mostly Shabbat (or "welcome to my rabbi's world, again")
Rosh Hashana went well for me, but I don't find myself
having a lot to say about it. There are some bits
of the liturgy that particularly struck me, and maybe
later I'll get my machzor (high-holy-day prayerbook)
and post them.
Shabbat morning I got a phone call from that day's torah reader, saying that she couldn't get there due to flooded-out areas between her house and the synagogue. I feel bad for her because she spent time learning the portion and now she can't use it until this time next year. She felt bad for leaving us in the lurch, and I tried to reassure her that it was obviously not her fault.
The rabbi couldn't stay today, so I suspected this would mean we wouldn't have a torah service, but then I said "hey, I read this portion last year; I wonder...". With ten minutes available to me to answer that question, I pulled out the tikkun and scraped the rust off of enough to make a valid torah reading. I wasn't going to be able to do all of it with that amount of time, but so long as you do at least three verses you can read torah. And I was able to do that, because (IMO) Ha'azinu is one of the easiest torah portions out there, and I'd done it before. When I got to shul I asked someone else to lead that part of the service and a third person to read the haftarah portion, because I didn't want to just take over myself. Remember those words; they'll be relevant later.
I mentally composed a d'var torah while walking to shul -- so it wasn't as polished as it might have been under better circumstances, but it was passable. I talked about the season and not the parsha directly. As my rabbi pointed out last week, this season is characterized by t'shuvah (repentance, or return), s'lichah (forgiveness), and kapparah (atonement). We've talked about the first and the last but not as much about the middle one. When we talk about forgiveness, we often focus on seeking it -- but we also have to be ready to grant it, when someone asks or even when the person doesn't ask. Sometimes the person who wronged you has no idea that he has done so, in which case he's not going to come to you. And sometimes the person knows he wronged you but he's not going to approach you and it's just not worth staying angry about it. So, I said, try to grant the possibility that the person might not know, and even if he doesn't, try not to carry minor grudges into the new year. It's just not worth it. Remember those words; they'll be relevant later.
One of the members of the group is a professor at a nearby college and is teaching a religion class this term. So, with advance notice to the rabbi, she brought about a dozen students to the service. The rabbi welcomed them and was extra-careful about giving page numbers, but otherwise did nothing special. Everything was going fine, and I assume the professor gave the students an overview of the service before she brought them.
So. The rabbi left, and a lay leader took over as we began the torah service. One of the members of the group (who is widely regarded in the group as being a disruptive PITA) started interjecting explanatory notes into the service. (Note that their professor never did.) The leader and I exchanged a look, but the leader is real laid-back and this didn't seem to be flustering him, so we shrugged at each other and went on.
Later, after I gave my talk, this same person jumped in and asked if he could add something. (This is, basically, never done during a d'var torah.) Having seen this go badly wrong before (and not just with him), I said "I'd rather not have a discussion in the middle of the service; how about bringing it up when we're done?". He protested that it would be short (he's never terse), a couple people off to the side said "no" quietly (I don't know if he heard), and I said that we were going to proceed with the service now. I didn't choose my words incredibly well, because I can be slow when things like this surprise me, but neither did I say something really inappropriate like "there's no way I'm going to let you derail this service like you've done so many times in the past". (And anyway, it wasn't just about him; I wouldn't have let anyone start a discussion, except if the rabbi popped back in and wanted to say something.) We continued through the rest of the service.
As soon as the service was over I went to this person to say "I'm sorry I had to cut you off, but if I let one person speak I'd have to let any of the other 40 people here do so too". He initially gave the impression that he wanted to discuss it but had things he wanted to say first, so I didn't immediately walk away when he started bitching at me. I was so wrong. He, basically, asserted that he had a right to speak during the service, and what he was going to do was add some more explanation about what I'd just said for the visitors (which I definitely wouldn't have allowed if I'd known!), and he's a school teacher and he knows what he's doing and I need to just trust him, and I'm patronizing and arrogant and I need to learn a thing or two about leadership, and I never let other people do anything, and so on. Any time I tried to respond (such as correcting the numerous factual errors I omitted in that summary, like when he accused me of firing a torah reader), he said "let me finish first". Ok, I figured, it's a leader's job to take a certain amount of flak for the group, and I'll be able to straighten him out when he's done. But when he finally finished, he then said "I'm very angry and I'm not interested in anything you have to say", and he walked out.
Ok. So he demanded the right to be heard but wouldn't grant that right to anyone else. I know he's way off base (and several people who overheard this hastened to point this out to me too), and I'm not going to let him bring me down. I find it ironic that he started by saying he agreed with what I said about forgiveness, but then acted in a way that was contrary to those ideas.
This is his third outburst at services in four months, and it's pretty clear the problem does not lie with the group in general or me in particular. From a personal perspective I have already put this behind me; he can't hurt me because I won't let him. But because he is (intentionally or not) undermining the lay leadership of this group, I suspect I'm not done dealing with this (or him). A staff member who overheard the tail end of this told me I need to talk with the rabbi about this; I was going to just deal with it on my own (either ignoring him or writing him a letter to arrive before Yom Kippur), but in thinking about it I think she's right. I don't want to add to my rabbi's workload and this feels like running to the teacher about the name-calling bully on the playground, but it sounds like at this point the guy needs to be straightened out by someone in clear authority.
But other than that the day went really well, and I received many compliments on my last-minute torah reading. After the ranty guy left I spoke with a freshman from Pitt who was there for the first time, and she said she really enjoyed the service and will be back. We also told her about Yom Kippur services, and it sounds like she's planning to come. She seems like a nice person; I'm glad the ranty guy didn't scare her off.
After services we went to Coronation (SCA event), giving a ride to a student who's in the choir. It took a long time to get there due to heavy traffic caused by closed roads, but it was a good event and it was fun to spend the time in the car chatting with a newer member. We also sat with two newer members at dinner (I hadn't met them before, though one of them had heard of me), and they are both nice people I hope to see more of. A lot of people in the SCA worry about getting new members, which often comes through big demos and the like. But retention has a lot to do with that kind of one-on-one contact, and it's what I enjoy more. I'm not all that interested in pitching the SCA to a boy-scout troop, but I'm very interested in chatting with folks who've already decided to get involved about what they want to do and helping get them pointed in the right direction.
The dinner at the event was really good. I like it when Johan cooks. :-) In addition to being talented, he takes care to make sure that everyone will be able to get enough to eat -- at many events vegetarians basically get bread, noodles, rice, and maybe a salad, but I ate quite well yesterday -- spinach quiche, salmon (ok, "regular" vegetarians wouldn't eat that), noodles with cheese, asparagus, salad, nuts, another cooked vegetable, and more. I didn't even save room for dessert, as it turned out.
Shabbat morning I got a phone call from that day's torah reader, saying that she couldn't get there due to flooded-out areas between her house and the synagogue. I feel bad for her because she spent time learning the portion and now she can't use it until this time next year. She felt bad for leaving us in the lurch, and I tried to reassure her that it was obviously not her fault.
The rabbi couldn't stay today, so I suspected this would mean we wouldn't have a torah service, but then I said "hey, I read this portion last year; I wonder...". With ten minutes available to me to answer that question, I pulled out the tikkun and scraped the rust off of enough to make a valid torah reading. I wasn't going to be able to do all of it with that amount of time, but so long as you do at least three verses you can read torah. And I was able to do that, because (IMO) Ha'azinu is one of the easiest torah portions out there, and I'd done it before. When I got to shul I asked someone else to lead that part of the service and a third person to read the haftarah portion, because I didn't want to just take over myself. Remember those words; they'll be relevant later.
I mentally composed a d'var torah while walking to shul -- so it wasn't as polished as it might have been under better circumstances, but it was passable. I talked about the season and not the parsha directly. As my rabbi pointed out last week, this season is characterized by t'shuvah (repentance, or return), s'lichah (forgiveness), and kapparah (atonement). We've talked about the first and the last but not as much about the middle one. When we talk about forgiveness, we often focus on seeking it -- but we also have to be ready to grant it, when someone asks or even when the person doesn't ask. Sometimes the person who wronged you has no idea that he has done so, in which case he's not going to come to you. And sometimes the person knows he wronged you but he's not going to approach you and it's just not worth staying angry about it. So, I said, try to grant the possibility that the person might not know, and even if he doesn't, try not to carry minor grudges into the new year. It's just not worth it. Remember those words; they'll be relevant later.
One of the members of the group is a professor at a nearby college and is teaching a religion class this term. So, with advance notice to the rabbi, she brought about a dozen students to the service. The rabbi welcomed them and was extra-careful about giving page numbers, but otherwise did nothing special. Everything was going fine, and I assume the professor gave the students an overview of the service before she brought them.
So. The rabbi left, and a lay leader took over as we began the torah service. One of the members of the group (who is widely regarded in the group as being a disruptive PITA) started interjecting explanatory notes into the service. (Note that their professor never did.) The leader and I exchanged a look, but the leader is real laid-back and this didn't seem to be flustering him, so we shrugged at each other and went on.
Later, after I gave my talk, this same person jumped in and asked if he could add something. (This is, basically, never done during a d'var torah.) Having seen this go badly wrong before (and not just with him), I said "I'd rather not have a discussion in the middle of the service; how about bringing it up when we're done?". He protested that it would be short (he's never terse), a couple people off to the side said "no" quietly (I don't know if he heard), and I said that we were going to proceed with the service now. I didn't choose my words incredibly well, because I can be slow when things like this surprise me, but neither did I say something really inappropriate like "there's no way I'm going to let you derail this service like you've done so many times in the past". (And anyway, it wasn't just about him; I wouldn't have let anyone start a discussion, except if the rabbi popped back in and wanted to say something.) We continued through the rest of the service.
As soon as the service was over I went to this person to say "I'm sorry I had to cut you off, but if I let one person speak I'd have to let any of the other 40 people here do so too". He initially gave the impression that he wanted to discuss it but had things he wanted to say first, so I didn't immediately walk away when he started bitching at me. I was so wrong. He, basically, asserted that he had a right to speak during the service, and what he was going to do was add some more explanation about what I'd just said for the visitors (which I definitely wouldn't have allowed if I'd known!), and he's a school teacher and he knows what he's doing and I need to just trust him, and I'm patronizing and arrogant and I need to learn a thing or two about leadership, and I never let other people do anything, and so on. Any time I tried to respond (such as correcting the numerous factual errors I omitted in that summary, like when he accused me of firing a torah reader), he said "let me finish first". Ok, I figured, it's a leader's job to take a certain amount of flak for the group, and I'll be able to straighten him out when he's done. But when he finally finished, he then said "I'm very angry and I'm not interested in anything you have to say", and he walked out.
Ok. So he demanded the right to be heard but wouldn't grant that right to anyone else. I know he's way off base (and several people who overheard this hastened to point this out to me too), and I'm not going to let him bring me down. I find it ironic that he started by saying he agreed with what I said about forgiveness, but then acted in a way that was contrary to those ideas.
This is his third outburst at services in four months, and it's pretty clear the problem does not lie with the group in general or me in particular. From a personal perspective I have already put this behind me; he can't hurt me because I won't let him. But because he is (intentionally or not) undermining the lay leadership of this group, I suspect I'm not done dealing with this (or him). A staff member who overheard the tail end of this told me I need to talk with the rabbi about this; I was going to just deal with it on my own (either ignoring him or writing him a letter to arrive before Yom Kippur), but in thinking about it I think she's right. I don't want to add to my rabbi's workload and this feels like running to the teacher about the name-calling bully on the playground, but it sounds like at this point the guy needs to be straightened out by someone in clear authority.
But other than that the day went really well, and I received many compliments on my last-minute torah reading. After the ranty guy left I spoke with a freshman from Pitt who was there for the first time, and she said she really enjoyed the service and will be back. We also told her about Yom Kippur services, and it sounds like she's planning to come. She seems like a nice person; I'm glad the ranty guy didn't scare her off.
After services we went to Coronation (SCA event), giving a ride to a student who's in the choir. It took a long time to get there due to heavy traffic caused by closed roads, but it was a good event and it was fun to spend the time in the car chatting with a newer member. We also sat with two newer members at dinner (I hadn't met them before, though one of them had heard of me), and they are both nice people I hope to see more of. A lot of people in the SCA worry about getting new members, which often comes through big demos and the like. But retention has a lot to do with that kind of one-on-one contact, and it's what I enjoy more. I'm not all that interested in pitching the SCA to a boy-scout troop, but I'm very interested in chatting with folks who've already decided to get involved about what they want to do and helping get them pointed in the right direction.
The dinner at the event was really good. I like it when Johan cooks. :-) In addition to being talented, he takes care to make sure that everyone will be able to get enough to eat -- at many events vegetarians basically get bread, noodles, rice, and maybe a salad, but I ate quite well yesterday -- spinach quiche, salmon (ok, "regular" vegetarians wouldn't eat that), noodles with cheese, asparagus, salad, nuts, another cooked vegetable, and more. I didn't even save room for dessert, as it turned out.