually full for the next few months. That's a change! It's bar-mitzvah season, apparently, and they try to have the bar mitzvah lead services Friday night as well as Saturday morning. Things could change; sometimes the student just isn't up to the task and they have to substitute in someone else. But currently, his first opening is in late June.

I'm glad their congregation is healthy enough to have this "problem", though a little disappointed that I'll have to wait. On a micro level, I'm disappointed that a certain date in April (my congregation's 4th-grade service) isn't available. As I've mentioned before, I hate those as they are implemented there. So I'll probably go somewhere else that week, but I won't have a handy excuse. :-)

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weekend so far

Friday night I went to Susan's conversion ceremony. It was very nicely done. We all then went to Rodef's Shabbat service and then across the street for a party at her in-laws' house. I met some interesting people, including Susan's children -- one of whom works at WhizBang. Small world. (Given that all of this was pretty public, I hope my mentioning this isn't considered indiscreet.) I also met an 80-year-old man who had just converted; Susan said that she had thought she was too old at 50, but he inspired her.

I then walked to Temple Sinai for *our* Shabbat service. The choir sounded great! They also did one of my favorite songs, and a newish one that I like quite a bit. Rabbi Gibson gave a very good sermon (I do wish he would publish more of these).

As I was sitting down one of my friends asked how the service at Tree of Life had gone a couple weeks ago. It turns out that the morning service that week was a special service for the local Hadassah chapter, and she had been there for that. And they only print up one "bulletin" per Shabbat, so it includes info about both Friday and Saturday services, and she saw my name there and figured there wasn't *another* Monica Cellio in town. Ok, I've been found out. :-) (Not a secret, but no reason to bring it up, either.)

(What *is* Hadassah, anyway? I gather it's some sort of national women's organizatin, but what do they *do*?)

The walk from Rodef to Sinai is about 25 minutes, so I guess it's a bit more than a mile. It was a nice night, though, and I've been known to walk up to 2 miles (each way) for services so that doesn't bother me. Wouldn't want to do 2 miles on a regular basis, but once in a while is fine.

Oddly, this morning's service had a newcomer who I know from Tree's morning minyan. She just switched from there to Sinai and this was her first time at our informal service. She seemed to enjoy it and she remarked on the strong sense of community we have, especially in comparison to other congregations.

Today Dani and I went to a local SCA event. It was a pleasant day. I came in second in the gaming tourney; I usually don't do that well at those. This one was a single game, something akin to table-top shuffleboard, kind of. It's called shove-groat (modulo spelling). You use a finger to push coins down a board and are trying to hit various scoring areas. It's a lot of fun. I should make myself a board to take to events, at least Pennsic.

The feast was *very* good, and the cook went to extra effort for the vegetarians. I should say vegetarian -- I was the only person who inquired. She had planned to make a cheese pie for us to replace the meat dishes; I was the only one, so I got the entire pie. (I can't actually eat an entire pie -- at least if I want to eat anything else -- so after taking my fill I passed it around for others.) It's pretty rare for cooks to go to extra effort, and this is the second event in a row where it's happened. Neat! The autocrats also did a great job with the event -- careful planning and enthusiasm paid off.

The local group has an acting troupe that has been around for about a decade and has, in my opinion, varied between barely competent and pretty bad during that time. (Usually toward the negative end, mostly caused by insufficient rehearsal.) This time they actually had more rehearsals than usual, and the actors learned their lines instead of reading from scripts or doing a mostly-narrated show, and it made a real difference. This show was well-done and fun to watch. I hope they keep it up!

We left the event after dinner because Dani is sick. I assume that he and I have been hit with the same cold, but I'm doing mostly fine (thoat's a bit gunked up) and he's not. That's because I take cold medicine when called for and he (apparently) thinks such things are ineffective. He's free to believe that, but I claim the evidence is on my side. :-)

I hope he's feeling better tomorrow, when we're going to see Les Mis.

Current Mood: mellow

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misc

I talked with Rabbi Berkun (at Tree of Life) this morning. He's very happy with the job I did last Friday and wants me to do this again. (That had been my impression, but it's nice to have confirmation.) I'm next doing this at the end of September.

Dani and I are headed off to Worldcon. I don't know what there'll be in the way of net access; on the one hand, it's a con full of geeks, but on the other hand, more and more people have laptops and the like, and there are data ports in the hotel rooms. So the days of public clusters at large conventions may be past; I'm not sure.

Well, whatever. I'm not all that worried about it. After all, there are (gasp) more important things to do at a con than surf the net. :-)