Monica

My synagogue has gone through some changes in the last couple years, on top of the changes forced on all of us by the pandemic. Last year we hired a new rabbi and this year we hired a new cantor, and in-person services are more of a thing than they were, so lots of stuff is new together.

The rabbi and the cantor work well together. I already knew this from the morning minyan, but it also carried over to the formal high-holy-day services with all their extra stuff. Later, when all the holidays are over (they aren't yet), I want to ask the rabbi about some of the choices he made, but it was generally fine. It was nice to be together again.

I was asked to read torah, even though I said I'd pretty much have to memorize it because of the vision issues that are why I stopped reading torah on Shabbat. The readings for Rosh Hashana aren't that long, so I could memorize it, and anyway I don't know the special trope for the day so I was going to have to learn the music by rote anyway. That all went fine. I had the last aliyah and I noticed that other people were translating after their readings, so I followed suit on the spur of the moment. Later I realized that most of the others were reading translations, not doing it on the fly. (I'm not fluent in Hebrew, but I knew this part.) Ironically, I did need to look at the scroll for that part and there were some stumbles as a result, but on Yom Kippur several people stopped me to tell me how much they liked my RH reading, with specific compliments. Wow.

We have programming all day on Yom Kippur so you don't have to leave if you don't want to. The "learning" slot had two class options, fewer than in the past but I think this worked together. I went to a very good class on the Vidui (confessional) prayer, taught by someone who used to be our associate rabbi 15-20 years ago. (He moved away for another pulpit and returned to Pittsburgh a couple years ago, taking an educational position rather than a pulpit.) We did a close reading of the text compared to the translation in our prayerbook and talked a lot about the word aval.

In some years I've gotten to the end of Yom Kippur on a high, feeling scrubbed clean and energized and stuff. That didn't happen this year. I think some of that is due to some liturgical choices they made. I wonder how much of it is due to having finally been to a traditional Yom Kippur service (last two years) and now I'm more keenly aware of the differences.

For festivals we combine with another congregation and Sukkot was there not here. "There" is a two-mile walk each way for me, so I went to Beth Shalom, a Conservative congregation that also has an occasional musical Shabbat evening service that I've gone to. The people there were very welcoming, the service was complete and yet efficient, and the leaders and speakers were good. I was surprised to be offered an honor (carrying the first torah scroll). I had pleasant conversations with several people I didn't know at the kiddush after. I wonder if I should try to go there next Yom Kippur.

We've been able to have most of our meals in the sukkah this week, though a couple got rained out. This late in the year I didn't have expectations.

Today's daf bit is a seasonal diversion into tractate Sukkah. During the week-long festival we are commanded to "dwell" in sukkot (booths), which the rabbis understand to mean eating and sleeping. But we learn in a mishna (Sukkah 25a) that casual eating is permitted outside the sukkah. What is casual eating? In the g'mara (26a) R' Yosef says the volume of two or three eggs, but Abaye says this sometimes suffices for a whole meal! Rather, Abaye says, it's only as much as a student eats before proceeding to the college assembly (a small breakfast, it sounds like). The g'mara continues: casual eating is permitted outside the sukkah, but not casual sleeping (a nap). Why not? Because you might sleep soundly and it turns out to be a real sleep, which you were required to do in the sukkah. Rami b. Ezekiel says a casual sleep means the time it takes to walk one hundred cubits.

Today's daf is Menachot 48.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

It's been rainy all week here, which made putting the sukkah up (holiday begins tonight) challenging. I briefly considered doing it last night after Shabbat, but I didn't want to bother the neighbors with late-ish noise from assembling the metal frame. I figured if it was still raining this afternoon I'd do it then anyway. I won't melt.

The rain stopped today around 2:30. Huzzah. I've got assembly down to an hour, which is why I could try to wait out the weather. (I had previously hauled all the parts out of the garage onto the patio.)

While the lattice walls are attractive, I'm starting to think that cloth walls would be easier to manage. I can probably find attractive cloth. (Though I'd have to, *gasp*, sew.)

Chag sameach to those who celebrate.

Tomorrow night begins the week-long festival of Sukkot (aka "Booths"), during which we "dwell" in booths outdoors. ("Dwell" has been interpreted to mean "eat, and if you live in a place where it's safe you should sleep out". This city-dweller declines the latter.) I've been watching the little booths bloom across Squirrel Hill during my commute.

Number of days among the next eight when rain is not forecast: one.

Pbbbtht! Well, we'll see what happens.

The rabbis are very practical. Since Sukkot is called "zman simchateinu", or "season of our rejoicing", and since soggy dining is not very joyous, if it's raining you stay inside (except on the first night when you still should at least go out and have some bread to fulfill the commandment).

Sukkot started with rain, as in this thematic haiku from richardf8. Saturday I noticed that the lights in the sukkah were out; Sunday we determined that power to the entire garage (from which that extension cord was run) was out. The garage outlet doesn't have a GFI and the breaker wasn't tripped; I had not previously known that a GFI might be elsewhere on the circuit. It turns out that the line from the basement to the garage goes through an outlet in the furnace room that has a GFI, and something -- presumably the rain and my lights -- tripped it. (Mind, I've been using that configuration of lights for ten years without prior problems...) There is now an annotation in the breaker box about this.

Last week Rabbi Symons and I completed our study of midrash on the Akeidah. (I still owe a couple write-ups.) Saying kaddish d'rabbanan at that point was quite satisfying. He asked me what's next, I said I picked last time, and he proposed something that sounds good to me. (I'll reveal it after he confirms that there is a sufficient body of interesting material.)

A new Dunkin' Donuts opened in Squirrel Hill last week. I knew they were getting kosher certification for the doughnuts; I hadn't realized that they were getting it for everything. So they sell breakfast sandwiches but that's not really bacon or sausage. (I haven't heard if it's turkey or soy.)

Two interesting links from magid: the referendum (or mid-life re-evaluations) and watching whales watching us.

From chaiya: Improve Everywhere does invisible dogs. Nicely done, including some of the community response. :-)

From a coworker: unfortunate domain names.

Yesterday the person in charge of this asked me if I can read torah in two weeks, which will be the Shabbat in the middle of Sukkot. All the holidays (and their intermediate days, as in this case) have special torah readings, so I asked what it was. No one present remembered. I said sure, I'd take care of it; I could look this up at home. I hoped I wasn't biting off something that would be too hard on that timescale, but figured I could roll with it, whatever it was.

I pulled it up in Trope Trainer today (forget about its cantilation features; it lets me print nice big copies to practice from!) and started to read. I fell into chanting it easily -- too easily. Err, wait a minute, I recognize that turn of phrase. Heh -- I chanted this exact passage last winter. Ok, this just got easier. :-)

The Sukkot portion is from Ki Tisa, after the incident with the golden calf when Moshe talks God into giving the people another chance and they make the second set of tablets. There's a reference to Sukkot somewhere in there, which might be why it was chosen for this holiday, but I can't help noticing the parallel between the servicable fragility of the sukkah and the fragility of our people's relationship with God at that point in time -- and, perhaps, individually since then. So maybe I'll work that idea up into a d'var torah.

(The web interface is being wacky. If you saw a mis-formmatted post from me -- I didn't do it. Let's try again.)

Domain names to avoid, from dagonell.

This conversation is funny in that oddly-familiar way (from xiphias).

Quote of the day from dglenn: "The country is run by extremists, because moderates have shit to do." --John Stewart, on The Daily Show. (Meta: I tried to email this to myself and the filter at work blocked due to profanity.)

Last night Dani was explaining the cult of Eye of Argon, an astonishingly-bad SF story, to a friend. Naturally there is a Wikipedia entry. Dani called my attention to the following comment about the author from there: "a malaprop genius, a McGonagall of prose with an eerie gift for choosing the wrong word and then misapplying it".

The new furnace has a display with buttons and a numeric read-out... and no user documentation (but lots of installation documentation). How odd. Fortunately, furnaces usually don't require a lot of user intervention: turn on in October and off in April (or whenever, adjusted for your locale).

Well, we had a few good sukkah nights before rain and cold ended that. And note to future self: the week of Sukkot has the longest morning (weekday) services of the year; anything you can do to expedite (without rushing) will be looked upon with favor by the congregation.

The torah tells us to celebrate Sukkot because Israel dwelt in sukkot in the desert. The talmud records an argument about what those sukkot were. Rabbi Akiva said that they were physical booths, like we build today. Rabbi Eliezer disagreed, saying that the word "sukkot" refers to the clouds of glory, the divine presence that protected Israel. Both agree that the sukkot (whatever they were) signified Israel's special relationship with God. (Sukkot 11b)

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Then we came home and watched West Wing, thanks to a coworker's tape. Yup, we both thought we'd correctly identified the leak. And is it my imagination, or is more of current-day American politics creeping into that show? I mean, it always rang true or it wouldn't have worked, but it feels a little more like I'm seeing last week's newspaper stories on the show this week, and that feels different.

Congrats to all the folks behind SpaceShipOne! Commercial space flight for non-billionaires in my lifetime has just gotten more likely. Woot!

Here's a perfect gift for certain types of geeks: Klein Bottles. Be sure to read the guarantee.

This is a fantastic hack (link courtesy of dglenn). Some urban explorers in Paris found some unused tunnels and caves below the city, so they built a cinema -- with restaurant and bar. Their mission: to "reclaim and transform disused city spaces for the creation of zones of expression for free and independent art".

Random bit from the instructions for my new sukkah: What's the Hebrew word for the day you take the sukkah down? ( Read more... )

I use a strand of small white lights to light my sukkah. (Got 'em cheap one year on Boxing Day. :-) ) The box is long since gone, but I remember that it proclaimed that these were the sorts of lights where one burned-out bulb does not take out the entire strand. This is, now, demonstrably true, but I am at a loss to explain the failure mode that results in all lights in the first third of the strand -- and no others -- going out simultaneously.

Yom Kippur was a good experience this year.

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This afternoon I put up the sukkah. Yay new sukkah! I got one surprise, and maybe before next year I'll ask a friend with the right tools to help me. I ordered an 8x8 sukkah frame, the kind with the metal poles (technically "tubing") and connectors that you just hand-tighten (no tools!). I had gotten the impression that it was about 7 feet high, but it's really 8. If I had paid more attention to the packing list I would have figured that out two weeks ago when it came. The problem with an 8-foot-high sukkah is that I'm 5'3". Even standing on a ladder, it was difficult for me to get the s'chach (roofing material) up there. (Ok, it's not a big ladder. I have this thing about ladders. I really want a sukkah I can put up with a step-stool.) I'm hoping that a certain friend of mine has saws that can cut metal, so we can just lop a foot off of the vertical poles. Later -- I got it up for this year. And hey, it meant I didn't have to cut down the lattice I use for the walls this year. :-) (I had the hand-saw ready.)

So now I have a sukkah big enough that we can theoretically have guests more than singly or pair-wise (if friendly), though I still only have the one card table. I may pick up another card table and a couple more folding chairs. (The size increase was a side-effect; the goal was a free-standing sukkah that's easy to put up, and I succeeded there.)

Welcome to siderea, aka Tibicen -- SCA person, early-music geek, and interesting writer. Apparently the Boston crowd sucked her into LJ. :-)

Last night my rabbi gave a class/discussion on mourning, funerals, etc. This was for the group of people who may be called on to lead shiva minyanim (services in a house of mourning), or who might help out those families in other ways. I didn't learn a lot that was new, but I think it was useful to pull all the information, and all the people who might need it, together. And we were given books, and books are never bad. :-)

I came home to find that there was no West Wing episode. I'm glad NBC ran a message on the bottom of the screen during the replacement show. But I was surprised: I can understand pre-empting a show for a baseball game that you're airing, but near as I can tell, they decided to pull West Wing because they didn't think it could compete with someone else's broadcast of the game. So did they think the Law & Order episode they showed could compete, or was it an old rerun and they were giving up on viewer share that night?

I wonder if Nielsen et al have changed the way they do ratings. In these days of TiVo and VCRs (often multiples), I can't believe they're only interested in people who watch the broadcast live. Yeah, we fast-forward through the commercials when time-shifting, but it seems like that's still better than not seeing them at all. So live is best, fast-forwarded is not worthless, and not watching the show at all is worthless.

We finished watching the second season of West Wing a couple nights ago. (Now we wait until April, if past performance is an indicator of future trends.) I'm impressed by this show, and the last episode of that season was very effective even though it used some techniques I normally consider cheesy. It was well-done, both in the writing and the direction. I hope the show doesn't go into a death spiral with Sorkin gone.

I went to services this morning at Tree of Life, where lulav and etrog were provided for pretty much everyone who wanted them. I still cannot hold a lulav, an etrog, and a siddur (prayer book) in a useful way. Fortunately, I'm starting to memorize the responses. :-)

My brother-in-law-once-removed [1] called tonight asking for computer advice. He said he was sitting in front of a dead machine, he had the Windows 98 CD in the drive, and how does he boot from that? This spawned several mental threads: (1) Define "dead". (2) Hey, aren't you a Mac snob? (3) Beats me, but I think Dani has done this. I opted for #3 and gave the phone to Dani. :-)

[1] My sister-in-law's husband. I know that English doesn't distinguish between Dani's sister and Dani's sister's husband in the "-in-law" thing, but it still feels weird to call him my brother-in-law when he's not related to either of us. I mean, if my brother-in-law is married to my sister-in-law, doesn't that sound just a bit too much like incest to you? It does to me.

This Shabbat is Sh'mini Atzeret (cue chorus of "what's that?"s -- goljerp did a good job with this here). In the Reform movement it's also Simchat Torah. In my congregation, this year, it's also the b'nei mitzvah of my rabbi's twins. And, due to unfortunate timing, it's also baronial investiture, a once-in-every-several-years occurrence in the local SCA group. I want to be able to spawn clones in the morning and sync memories at the end of the day, darnit!