cellio | Entries tagged with my synagogue

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:

graph of new cases with scary trend line

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.)

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.

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!

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.

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.

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.)

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.

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.

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.

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. :-)

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.)

People in the Reform movement have been talking a lot lately about inclusion, with a particular focus right now on disabilities. ( rant alert: lots of Kool Aid, not much common sense )

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.)

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...

The Reform movement is publishing a new machzor (prayerbook for the high holy days) after several decades. The format is similar to Mishkan T'filah, the new rest-of-year prayerbook that was published a few years ago. Just as MT was intended to replace Gates of Prayer (its predecessor), the new machzor is intended to replace Gates of Repentance (GoR). I am one of the people in my congregation who was asked to evaluate it for possible purchase. (Actually, what we're evaluating is draft editions of certain services. My comments are based on the morning services for Rosh Hashsna and Yom Kippur.)

Now that I've shared my comments with my rabbi and the head of the committee, I'll go ahead and share them here. I'd love to hear opinions from people in other congregations who have also taken a look at the drafts.

( a brief note on context )

( my review notes )

Dear LJ Brain Trust,

A member of our minyan has a degenerative vision problem and can no longer use even a very-large-print prayer book. (She was absent for a while and returned this week with a guide dog.) She realized that she didn't know as many of the prayers by heart as she thought she did, so I'm spending some time with her to teach her by ear and we'll scare up some recordings for her, but memorization isn't really the ideal solution. Sure, people can and do memorize the core, common prayers, but it's hard to memorize everything, and sometimes there are seasonal changes, so you really want to be able to read the prayer book.

I once saw somebody who used a Braille prayer book, but at the time I didn't ask him how that worked and he's since passed away. Braille is, as I understand it, a letter-by-letter notation system with an extra layer (called "condensed", I've heard) where common words have their own symbols instead of being spelled out. (Like American Sign Language, except I have the impression that the balance between spelled-out and condensed is different. I may be wrong about that.) But -- all of that kind of assumes a particular alphabet, right? So how would Hebrew be rendered in Braille -- do they transliterate it and then Braille-encode that, or does the reader have to learn a different Braille language to match the different alphabet, or what?

I'd like to be able to help her get a prayer book she can read. I don't think she's ready to learn a second Braille language (she's still working on the first).

And a related question: she has an iPad; are there Braille peripherals for that like (I understand) there are for desktop computers? Is "digital copy of the book + iPad + peripheral" a practical alternative to the massive paper tome? (She would use technology on Shabbat for that purpose.)

I haven't really prepared a "year in review" post, but here are some random notes and thoughts.

On the job front there have been ups and downs but the year ended on an up. After thrashing about earlier in the year, being moved from one short-term or ill-defined task to another while people juggled charge codes and contracts, I finally got to settle into something (a) interesting and (b) that takes advantage of my particular specialty, and I rocked. I got a new manager mid-year (my first remote one, too; he's in AZ), which always carries some uncertainty, but he and I really click. He specifically appreciates what I do and wants to help me find more opportunities to do it. Excellent!

The cats have settled in well. I was only without cats for about 4.5 months, but they felt really empty. I mean, Dani's and my relationship is strong (no worries there!), but there was still something missing. That Erik, Embla, and Baldur all died within a span of 10 months (and the last on the day I returned from a frustrating trip to Israel) may have had something to do with that.

I continue to really enjoy my job as a moderator on Mi Yodeya, and last winter I was also appointed as a moderator on Writers (both Stack Exchange sites). On both sites I get to work with great teams on interesting content. I'm still trying to figure out how to increase the tech-writing content on Writers. I need to ask and perhaps self-answer some questions to nudge things along, I suspect.

2013 was a terrible year on another Stack Exchange site. What was supposed to be an academic-style biblical-studies site turned into a cesspool of Christian dogma. I know it's possible for people of different religions to have civilized, respectful discussions about the bible (and other religious matters); I've seen it. (I have thoughts on what makes it work when it works, but I'll save that for another time.) This site was supposed to be non-religious (though obviously most of its members are religious), like a secular university. But it didn't work out that way, and the evangelical moderators (there's no diversity on that team) either can't see or don't care about the damage being done. Everything I did to try to help get things back on course was thrown in my face -- with personal attacks, offensive (usually anti-Jewish) posts, and assorted misrepresentation. So I'm done with that; I have better things to do with my energy. There are a few good people there who are trying to turn some things around; I wish them much luck, but personally, I'm done.

I've had ups and downs religiously and congregationally. My rabbi is fantastic and I like my congregation, but there have been changes in how we approach services, and too many weeks I just don't go on Friday night because they're doing something kid-oriented or entitled (sisterhood service, Reform-style bar mitzvah, etc), and that's frustrating. The Shabbat morning minyan continues to be excellent and the spiritual high point of my week, so that's all good. I'm just trying to figure out Friday nights, and some of it is bound up in questions about whether the Reform movement is right for me at all (except I have this fantastic rabbi and he's worth staying for). It's just that sometimes, being rather more observant than those around me and caring about the halachic and other details that most shrug off, I feel like a mutant.

This year was the last Darkover Con, so On the Mark re-assembled to do a concert. That was fun, and it was nice to see friends I haven't seen in a while at the con.

I'm sure there's more, but this is what I've got right now. Happy 2014 all!

Many years ago, when I was starting to become religious, I asked Micha Berger (who would later become a rabbi) how one made sense of the mitzvot -- why were we doing these particular things, how should we understand the purpose of individual mitzvot? He said something to the effect that understanding is over-rated and that if you do something enough, you may come to understand -- but it doesn't work so well the other way around.¹

Yesterday I was the torah reader, meaning I also led the torah service, read the haftarah (in English), and gave a d'var torah (a commentary). I do that fairly often; that's all normal. (I am woefully behind on actually posting my divrei torah, in part because, more and more, I'm speaking from detailed outlines so there's still work to do to properly write them up.)

Yesterday's haftarah reading was from Isaiah 66, which has some evocative imagery in it about Israel's redemption and restoration. After the service a congregant, one who also started caring about religion later in life, came to me. That was beautiful, she said, but how are we supposed to relate to it when that can't possibly happen? I asked her if there was anything that God couldn't do. She looked unconvinced, and I -- I, who have real trouble with the idea of yearning for the moshiach -- said that I thought it was talking about messianic times and when we get there it'll be through God's action, not ours. Human nature being what it is we may never earn such a thing, but our job is to move in the right direction, in our small way to help bring it about, and that would have to be enough.

Blink. Where did that come from?

The oddest things can serve as prompts for conversations sometimes. I don't really spend much time thinking about messianic times; I figure it'll happen or it won't, but there's not much I can do about it anyway and as I said, I don't actively yearn for it (which is my own failing, I suppose). And yet, it's obviously not something I'm completely distant from either, because I don't think I was just spouting comforting nonsense either. How...odd. Usually when people talk to me after services on one of "my" days it's to talk about something I said in my d'var.

¹ I'm trying to strike a balance between giving due credit and not mis-stating something I remember incompletely and don't have in writing. R' Berger, if you're out there and feel I'm misrepresenting you, please let me know so I can correct matters.

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.

Friday night I went to a fellow congregant's home for a monthly shabbat gathering (about which I've written before). I've been to most of these gatherings though it's mostly different people each month so I'm the outlier in that regard. (That's fine; the family-oriented service that would be my other option at my own congregation does not really work for me.) It's really refreshing to have an adult-oriented gathering -- singing, discussion, some personal sharing -- on a regular basis. This time I particularly noticed an emerging sense of community -- most of these people didn't know most of the rest and yet we clicked anyway. I've got to figure out how to bottle this and carry it into Shabbat afternoons.

There is no way that house is really only 1.6 miles from mine. The path is Pittsburgh-flat (nothing is really flat in Pittsburgh, but there were no major hills) and it took me 40 minutes to walk home. I don't mind a 40-minute walk in nice weather (which we actually had), but I was a little surprised.

Last Sunday we went to my niece's graduation (she got a master's degree from the Entertainment Technology Center at CMU). I hadn't realized the class was so large; I somehow had the impression, probably because of all the close collaboration they do, that there were maybe 25 students. I didn't count, but I think close to 100 graduated this year. Wow.

The ceremony was very well-organized. You know it's going to take a certain amount of time for each student to walk across the stage, receive a diploma, and pose for a photo with the folks on the stage (dean etc) -- so the emcee (I didn't retain her actual position) gave a short summary of each student while that was happening -- projects worked on, internships, and (where applicable) where the student would be working. She'd finish that, take three steps to be in the photo, then step back and start announcing the next student. And since all the projects were done by teams, meaning we'd be hearing the same names over and over, she managed to space out the explanations of what they were so that it wasn't tedious but we got clues about what they were rather than just names. Very smooth.

Today I got a notice in my mailbox from the neighborhood association. We have a neighborhood association? Cool! Not all of Squirrel Hill -- six blocks of our street plus some side streets. There is a block party in a few weeks that I will miss unless it rains (I'm free on the rain date), and there is apparently an email list (which I will now join). Even though we've lived here more than a decade I still do not know most of the neighbors, and it would be nice to start to fix that.

Last night was my congregation's annual talent show. (There have been two, so they can now use the word "annual".) There was quite a range of material -- poetry, Yiddish songs, 70s popular music, classical piano music, lots of show tunes, and one religious song (hi). I sang Neshama Carlebach's "Min Hametzar", a song of yearning for God. The performance wasn't perfect (better sight lines between the piano and the bimah would have helped), but I thought it went pretty well and I got a lot of compliments.

This time I was able to get someone to record it and, with permission of the author, share it (the intro contains a text overview):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wtX9yWSLwTs

Edit: lyrics and an explanation.

Ah. Sometimes a piece of music just clicks.

My congregation is having a talent show at the end of this month (for the second time). Last year I wrote a song (with piano accompaniment) for it and that went well so I was planning to do the same again this year, but the muse does not always work to deadline and what I was coming up with just wasn't working. So, a little disappointed in myself, I fell back on doing a song written by somebody else. But there was a problem: I didn't have sheet music. I didn't need it for my part, but I needed something to give the pianist.

Several attempts to reach the author produced no results and I was about to hire somebody to transcribe the music from a recording (it was beyond my skills) when I got a message from her. She put me in touch with her pianist, who provided music and transposed it into a couple adjacent keys for me after we sang/played it via phone to get candidates. (For the record, F# minor is a happy key for me. F minor is pretty good too. Nothing is ever easy.)

Tonight I met with our pianist, who sight-read a reasonably complex piano score while I sang. And we both felt really good about it. Imagine what some actual practice will do! :-) (I've been practicing on my own against an mp3 the first pianist provided, which helps me but of course doesn't do squat for our pianist.) Our pianist would also like to do more with me, and would like to play more music that I've written (once I actually, y'know, do that). Nice.

This is going to be fun!

Friday night we had a service to honor our congregation's veterans. It was very moving, including some memories from as far back as WWII. I was surprised to learn how many veterans we have, and those just the ones who responded to a request to self-identify. Seeing a good number of them there, some in uniform (or at least parts thereof), felt indescribably special.

* * *

Thought from the beit midrash (study session) after morning services: "sh'ma yisrael..." (ending "God is one") is a core tenet of Judaism and prominent in liturgy. We say this all the time. And toward the end of every service we say Aleinu, which says of the messianic era: on that day God will be one. I've wondered about the contradiction for a while and still have no answer after this discussion. Understanding this as "on that day everybody will finally agree that God is one" doesn't feel quite right to me. Does this bother anybody else?

* * *

I heard an excellent d'var torah from a fellow congregant Saturday that I've been meaning to write about, but this short note will have to do for now. The torah tells us that Yaakov loved Rachel pretty much right away, enough that he was willing to work an extra seven years to marry her after Lavan pulled a switch under the wedding canopy and slipped Leah in in Rachel's place. But the torah never actually gives us any reason to believe that she loved him. Did she? If she didn't love him, she might have been willing to help in that switch. The midrash says that she taught Leah the secret signs that she was supposed to make so that Yaakov would know it was here; the midrash's explanation of this is that Rachel was sparing Leah's honor, but another explanation might be possible as well. Interesting idea that had not occurred to me before.

Yes, that's how I'd like my erev Shabbat to be. More, please.

This week my congregation did something new, which we will do monthly. Out of a desire to reach out to more of the congregation, while recognizing that anything other than "same thing every week" will confuse some people, we're now doing the following: early tot shabbat (reaching out to young families), dinner, then a 7:00 service that's meant to be accessible to everyone without being dumbed-down for kids. Short d'var torah, no torah reading, opportunities for congregants to lead parts of the service (all English readings, this time), and an alternate set of said English readings that are a little less "lofty" than the ones in Mishkan T'filah.

That's actually not the part I liked. I think it can be made to work (though I don't think it will really reach me in particular), but the first one had some bumps and glitches. No, the other part of this is the new "Shabbat BaBayit" (Shabbat in the home) program, led by my rabbi starting at 8 in some congregant's home (different one each month). This is not a service per se; it's a gathering of a smaller number of people (as many as will fit in the house) with songs, stories, thought-provoking commentaries and discussions of same, and socializing. It is specifically for adults.

Because I'm part of the leadership of the congregation I felt an obligation to go to the service at the synagogue, at least for the first one. So I didn't make a reservation for the much-more-attractive Shabbat BaBayit because the timing didn't work. The host asked me about that and after I explained she said to come anyway; she was going to put out the desserts and stuff first, not last, and she thought I'd be able to get there without missing too much. And I did, and it was glorious, and I reluctantly left at about 10:15 because Dani would be wondering where I was (I hadn't expected it to go that long) and it was looking like a half-hour walk home, and now I want to go to all of them.

I can't go to all of them, alas. First, space is limited and I shouldn't be greedy no matter how badly I want to be, and second, not all of them will be where I can walk to them. The next one will be in Fox Chapel -- bummer. (I don't think I can impose on my rabbi, though the thought of stowing away in his car has some appeal. :-) ) But as often as I can, I want to have this thoughtful, intimate, adult-oriented, long-attention-span experience of Shabbat evening. Our morning minyan is wonderfully full of spirit and I have long been a little disappointed that we don't capture that on Friday night. Now we do.

I've never really been able to make the "home" part of Jewish life click. I think it's because one person isn't critical mass (or at least this one person); even when I invite a bunch of people over for Shabbat lunch, we don't manage this level of engagement. We have great conversations and sometimes they're even about torah, but it doesn't feel spiritual, merely social. (Social's not bad; I'd just like to go beyond.) I've been to occasional Shabbat meals in other homes where that spirit was there more, and they've always been families that probably do this together every week. Even if I could do that to Dani, which I can't, we don't have a core group of like-minded people who would get together to do this every week without being led by our rabbi.

But hey, once a month in months when it's within, say, two miles of my house, I can get a Shabbat evening that is matched only by our annual Shabbaton. Score!

My rabbi was away this Shabbat and last, and the associate rabbi (formerly known here as "the third rabbi" or "the educator rabbi") said he'd like to include lay people in services instead of just doing everything himself (yay!). I'm now the head of the Neshama Center (um, is complicated -- not just a worship committee but go ahead and think of it that way for now), so he asked me to invite some people from our group. Since I got to do a service myself in July under similar circumstances I deferred to others this time. Then this Thursday at the board meeting the cantorial soloist told me that one of the people for this week was sick and she wanted me to fill in. People told me it looked very smooth, as if this set of people was used to working together. Nifty. :-) (The cantorial soloist and I, and my rabbi for that matter, have worked together enough to be able to sort of read each others' minds on the bimah. Glad to see it works with the other rabbi too.)

This spirit of inclusiveness extended to the morning bar-mitzvah service in one way. (This is the sanctuary service with family-centric attendance, not the regular morning minyan with a steady community. We're talking about ways to fix that but it's a hard problem endemic to the Reform movement.) Obviously the associate rabbi can read torah -- you won't graduate rabbinic school without demonstrating capability there -- but instead he invited another lay reader and me to read for these two bar-mitzvah services. The other one did last week and I did this week, each of reading everything except the part that the student read. Mine went very well, I thought -- I made two mistakes requiring correction, one of which was accidentally over-shooting an aliya boundary (I realized it at the same time as the rabbi). The bar mitzvah chanted very well; afterward I whispered to him that he was welcome to come back and read for us any time. :-) (Articulate, on key, and it was clear that he understood what the text he was reading meant.) I hope we'll see more of him.

The typical Reform bar-mitzvah service is somewhat tedious (to those outside the family) in some respects; there's a reason the president of the URJ once called it "king for a day". Yesterday's was a little better than I'm used to in some ways; I suspect that's the handiwork of the associate rabbi, and if so I'll be interested to see where this goes. Other aspects still require a lot of work, but I'm glad to have good relationships with both our rabbis such that I can talk with them about these things.

This rabbi was originally hired to focus on education and not be on the bimah much; with the (planned) departure of another associate rabbi earlier this summer, we are back down to two. So roles have shuffled around somewhat and he'll be on the bimah more. Between his service-leading skills, his excellent sermon-craft, and his interest in involving lay people more, I'm looking forward to this.

Monica

Here we go again

Sukkot

rising to the challenge

a Shabbat story

gaming outreach?

a few Rosh Hashana links

authenticity vs. accessibility

so much meaning in one capital letter

#SaraiToo

a conversation snippet

inclusive kavanah

inclusion: doing it wrong

Ruach services

Ruach services

machzor pre-review

Braille + Hebrew?

excerpts from 2013

an unexpected conversation

Rosh Hashana (2nd day)

random bits

congregational talent show

musical happiness

Shabbat short takes

Shabbat evening

Shabbat with the new(ish) rabbi

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