cellio | Entries tagged with rabbinics

My congregation has an evening service on Thursdays. (Long story.) Usually one of the rabbis leads it; if neither is available, usually I get a phone call. Tonight there was no rabbi and no phone call (something must have come up), so at five minutes past the start time the consensus was that I should lead it.

That by itself would not be worthy of a post.

Two of my friends in my congregation are sisters, and their father died while I was out of town. I missed shiva, but they came tonight. We talked a little before the service; they said their dad had had as perfect a death as you can, at the age of 93, surrounded by family, and not in pain. They're feeling the loss, of course, but they said he was at peace and that helped.

It's customary for the leader of this service to give a two-minute d'var torah, generally on the weekly portion. See previous comment about having had no notice. Normally I can wing it; if nothing else, every Thursday morning I find some bit of midrash to tell to the morning minyan, so I can usually use that as a starting point if I need to. And I'm starting to develop a small repertoire of "d'var-lets" that I can spin up without falling on my face.

But it felt wrong. At least half the people there tonight were mourners, including the sisters, and I didn't want to just talk about Moshe preaching to the people or retelling the revelation at Sinai. So I improvised massively: I started by talking about what I studied last week at Hebrew College, used that as a basis for talking about Moshe's achievements through faith and despite adversity (and that they started late in life), and that this kind of leadership is inspirational, and then I talked about how we can all emulate Moshe to some level if we want to and it's inspiring to see parents or grandparents serving as models for us by doing so. It didn't come out as well as I would have liked, though the two sisters both thanked me and said this sounded just like their father, so that's good.

Comforting words do not come naturally to me, so after the fact I feel like I was playing with fire. Hmm. I guess it's good I didn't have time to think about it.

This morning we went to HUC for a double bar mitzvah and then we scattered, mostly into the old city. It was a good day, though mostly unstructured.

( service, old city, group dynamics, hebrew, reflections )

Current Location: Yerushalayim

( a walk through Yemein Moshe ) ( speaker, havdalah ) ( other bits )

Next up: SCA event, Yad l'Kashish, the old city, and more -- but not tonight, because the wake-up call tomorrow is at 6:00 (!) so we can get on the road by 7:30. Tomorrow we head north.

Current Location: Yerushalayim

I'm reading torah this Shabbat, which means I'm also speaking briefly Shabbat morning. I recently got some valuable tutelage in sermon-craft, which I would like to apply (even though it's really a micro-sermon or micro-d'var). This involves approaching it a little differently, and I was a little stuck for how to start, being new to this.

There are several themes I could develop from this portion, and I was about to post an entry about that, when bam -- the full outline, including how to start (the hard part), announced itself. I don't think that's ever happened to me before, at least not that dramatically.

Now, to write. Tomorrow we'll see if it was actually a good idea. :-)

Friday night's service went really well. I got lots of compliments, including from both rabbis. Whee! Constructive criticism (which I explicitly requested; how else will I get better?) will come later.

I did pretty much all of the service up to the torah service, except that the cantorial soloist led some stuff. I did some parts that she normally does; she was very gracious about it (and offered, in most of those cases).

I was confident, comfortable, and apparently smiling a lot. I'm told my articulation was very good, and that the 90-something-year-old who often has difficulty understanding people understood me just fine. I feel that I didn't look at the congregation while speaking (reading) as much as I wanted to, though I tried some things to make this not completely suck. (No one wants to look at a service leader who has his face buried in the book.) While reading a passage aloud you can read a few words ahead to the end of the sentence and then look up while reciting those from short-term memory; I did that a lot. Of course, that worked as well as it did because the prayerbook is familiar. I had more trouble doing this during my d'var torah even though I wrote those words.

( t'filah experiment )

( d'var torah )

One thing I definitely need to work on: rehearse the ad-libs. Yeah, contradiction in terms -- what I mean is the bits like inviting the bat-mitzvah student to lead the one prayer she did, making references to the handouts, inviting silent prayer... all the stuff that doesn't exist as words in the prayerbook. I practiced the book; I needed more practice with the other bits.

Speaking of the bat-mitzvah student, she was amazing. She was poised and knew her stuff, and she has an excellent voice. If I hadn't had lunch constraints, I would have gone to the bat-mitzvah service this morning (after my regular service) at least through the torah reading and her d'var torah.

( program inserts )

We have a new associate rabbi (just ordained, from Jerusalem), and this Shabbat the senior rabbi was away so he was on his own. So much for a gradual introduction. :-)

He did a very good job with the Friday-night service. He seemed at ease on the bimah, and he spoke well during the sermon. (Not reading and mostly not from notes either; I want to learn how to do that!) I know that he feels a little uncertain about his English (not his first language), but really, he did fine. Nothing to worry about there. (Hebrew aside: he pronounces the ayin. I can't quite figure out how; more observation is needed.)

He had never been to the informal morning service, so he asked the chair of the worship committee to have someone in the group lead it and the chair asked me. (I told him to give others the chance first and he did ask a couple people, who declined. Only later did it occur to me that maybe some people are nervous about leading in front of a rabbi, as opposed to when we're on our own. I, on the other hand, am not bothered by that in the least, any more. :-) )

( Read more... )

I'm not a rabbi, but this is the Shabbat when I played one at my synagogue. Overall, that went quite well!

( Friday night )

( torah study )

( bar mitzvah )

All together, this was the longest torah portion I've learned (one chapter, 23 verses, one full column -- and it had the decency to actually fall out as one column, so I didn't have to roll the scroll mid-reading). I read different, overlapping parts Friday night and Saturday morning; I didn't read all that at once. I realize that to some of my readers this sounds piddly; a full parsha is generally three or four chapters (sometimes more), and readers routinely prepare that much. My congregation doesn't read the entire parsha -- never has, so far as I know. But still, this was a milestone for me.

I need to get some hair clips or something. Because I have medium-length hair and need to get fairly close to the torah scroll to read, my hair was hanging down while I read Friday night. It wasn't blocking my view, but a couple people told me that it meant they couldn't see my face. I wouldn't have thought that my face would be an interesting visual target at that point, but I guess I'm wrong. I think wearing a ponytail on the bimah would seem too casual and unprofessional, so I need to figure out something more decorative. I haven't got a hair-aesthetics gene, so this could be interesting.

I really enjoyed this stint in my rabbi's shoes, and I hope I get to do it again someday. I have high hopes that sometime this fall I will lead a Friday service when my rabbi will be there to see me.

( weekday minyan )

Friday night I met next week's bar mitzvah and his parents. They seem like nice folks, and I'm glad we got to say hello to each other sometime before the rehearsal on Tuesday. They didn't stay for the oneg after the service, so I didn't get much chance to talk with them. Because I am not quick enough on the uptake, I failed to thank them for allowing me to play a role in their simcha. Must say so at the rehearsal. After all, they are making a sacrifice and taking a chance; when they started planning we expected to have a rabbi available that week, and they only have my rabbi's word that I'm up to the task. I want to make sure they're comfortable.

Shabbat morning we had a first-time torah reader. He did a good job and had some interesting things to say about the portion (which, alas, have not cohered in my brain). Every time a new person from our minyan decides to take a shot at reading torah and leading that part of the service I do a little happy dance inside. :-)

I will be conducting the torah study next week. (I had been assuming that the chair of the worship committee would do it, but he'll be out of town.) We're in Va'etchanan, in the repetition of the ten commandments. After an animated discussion these last couple weeks about "do not murder", next week we move on to "don't commit adultery". So I have to think about how to structure that and have some provocative conversation-starters on tap. This is one part of the job I'm not very good at yet -- I can participate in study (though less effectively at 8:30 in the morning), but guiding it is something I need more practice with. So, I'm getting practice, which is good. (I've done this in this group twice before, once with preparation and once with 30 seconds' notice.)

The first draft of Friday's sermon is almost done. I need some transitional bits in a few places and a better wrap-up. Then I need to put it aside for a day or two and then revise.

The part assignments for Friday's service are all taken care of. I was surprised to learn that of the four people from the worship committee (other than me) who are involved, only one is comfortable leading the Hebrew reading of ma'ariv aravim -- and I'm already using her for the torah service. I could do that part, of course, but then it would be obvious to the congregation at large that the person leading that section couldn't, and I don't want to cause embarrassment. So I asked the cantorial soloist to do it; that'll make it look like I planned to give her a role that's a little different. (She'll already be up there, having just lead barchu.) I think I'm starting to get a little better at those "people skills" I hear so much about. :-)

I've got the torah reading pretty much under control. Tomorrow I will move from practicing with the nice, neat print-out from Trope Trainer to practicing from the sometimes-fuzzy, sometimes-sloppy calligraphy in a printed tikkun. That's more realistic. (I am also promised access to the actual scroll for practice.)

All together, I'm doing, in one week, several parts of the job my rabbi does so smoothly (and, seemingly, effortlessly) -- leading services (two), reading torah, giving a sermon, conducting study, and coordinating the efforts of other congregants involved in the services. Some of my preparation has been spread out over several weeks; my rabbi does this every single week. Of course, he doesn't have another job -- but he does have a family, pastoral duties, administrative duties, community duties, and more. Still, this is all providing an interesting window into (part of) my rabbi's world.

Fortunately, all the rabbis in town have cross-coverage agreements, so there is zero chance that I would be called on to do a funeral while he's gone.

( Read more... )

A few months ago my rabbi gave me a Friday-night service to lead, which will be next week (July 14). There have been some changes since I first wrote about my plans, so here's an update on my thinking. ( Read more... )

I gather that rabbis draw a real distinction between a "sermon" and a "d'var torah". My impression, based only on seeing these terms used in the wild, is that a sermon is more formal (in writing and presentation) and, generally, less focused on the text. A d'var torah ("word(s) of torah") is commentary on the text; a sermon might (or might not) use the text as a jumping-off point to talk about something else, and is more likely to involve exhortation of some sort. (I welcome elucidation on all this.)

Most of what gets presented in our Shabbat morning minyan are divrei torah, not sermons, even if I've sometimes used the word "sermon" to describe something I've presented. (I figure that term is more accessible to my non-Jewish readers.) I usually use the text as a starting point but don't focus only on the text; however, I stick pretty close to it most of the time. I do try to give people something to think about in their own lives (I use the word "we" frequently, but not "you"), but the sermon-style call to action feels presumptuous to me for a lay leader.

Actually. the regulars in our group have different styles, which people have commented on to me. One person (who is fluent in Hebrew) tends to talk about subtleties of meaning in the text; another gives a lesson of some sort, maybe based on word meanings or more likely based on connections to other text and historical context. I tend to try to apply the text in some way, making the leap from "what this says" to "what this might mean for us". Another person tends to seek out and summarize commentaries from other sources. We have a variety of divrei torah.

My rabbi -- who, after all, addresses the congregation almost every week -- often gives sermons that are not strongly tied to the parsha. One reason, as I aluded to before, is that the rabbi, being the spiritual leader of a congregation, is in a position to nudge people in particular directions, and people want to hear not just how he reads the text but what he thinks are the important issues for us to be thinking about and applying (text-based or not). Another reason, I suspect, is that it adds variety; if you address the congregation every week for years, both you and they are probably happier if you sometimes do something other than talk about the parsha. But in our Shabbat morning service, where any given person only speaks once every several weeks (and only for a few minutes) and we've only been doing lay presentations for two and a half years, the strong tradition is for a parsha-based d'var torah.

This ramble is prompted by the fact that I've ended up with Tazria-Metzora (the leprosy portion) again, and I haven't a clue what I'm going to talk about yet. The obvious thing to talk about with this portion is lashon hara (hurtful speech), because the rabbis hold that this is the cause for the affliction described in the portion. But I've done that before, more than once, and I'd like to find something else to talk about, while continuing my practice of somehow making it relevant to the listeners.

I recently attended a study session about which I want to record some "meta" (structural) notes before I forget. In a lot of ways it reminded me of what our group attempted, but didn't do nearly as well, in the Sh'liach K'hilah program last summer.

( Read more... )

I'm feeling a little grumpy about the Shabbat service I'm helping to lead this week. I post this not to gripe about the people involved, but to help me understand what's happening and reduce the odds that I'll do this to someone else someday.

( Read more... )

( visitation )

( funeral )

( an observation about music )

( an observation about eulogies )

( later )

Today ian_gunn and eclectic_1 came for lunch with their two daughters. It was nice to have some time to catch up with them; we pretty much never get up to New Hampshire and with small children they don't always get to Pennsic. It's unfortunate that a sad occasion brought us together, but at least we did manage to get together.

The burial is tomorrow in Johan's home town, so the family went there today. Ian and Eclectic One are staying at the house through the weekend, which works out well for everyone -- they get a place to stay and the house isn't looter-bait. (I'm horrified by the apparent trend of people scanning obituaries and robbing houses during funerals.)

I studied with my rabbi today. When I got there he said that if it's ok with me he wants to study a different section of talmud than where we are right now. Fine with me, I said. After we laid the foundation, he raised an issue of practical application. We've done that before, but this time we argued about it more. It's a real unsettled issue in our community, he said, and he had me arguing both sides -- "ok, then if you say X, the logical response to that would be Y, and the logical response to that would be Z, and...". I don't think I came up with anything he hadn't already come up with, but he was definitely working me harder than usual, and I appreciate it.

He also asked me to do a shiva minyan tonight, and asked if I'd like to chant torah for the high holy days. (Woot!)

I feel like I've moved up to a new level. Nifty! It's not that any one of those would have been all that unusual on its own (well, maybe high-holy-day torah reading...), but the combination of them all in one 45-minute meeting was novel.

(Yes, he agreed that learning high-holy-day trope in this timeframe would be impractical, and I should use the trope I already know.)

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 mis-characterized this program before. (To be fair, so did one of the organizers.) I had said that last year was focused on information and this year was focused on practical skills. But that's not correct; we learned a lot about practical skills last year and we certainly had some classes this year that were not directly tied into skills we will use. No, a better characterization, I think, is that last year was about learning how and this year was about doing and being evaluated.

So, for example, when I saw two sessions about homiletics (think "preaching", but it's broader than that) on the schedule, I got excited. I thought these would be classes where we'd get a lot of practical instruction. I think the view of the program organizers is that we got that last year; what these sessions actually were were student presentations for critique. That's valuable (I certainly learned from mine), but I was also hoping for some more structured learning in this area. We barely scratched the surface of the topic last year and hadn't come together for any sort of "what have we learned about this in the last year in our own congregations?" discussion before we went off and did it. So there was a chunk missing.

The text studies were a little better in that regard, but here too I had different expectations based on the advance schedule. I saw daily text study and said "woo hoo! we're going to get down and dirty with our sources for a whole week with rabbis who can guide us!". I was practically salivating. This turned out to be the student-led sessions (after the first day). Now these were generally very good and it was certainly a valuable experience for all of us; I'm not dissing student-led study. But again, it violated my expectations. Here, unlike with homiletics, they did first give us one faculty-led text study (as a model) and a class about text study (specifically, learning styles), so they gave us more of the tools we needed before we went off and did it ourselves. I wanted that with homiletics too. Pretty much everything I know about homiletics comes from observing other people (most specifically my rabbi); I think I've figured out some things that way, but before doing it for critique it would have been valuable to formally look at some of those techniques.

( classes and stuff )

( next steps )

Today was a mixed day. Most of the classes were quite good; one was not (and I want my hour and a half back). My group's text study is tomorrow morning and there has definitely been tension within the group as different styles and goals have clashed, but I hope things will be better tomorrow and that if there are any lingering issues we'll be able to talk about them.

( Read more... )

The feel of this year's program is somewhat different from last year. I don't know how much of that is me, how much is this particular group of people, and how much is the program itself. I was talking with a classmate tonight who's also feeling it.

I've sometimes described Level 1 as "open brain, insert knowledge, shake until blended". It was overwhelming but exhilerating. I didn't get much sleep but I rode that wave for a week and it was grand. Yes, of course there were problems, but the overall feeling was still "wow". This year is positive -- don't get me wrong! -- but the balance of content is different and I'm having more trouble catching that wave.

They gave us an hour and a half a day (well, less any transit time) to work on assignments; one of the problems last year was not having enough time to work on the services, so that was good. But they gave us a second group assignment and two individual assignments that occupied that work time and then some, so it feels like I'm learning less. Yes, if we punt on one or both of the individual assignments the world will not end, and they encouraged us to do so if we need to, but I'm here to learn as much as I can.

Yes, the work time is being spent learning practical skills (as side-effects of the assignments), but I think I'm learning them more slowly than if I were being guided by a teacher, so the density of learning is lower this year -- same amount of time, less overall learning. I don't know what they could reasonably do about that, mind. Maybe, just as the service groups have assigned advisors, the text-study groups should have had advisors too. That might have eliminated some of the disconnects in my group. Yes, we're all adults and we can ask for help when we need it, but having someone there who spots the landmine before we saunter up to it and say "ooh, what's this shiny thing?" might be helpful.

I should stress again that I've taken a lot of good classes this week. I do not at all regret coming; I just hoped for a slightly different experience than I'm getting.

Mind, some of it is certainly me. More specifically, this week has done a lot to convince me that I would never hack it in rabbinic school, at least at HUC, and while I wasn't planning to try to go to rabbinic school any time soon, it hurts to see that thought dashed. I wanted the decision against it to be my decision, dammit. This is, obviously, not an issue that the organizers of the program could or should address. My baggage, my problem. And I didn't realize it would even be a factor, so I didn't pack the right things in that baggage.

Shabbat afternoon I got a phone call from my rabbi. Could I lead a shiva minyan that night at 7? 7 is rather before sundown these days, so I asked if it was in Squirrel Hill. No, he said, Oakland.

I hesitated. He heard the pause. I said I try not to drive on Shabbat. He said I was pretty far down on the list of people he could call. I hesitated a bit and then said yes, I'd do it.

( omphalokepsis ahead )

( liturgical oddities )

I stayed for a while after the service; they seemed to want that. The person I know introduced me to assorted relatives, one of whom sits on the national movement's board of trustees. (Or directors. I'm not sure which we have.) He asked if I'd been through the para-rabbinic program and I said I'm in it now. We talked for a while about the program, which he feels is very important. He had been to services the previous night and asked me some things about our congregation; he seemed to be favorably impressed with us. I'll try to remember to pass that on to my rabbi.

He asked me where I'd learned Hebrew and I said it was mostly by coming to services and studying torah and a little from a couple classes. He then asked me, in Hebrew, if I speak Hebrew, at which point I, err, provided a clear demonstration that comprehension is easier than generation. I knew what he said; I knew what I wanted to say; I didn't know how to formulate it. (And, well, I didn't know one verb I wanted to use.) So I shrugged and said "katan" -- which means "small" but probably doesn't mean "a little", but that was the best I could do. This is the second time this has happened to me, so I should prepare an answer for time #3.

( language stuff )

The interview meme is back. If you want me to ask you questions, post and say so (and then you answer them in your journal).

1. Your four favorite blogging topics are food, gaming, Judaism, and work. Does this represent a fair division of your life? Would you change the relative proportions, if you could? ( Read more... )

2. There are lots of similarities between being a technical documentation author and being a rabbi arguing over the mishnah. Do you like this analogy? How does it make you feel? ( Read more... )

3. You get the chance to make a major manufacturer or producer of goods and services introduce one new thing that you really want. It has to be currently physically possible (i.e. no teleport booths, no fusion reactors) and it will be priced realistically. What do you want? ( Read more... )

4. What's the biggest threat to your continued happiness? ( Read more... )

5. How many fences around fences do you feel comfortable drawing? As a Reform Jew, you have a duty to interpret for yourself. For example, we separate milk and meat because we are commanded not to boil a kid in it's mother's milk. The first fence is extending that to not cooking any meat in any milk. The second fence is to prohibit eating meat and milk at the same meal. The third fence extends this to not eating chicken (considered meat) with cheese even though chickens are in no way mammals, chicken eggs can be eaten with cheese, and fish can be eaten with cheese. Feel free to go with other rules, if you'd like. ( Read more... )

For a while I've been compiling a mental list (which I should turn into a written list before it rots) of tips and tricks for leading services. I mean to someday share this list with my congregation's other lay leaders (after running it all by my rabbi). These tips come from learning on the job (a lot), observing my rabbi (a lot), formal education (a little), and watching other lay leaders (a fair bit). This weekend I observed something kind of related that I don't want to lose track of.

What I noticed was that the rabbi sprinkled his talk liberally with Hebrew words, some well-known and others that could be understood from context even if you didn't previously know the words. He never used the language in a way that would leave an uneducated listener completely in the dark, but he also did not shy away from using Hebrew. I like this, a lot, and in my experience the Orthodox do this a fair bit in general. It's something that Reform Jews could learn from.

I speculate that Reform leaders, wanting to be as open and accessible as possible, shy away from this for fear of losing people. And there may be some merit in that fear, as members of Reform congregations are less likely to have gone to a full-time Hebrew school and thus been able to absorb more of the references. On the other hand, it's not as if I had that experience or have become fluent, and I can generally follow these conversations. Given a statement like "when Moshe brought the luchot down from Mount Sinai and saw the people worshipping the golden calf...", don't most people understand that "luchot" is "tablets"? That's the sort of context I'm talking about. That, and sometimes people use a term and immediately translate -- "Nadav and Avihu made an aish zarah, an alien fire, on the altar...". This just makes the educational aspect a little more explicit.

As with everything, context and audience matter. When my rabbi and I talk he uses a lot more Hebrew than he does when giving a sermon, for instance. When friends and I are discussing some bit of torah or halacha the Hebrew terms fly, though I wouldn't do that when talking with random members of my congregation. But I wonder if we don't shy away from Hebrew a little too much. It's happened in the liturgy already (and Hebrew is now coming back into favor in the last couple decades), and that avoidance helped to move Hebrew from "normal" to "strange and foreign". But maybe we should be pulling small bits of the language back into the normal lexicon of synagogue discourse, not just in worship but in conversation, as a way of making Hebrew seem less foreign and scary to folks.

Nick asked me these questions a while back, but I never got the email notification and I didn't notice. If anyone else thinks I'm ignoring questions, please let me know.

1. How has the field of software documentation evolved during your career?

( Read more... )

2. How did growing up in the SCA community in particular influence who you are now? Would you have grown into more or less the same person in a different social environment, such as your current congregation?

( Read more... )

3. If you could become a pen pal of any person from any time, with whom would you correspond? (To avoid paradox, assume that the person exists in a parallel universe, so you could even correspond with yourself from the past without causing reality to implode.)

( Read more... )

4. Alternatively, what do you do if the genie allows you to undo after seeing the consequences? Specifically, you may once instantly revert reality to a backup copy of the moment before he would have contacted you. Does your answer change if you could remember your experiences from the forked reality?

( Read more... )

5. How would you characterize the stories that you most enjoy reading or watching? How have these desiderata changed over time?

( Read more... )

Here's how this works:

If you want to be interviewed, leave a comment saying so.
I will respond, asking you five questions.
You'll update your journal with my five questions and your five answers.
You'll include this explanation.
You'll ask other people five questions when they want to be interviewed.

I've had two glimpses into the inner workings of (some) synagogue leadership this week.

I'm a member of this year's nominating committee. This year we're also nominating the executive committee (last year was just board members). The executive committee consists of the president and three VPs (with an obvious line of succession), and also a treasurer, financial secretary, secretary, and a couple assistants. My understanding had been that getting onto the VP track leads to eventually being president, but that the other positions are not tied into that.

At this week's meeting of the nominating committee, though, the chair said something like "so-and-so (currently on the exec committee) is interested in keeping his current job but isn't interested in moving up the ranks" (so he was willing to step aside). That's when I learned that, actually, it's assumed that once you're on the executive committee you'll eventually move up to a VP and thence to president. How odd.

Our committee suggested that it's more important to have people who are both competent and interested holding positions like treasurer, and if such people don't have other aspirations that's fine with us. Two past presidents of the congregation thought this was right too, so it's obviously not a hard-and-fast rule. But still -- the skills that make one a good treasurer aren't obviously related to those that make one a good secretary or a good president. I'm still planning to insert myself into the budget committee, mind, but now I know that I probably shouldn't let them eventually make me treasurer. :-)

This morning at breakfast after minyan there was some discussion of that congregation's current rabbinic search. (Their rabbi gave notice a few weeks ago.) One of the minyanaires who (I gather) is on their board or executive committee had copies of a survey the Rabbinic Assembly asked the congregation to fill out. (The RA matches available rabbis with congregations.) She was soliciting feedback from the people there. I asked to look at the questions because I'm curious, though it would be wrong for me to contribute answers. (I'm not a member of that congregation. I'm just this person who shows up and now leads services.)

There were some interesting questions, including many that I wouldn't have thought to ask. (Obviously they have many more clues about this than I do. :-) ) They asked about congregational customs in a number of areas, including the role of women. (This is a Conservative congregation, so not automatically egalitarian.) They asked about attitudes toward intermarriages, conversions, and (I think) gays. They asked what activities in the last year the congregation is most proud of, what things the congregation does not want the rabbi to change, and what things the congregation does want the rabbi to change. They asked what the most recent major decision regarding worship was and how it was made, and what major decision the congregation expects to be next. These are all good questions -- in addition to providing raw data they give the potential rabbi a feel for what the congregation is like even before a phone screen happens.

I was amused by one question: "After leading services, what are the three most important jobs of the rabbi?". This is interesting because of the built-in assumption. Actually, at many congregations the rabbi doesn't lead services, or does so only for Shabbat and Yom Tov (that's the case at this one). And if a congregation has more than one rabbi, I gather that it's fairly common for leading services to fall primarily to one. I know a congregational rabbi who never leads services (except in an emergency); she was hired to oversee the religious school, not to lead worship, and she likes it that way.

Ok. I get it now.

When I had been going to morning services for not very long, I noticed a pattern: people in the congregation were given aliyot (saying the blessings for torah reading; this is an honor) in a very rough rotation, but the guy who led services every day never got one. I think, in the 6+ years I've been going there, I've seen him get one once. (Granted, I only go once a week and there are torah readings twice a week plus a few. But still.) The torah reader almost never gets one either, because he's, well, reading. (While historically the person who said the blessings would also read, that hasn't been routinely true for a very long time. The convention now is that the reader and the blesser are two different people except under special circumstances.)

So anyway, that seemed ironic: the aliya is the usual and customary way of honoring someone just a little bit, even if you know it's going to come around to you eventually because you need three per torah reading and there are only 25 people in the minyan, but it's still an honor. And the people who serve the community so there can be a service at which to hand out aliyot never get that honor themselves. I felt bad for the folks in this situation.

But now I am that person (in small scale). I led the entire service this morning; next week the regular guy is going to sit in the congregation rather than up on the bimah (where he was today just in case I needed him to bail me out). I've been gradually working up to this for months, and now I'm there. The training wheels are off and I'm still vertical.

And y'know what? I haven't had an aliya in months and that's just fine. I feel no lack. Getting to lead the service is also an honor, a huge one in fact, and I don't need to be the person who says those blessings when I say so many others and get to spend the entire torah service in close proximity to the sefer torah every week anyway.

That a community is willing to (collectively) say "we entrust you as our representative in prayer" is a pretty darn big honor in its own right, after all. I won't turn down an aliya should it happen in the future, but I'd be just as happy to see it go to that quiet person in the back row.

I spoke with my rabbi this morning. He had already heard a little of what happened Saturday, though I'm not sure what or from whom.

He re-affirmed that the lines of authority run from him (and the associate rabbi) to me and, if I choose, to anyone I explicitly delegate to. So I am within rights to make decisions like the one I did on Saturday, and he completely supports me. He agrees with me that ranty-guy's anger was way out of proportion to any perceived slight.

He urged me to adopt a new mantra if this happens again: "I will not be spoken to in this way". If ranty-guy goes off again, I will say that and, if he continues, walk away.

He thanked me for telling him about this (I had apologized for bothering him with it). He will follow up with ranty-guy. Also, he said, in the future I should feel free to use him ("perhaps you should take it up with the rabbi").

Have I said lately how great my rabbi is?

Monica

not exactly a shiva minyan

Thursday in Jerusalem

Shabbat afternoon

wrriting a sermon

Shabbat service

Shabbat with the new rabbi

Shabbat

assorted congregational doings

last few days

planning a Shabbat service

sermons, divrei torah, and routine

meta: conducting torah study (etc)

logistics of group-run services

funeral etc

meeting with my rabbi

meeting with my rabbi

Friday and Shabbat (written Saturday night)

Thursday

shiva minyan, and community versus personal needs

interviewed by dsrtao

using language

interviewed by nickjong

synagogue leadership behind the scenes

honors in the synagogue

followup on ranty guy

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