Shabbaton
This weekend was my congregation's annual shabbaton (Shabbat retreat).
A couple dozen of us, mostly regulars from the morning minyan, go to
a cabin in rural PA to pray, study, talk, and eat. It's something I
always look forward to, and this year was once again a good experience.
One thing that's really nice about it is that we're pretty much unconstrained on time, aside from hitting the designated meal times. We were able to slow down the services somewhat, not having to worry about fidgeting attendees or being ready to start the second service. We were also able to experiment with some changes, like an actual silent t'filah, because we didn't have to worry about alienating a larger constituency.
During the Friday-night service my rabbi stopped a few times for meta-discussion -- why we do something the way we do, or what other options exist, or (sometimes) to survey us on how we feel about some of the decisions that go into leading a service. While that sort of thing has the potential to distract one from worship, that didn't happen to me (nor, I think, to most other people). I've looked at worship on two different levels, the actual content and how they're implementing it, pretty much from the start, and I got a lot of practice with that during the Sh'liach K'hilah program where it was an explicit directive.
The format also gives us time and opportunity to talk about God and faith and ethics. The learning we do is mostly "applied learning", not pure intellectualism, and it tends to spark good discussions. This afternoon we studied a passage from Sifra about the case where two men are travelling in the desert and only one has a flask of water. If they share it, both will die before they reach the next water hole. If only one drinks, it will be enough to get there but the other will die. Rabbi Ben Petura says the verse "that thy brother live with thee" (Lev 25:36 for context) means they have to share and die together; he emphasizes "brother". Rabbi Akiva, on the other hand, emphasizes "live", and argues that the water must be used to save one of the lives. This led to an interesting discussion about this case, the lifeboat problem (which is different in a key way, IMO), and eventually, allocation of resources for medical treatment and prioritizing people for organ transplants.
If you follow Rabbi Akiva's opinion, you then have to answer the question of how you choose who lives and who dies. Akiva is pragmatic: the owner of the water decides. A lot of the discussion focused on the decision to let your {friend, family member, random travelling companion} die by taking the water. I found myself thinking in a differeet direction: there are people I would insist on giving my water to. And it is an intensely personal decision; we cannot articulate criteria that everyone would agree to.
Mixed in with services and study were lots of singing and some storytelling. (Everyone's singing; my rabbi's storytelling.) The late-night singing was largely dominated by what I presume are the greatest hits of the first half of the 20th century -- not my style at all but the guy with the guitar likes that repertoire, so oh well. (My rabbi was by that point resting his hand, having been playing off and on for several hours.) At one point my rabbi quietly commented to me that I looked tired (I guess I looked like I was tuning out); I commented that I was hoping we'd do some Jewish music and he actually made that happen. I'm sorry he started playing and abusing his hands, but I'm impressed by his responsiveness.
The senior rabbi of a congregation can not, apparently, be out of touch; Saturday morning the emergency phone rang to tell us that our associate rabbi had had a death in his family and he would be leaving as soon as he was done doing today's bar mitzvah. My rabbi knew the deceased and it looked like this hit him hard, quite aside from the logistics involved. (And let me just say: getting news of a death in your family and then turning around and conducting a worship service because someone has to has got to suck. Rotten timing; if it'd been any other Shabbat, just about, my rabbi would have taken over for him and someone else would have taken over for my rabbi if needed.)
One of our participants also got a call that his grandchild was in the process of arriving right now, two weeks early. A death and a birth affecting the group on the same day. (He left early; I guess my non-parent status shows, because I don't see why those few hours mattered. He wasn't having a child, after all.)
There was a funny incident Friday night. One car-load of people was very late getting there -- about an hour and a half late, and the trip was under two hours to begin with. They had gotten lost, but then their technology doomed them. While most of us would probably have reversed course until we got back to either a known point or a road we recognized on a map (central PA: good luck with that latter :-) ), they had a GPS. So every time they passed through an intersection the GPS reported "recalculating" and then told them to do such-and-such, which they did. This continued until they got to a locked gate across a none-too-impressive road (I think dirt, actually), with the GPS reporting that they were three miles away. One of their number set out for a visible house, and came back 20 minutes later with a woman and a hacksaw to cut the lock. It wasn't her lock; she had tried calling the owner and gotten no answer, and our intrepid travellers were prepared to cut first and send payment later. I wonder if they gave any thought to whether there would be more locks in their future.
One of the other people in the car said "that's solid steel; a hacksaw won't do it". He then said that if they had a torch it might be possible, and the woman offered that while she didn't have torch, she thought the people in the next house over might. By then, a more rational member of the party persuaded them to just turn around. I'm not sure, but I believe the remaining travel time was less than the 20+ minutes they spent at the gate, let alone the time spent trusting in the GPS.
One thing that's really nice about it is that we're pretty much unconstrained on time, aside from hitting the designated meal times. We were able to slow down the services somewhat, not having to worry about fidgeting attendees or being ready to start the second service. We were also able to experiment with some changes, like an actual silent t'filah, because we didn't have to worry about alienating a larger constituency.
During the Friday-night service my rabbi stopped a few times for meta-discussion -- why we do something the way we do, or what other options exist, or (sometimes) to survey us on how we feel about some of the decisions that go into leading a service. While that sort of thing has the potential to distract one from worship, that didn't happen to me (nor, I think, to most other people). I've looked at worship on two different levels, the actual content and how they're implementing it, pretty much from the start, and I got a lot of practice with that during the Sh'liach K'hilah program where it was an explicit directive.
The format also gives us time and opportunity to talk about God and faith and ethics. The learning we do is mostly "applied learning", not pure intellectualism, and it tends to spark good discussions. This afternoon we studied a passage from Sifra about the case where two men are travelling in the desert and only one has a flask of water. If they share it, both will die before they reach the next water hole. If only one drinks, it will be enough to get there but the other will die. Rabbi Ben Petura says the verse "that thy brother live with thee" (Lev 25:36 for context) means they have to share and die together; he emphasizes "brother". Rabbi Akiva, on the other hand, emphasizes "live", and argues that the water must be used to save one of the lives. This led to an interesting discussion about this case, the lifeboat problem (which is different in a key way, IMO), and eventually, allocation of resources for medical treatment and prioritizing people for organ transplants.
If you follow Rabbi Akiva's opinion, you then have to answer the question of how you choose who lives and who dies. Akiva is pragmatic: the owner of the water decides. A lot of the discussion focused on the decision to let your {friend, family member, random travelling companion} die by taking the water. I found myself thinking in a differeet direction: there are people I would insist on giving my water to. And it is an intensely personal decision; we cannot articulate criteria that everyone would agree to.
Mixed in with services and study were lots of singing and some storytelling. (Everyone's singing; my rabbi's storytelling.) The late-night singing was largely dominated by what I presume are the greatest hits of the first half of the 20th century -- not my style at all but the guy with the guitar likes that repertoire, so oh well. (My rabbi was by that point resting his hand, having been playing off and on for several hours.) At one point my rabbi quietly commented to me that I looked tired (I guess I looked like I was tuning out); I commented that I was hoping we'd do some Jewish music and he actually made that happen. I'm sorry he started playing and abusing his hands, but I'm impressed by his responsiveness.
The senior rabbi of a congregation can not, apparently, be out of touch; Saturday morning the emergency phone rang to tell us that our associate rabbi had had a death in his family and he would be leaving as soon as he was done doing today's bar mitzvah. My rabbi knew the deceased and it looked like this hit him hard, quite aside from the logistics involved. (And let me just say: getting news of a death in your family and then turning around and conducting a worship service because someone has to has got to suck. Rotten timing; if it'd been any other Shabbat, just about, my rabbi would have taken over for him and someone else would have taken over for my rabbi if needed.)
One of our participants also got a call that his grandchild was in the process of arriving right now, two weeks early. A death and a birth affecting the group on the same day. (He left early; I guess my non-parent status shows, because I don't see why those few hours mattered. He wasn't having a child, after all.)
There was a funny incident Friday night. One car-load of people was very late getting there -- about an hour and a half late, and the trip was under two hours to begin with. They had gotten lost, but then their technology doomed them. While most of us would probably have reversed course until we got back to either a known point or a road we recognized on a map (central PA: good luck with that latter :-) ), they had a GPS. So every time they passed through an intersection the GPS reported "recalculating" and then told them to do such-and-such, which they did. This continued until they got to a locked gate across a none-too-impressive road (I think dirt, actually), with the GPS reporting that they were three miles away. One of their number set out for a visible house, and came back 20 minutes later with a woman and a hacksaw to cut the lock. It wasn't her lock; she had tried calling the owner and gotten no answer, and our intrepid travellers were prepared to cut first and send payment later. I wonder if they gave any thought to whether there would be more locks in their future.
One of the other people in the car said "that's solid steel; a hacksaw won't do it". He then said that if they had a torch it might be possible, and the woman offered that while she didn't have torch, she thought the people in the next house over might. By then, a more rational member of the party persuaded them to just turn around. I'm not sure, but I believe the remaining travel time was less than the 20+ minutes they spent at the gate, let alone the time spent trusting in the GPS.