trip to Toronto
We went to Toronto this weekend to visit family. It was a fun trip.
Family stuff
We never actually saw Dani's sister's husband. In April he had a weird sports accident that resulted in a tendon in his arm detatching from the bone (ick!). He has been on a waiting list for surgery ever since. Apparently if you wait too long they can't fix it, so he used all the connections he had. The result was that he spent Friday sitting in the hospital waiting room waiting for a friend of a friend of a colleague (who was on call that weekend) to have some free time. At the end of Friday he said to check in and he'd do him the next day, which he did. But he was in no shape to be visited before we left. I hope the surgery was effective.
Dani's mother, meanwhile, has knee surgery this coming Wednesday; she's been waiting since March. She was having a fair bit of trouble getting around this weekend (using a cane or walker depending on context), so I hope things improve for her soon.
(There's a lot wrong with health care in the US, but I am so glad that when I need it I can get medical care more quickly than that!)
All three of the girls were in town; we haven't seen them in a while. The youngest spent the last year in Israel; it sounds like she really enjoyed it. She claims to not be able to speak Hebrew well despite that, though she understands well. (At one point Dani's father seemed to be testing her, much to her annoyance.) She'll be starting college in the fall; taking a year to do something interesting between high school and college strikes me as a very good idea that is under-used.
I don't know what that was, but...
When we arranged this visit Dani's mother bought show tickets to celebrate Dani's sister's birthday. (That was the nominal reason for our visit.) When I googled Blue Man Group my reaction was "that sounds kind of like the Cirque du Soleyl of...", and then I couldn't complete the sentence. Having now seen them, I don't think that's the right characterization but it's probably not too far off, as they distributed flyers for Cirque du Soleyl. :-)
Blue Man Group is multi-media commedic performance art. That's the best I can do. The show was fun, and they have troupes in several cities so if you have the chance, check it out. My only problem was that parts of the show relied on text that wasn't readable by me from the 15th row, but Dani fed me the highlights.
Here's an example of how they used that: the three of them were lined up on stage drumming to a rock song. There was one of those scrolling red-letter signboards in front of each of them. At the beginning of the song the signs read something like "choose one sign to read". One said "read this if you know White Rabbit by Jefferson Airplane", one said "read this if you don't know...", and the third said "read this if neither applies". The first one scrolled the words for the song. The second scrolled corruptions of the words, with occasional comments like "just pretend you know what you're doing" and "yeah, we know you're too young to remember that group". The third one had random stuff, like "use the force" and "blah blah blah". Most of the audience was singing along, some correctly and some not. :-)
They did a few things that involved pulling audience members up on stage (or getting them on camera, in the case of the poor folks who showed up late). I wonder how many of them were plants and how much the group relies on having fans, or people willing to play along, available. There definitely seemed to be some dedicated fans at the show.
Unlike Cirque, Blue Man Group does not rely centrally on the talents of the individual performers. There's a whole technological show built around them, and there were segments that were entirely on projectors or with those signboards. The performers were good at their parts too; it's just that the show could probably survive mediocre blue men, while other performances would have trouble with that.
I don't know if I would go see this show again, but if the same folks did a different show (different set of sketches) or I had occasion to take someone to the show, I would likely go. There is a trade-off I'd have to think about: to get close enough to see the text clearly, I might have to get into the "poncho" seats. (People in the first seven rows were issued ponchos. Yes, it seemed like a good idea. I did say multi-media, didn't I? Paint.)
Shabbat
I had a great time on Shabbat morning (and afternoon). When I sent email to Beit HaMinyan to ask about service times, I got a friendly note back offering me a lunch invitation. After confirming that Dani et al really wanted to go out for lunch together anyway (which I obviously wouldn't join them for), I accepted.
Beit HaMinyan calls itself "traditional" (and at least one member I spoke with dislikes the label "Conservadox"). The person who answered my email said they have a mix of observance levels and strive to be welcoming to all; I saw that on Saturday. I was not the only bare-headed married woman, and there seemed to be no shyness about women singing during the service. Men routinely offered me handshakes. The service was recognizable as a complete Orthodox service, led only by men, but a woman gave the d'var torah.
I was a few minutes late to morning services, between slightly misremembering the distance and stopping to help someone into the building (walker + stairs = difficulty). Ten minutes after the official start time they were in the middle of p'sukei d'zimra already. The davening continued at a fast but not uncomfortable pace; I'm not sure what they did because it never felt rushed, but I guess they just never did anything to draw things out. (I am not complaining. :-) ) Service anthropology (because I tend to notice and remember these things for comparison): 9:30 start, barchu at 9:50, kri'at torah beginning 10:20 and finishing 11:15, short d'var torah (done before 11:30), then musaf and concluding prayers and over at 11:55.
I accidentally picked up a weekday siddur (prayer book) on my way in. When I went back to correct that I picked up the first obviously-Shabbat book I saw (already felt awkward so wanted to hurry), which was Artscroll. It appeared that most people were using something else, and at one point the leader gave a page cue that wasn't Artscroll. (Gee, I hope my use of Artscroll didn't send an unintended signal to anyone who noticed.) They must have been pretty similar, though, because I never had problems knowing where we were (once I got oriented when I arrived).
This congregation is lay-led, and the leaders I saw (a couple people switched off, and then there was the torah reader) were all quite good. (I felt sorry for the torah reader. Is Naso the longest of all the portions?) One of the leaders, it turned out, was my host for lunch; the person who set that up did that on purpose (picking up on a shared interest in music). I would estimate that there were about 60-70 people there. The only time I saw young children was at the very end, when they gathered at the reading desk (in the center and facing the ark, by the way) for the singing of Adon Olam. There was certainly not the problem I've had in some shuls where lots of small kids do rowdy kid things in the women's section, making it harder for women to daven.
The kiddush was quite substantial. I'm used to grape juice, challah, and cookies; they had the grape juice and cookies (no challah for reasons I understand), but also salads (several kinds), herring, raw veggies and dip, crackers, fresh fruit, cake, and more. I was surprised by the variety and quantity. The people I talked with were friendly, and there was a lot of "Jewish geography", either trying to find connections to the Toronto relatives or them asking me if I know so-and-so in Pittsburgh. (No hits on the latter, alas.) Someone asked me if I know a particular person who shares Dani's last name and I said that wasn't a familiar name; later when I asked Dani I learned that, just recently, he found out about a lost branch of the family and this person is one of them. Dani last knew him to be in Israel.
Lunch was four of us, my hosts and one other woman. They asked me about the community in Pittsburgh and about my own background; I guess it's pretty unusual, in the traditional community, to have an "intermarriage" of a religious Jew and a secular Jew, so the fact that I have a husband but he didn't join us raised eyebrows. I learned some of the history of their congregation, which originally split from another I've visited. (The mechitzah, or in their case the lack of it, was a major negotiating point. Not surprising.) They were heavily influenced by the Chavurah movement (movement? style? not sure what to call it), and have never had a rabbi. We talked about the lay-led aspects in my congregation, which they seemed interested in hearing about.
They knew that I'm a convert (it came out in the earlier conversation) and that I belong to a Reform congregation, so I was taken by surprise when the man asked me to lead bentching after the meal. (So he had no problems with my status, which many Orthodox Jews would. But I don't think too many Conservative Jews would, at least after learning that I'm accepted as a service leader in a Conservative congregation. Err, maybe. Whatever.) I was doing a good job until the font size in the bentcher dropped after the opening few parts, and then I was having trouble seeing and he had to help me out. I wasn't going to interrupt to explain, so I just apologized afterwards and explained then. He complimented me on my voice and said something like "next time you'll lead the minyan", which I take as a compliment but not a prediction of future activity unless I happen to visit on a week when they're having their (occasional) egalitarian service. But still, high praise coming from one of their leaders.
Lunch was very nice and I enjoyed talking with all three of the other people. I'll need to ask my email correspondent for a mailing address so I can send a thank-you note to my hosts.
Et cetera
Erik chose Friday to be uninterested in food, so it turned out to be a good thing I'd taught my cat-sitters how to give subcutaneous fluids. Fortunately, that seemed to jump-start his appetite; at least, I think they only had to hit him once. He was being good all week, naturally, and only began having problems when I wasn't here. He seems to be fine tonight -- certainly no appetite problems. (Hmm. I wonder if it's me, or not-me as the case may be. I hope not!)
Border crossings were mostly uneventful. Coming back into the US they asked Dani to prove his shiny new US citizenship, and all he had was the 9x12 (or whatever) fancy certificate they gave him. That was good enough for the border, but it's not the sort of thing you can put in your pocket. I guess that's what passports are for.
Dani's sister ran into some passport problems when she was in Israel a couple months ago, because several decades ago she lived there long enough to be issued an ID number (kind of like US social-security numbers, I gather). Israel apparently requires that if you're an Israeli citizen, you travel with an Israeli passport, which she didn't have. She got a lot of hassle because of that, and will have to fix it before the next time she goes. But I now better understand a comment Dani once made that Israeli citizenship sticks to you "like tar". :-)
Family stuff
We never actually saw Dani's sister's husband. In April he had a weird sports accident that resulted in a tendon in his arm detatching from the bone (ick!). He has been on a waiting list for surgery ever since. Apparently if you wait too long they can't fix it, so he used all the connections he had. The result was that he spent Friday sitting in the hospital waiting room waiting for a friend of a friend of a colleague (who was on call that weekend) to have some free time. At the end of Friday he said to check in and he'd do him the next day, which he did. But he was in no shape to be visited before we left. I hope the surgery was effective.
Dani's mother, meanwhile, has knee surgery this coming Wednesday; she's been waiting since March. She was having a fair bit of trouble getting around this weekend (using a cane or walker depending on context), so I hope things improve for her soon.
(There's a lot wrong with health care in the US, but I am so glad that when I need it I can get medical care more quickly than that!)
All three of the girls were in town; we haven't seen them in a while. The youngest spent the last year in Israel; it sounds like she really enjoyed it. She claims to not be able to speak Hebrew well despite that, though she understands well. (At one point Dani's father seemed to be testing her, much to her annoyance.) She'll be starting college in the fall; taking a year to do something interesting between high school and college strikes me as a very good idea that is under-used.
I don't know what that was, but...
When we arranged this visit Dani's mother bought show tickets to celebrate Dani's sister's birthday. (That was the nominal reason for our visit.) When I googled Blue Man Group my reaction was "that sounds kind of like the Cirque du Soleyl of...", and then I couldn't complete the sentence. Having now seen them, I don't think that's the right characterization but it's probably not too far off, as they distributed flyers for Cirque du Soleyl. :-)
Blue Man Group is multi-media commedic performance art. That's the best I can do. The show was fun, and they have troupes in several cities so if you have the chance, check it out. My only problem was that parts of the show relied on text that wasn't readable by me from the 15th row, but Dani fed me the highlights.
Here's an example of how they used that: the three of them were lined up on stage drumming to a rock song. There was one of those scrolling red-letter signboards in front of each of them. At the beginning of the song the signs read something like "choose one sign to read". One said "read this if you know White Rabbit by Jefferson Airplane", one said "read this if you don't know...", and the third said "read this if neither applies". The first one scrolled the words for the song. The second scrolled corruptions of the words, with occasional comments like "just pretend you know what you're doing" and "yeah, we know you're too young to remember that group". The third one had random stuff, like "use the force" and "blah blah blah". Most of the audience was singing along, some correctly and some not. :-)
They did a few things that involved pulling audience members up on stage (or getting them on camera, in the case of the poor folks who showed up late). I wonder how many of them were plants and how much the group relies on having fans, or people willing to play along, available. There definitely seemed to be some dedicated fans at the show.
Unlike Cirque, Blue Man Group does not rely centrally on the talents of the individual performers. There's a whole technological show built around them, and there were segments that were entirely on projectors or with those signboards. The performers were good at their parts too; it's just that the show could probably survive mediocre blue men, while other performances would have trouble with that.
I don't know if I would go see this show again, but if the same folks did a different show (different set of sketches) or I had occasion to take someone to the show, I would likely go. There is a trade-off I'd have to think about: to get close enough to see the text clearly, I might have to get into the "poncho" seats. (People in the first seven rows were issued ponchos. Yes, it seemed like a good idea. I did say multi-media, didn't I? Paint.)
Shabbat
I had a great time on Shabbat morning (and afternoon). When I sent email to Beit HaMinyan to ask about service times, I got a friendly note back offering me a lunch invitation. After confirming that Dani et al really wanted to go out for lunch together anyway (which I obviously wouldn't join them for), I accepted.
Beit HaMinyan calls itself "traditional" (and at least one member I spoke with dislikes the label "Conservadox"). The person who answered my email said they have a mix of observance levels and strive to be welcoming to all; I saw that on Saturday. I was not the only bare-headed married woman, and there seemed to be no shyness about women singing during the service. Men routinely offered me handshakes. The service was recognizable as a complete Orthodox service, led only by men, but a woman gave the d'var torah.
I was a few minutes late to morning services, between slightly misremembering the distance and stopping to help someone into the building (walker + stairs = difficulty). Ten minutes after the official start time they were in the middle of p'sukei d'zimra already. The davening continued at a fast but not uncomfortable pace; I'm not sure what they did because it never felt rushed, but I guess they just never did anything to draw things out. (I am not complaining. :-) ) Service anthropology (because I tend to notice and remember these things for comparison): 9:30 start, barchu at 9:50, kri'at torah beginning 10:20 and finishing 11:15, short d'var torah (done before 11:30), then musaf and concluding prayers and over at 11:55.
I accidentally picked up a weekday siddur (prayer book) on my way in. When I went back to correct that I picked up the first obviously-Shabbat book I saw (already felt awkward so wanted to hurry), which was Artscroll. It appeared that most people were using something else, and at one point the leader gave a page cue that wasn't Artscroll. (Gee, I hope my use of Artscroll didn't send an unintended signal to anyone who noticed.) They must have been pretty similar, though, because I never had problems knowing where we were (once I got oriented when I arrived).
This congregation is lay-led, and the leaders I saw (a couple people switched off, and then there was the torah reader) were all quite good. (I felt sorry for the torah reader. Is Naso the longest of all the portions?) One of the leaders, it turned out, was my host for lunch; the person who set that up did that on purpose (picking up on a shared interest in music). I would estimate that there were about 60-70 people there. The only time I saw young children was at the very end, when they gathered at the reading desk (in the center and facing the ark, by the way) for the singing of Adon Olam. There was certainly not the problem I've had in some shuls where lots of small kids do rowdy kid things in the women's section, making it harder for women to daven.
The kiddush was quite substantial. I'm used to grape juice, challah, and cookies; they had the grape juice and cookies (no challah for reasons I understand), but also salads (several kinds), herring, raw veggies and dip, crackers, fresh fruit, cake, and more. I was surprised by the variety and quantity. The people I talked with were friendly, and there was a lot of "Jewish geography", either trying to find connections to the Toronto relatives or them asking me if I know so-and-so in Pittsburgh. (No hits on the latter, alas.) Someone asked me if I know a particular person who shares Dani's last name and I said that wasn't a familiar name; later when I asked Dani I learned that, just recently, he found out about a lost branch of the family and this person is one of them. Dani last knew him to be in Israel.
Lunch was four of us, my hosts and one other woman. They asked me about the community in Pittsburgh and about my own background; I guess it's pretty unusual, in the traditional community, to have an "intermarriage" of a religious Jew and a secular Jew, so the fact that I have a husband but he didn't join us raised eyebrows. I learned some of the history of their congregation, which originally split from another I've visited. (The mechitzah, or in their case the lack of it, was a major negotiating point. Not surprising.) They were heavily influenced by the Chavurah movement (movement? style? not sure what to call it), and have never had a rabbi. We talked about the lay-led aspects in my congregation, which they seemed interested in hearing about.
They knew that I'm a convert (it came out in the earlier conversation) and that I belong to a Reform congregation, so I was taken by surprise when the man asked me to lead bentching after the meal. (So he had no problems with my status, which many Orthodox Jews would. But I don't think too many Conservative Jews would, at least after learning that I'm accepted as a service leader in a Conservative congregation. Err, maybe. Whatever.) I was doing a good job until the font size in the bentcher dropped after the opening few parts, and then I was having trouble seeing and he had to help me out. I wasn't going to interrupt to explain, so I just apologized afterwards and explained then. He complimented me on my voice and said something like "next time you'll lead the minyan", which I take as a compliment but not a prediction of future activity unless I happen to visit on a week when they're having their (occasional) egalitarian service. But still, high praise coming from one of their leaders.
Lunch was very nice and I enjoyed talking with all three of the other people. I'll need to ask my email correspondent for a mailing address so I can send a thank-you note to my hosts.
Et cetera
Erik chose Friday to be uninterested in food, so it turned out to be a good thing I'd taught my cat-sitters how to give subcutaneous fluids. Fortunately, that seemed to jump-start his appetite; at least, I think they only had to hit him once. He was being good all week, naturally, and only began having problems when I wasn't here. He seems to be fine tonight -- certainly no appetite problems. (Hmm. I wonder if it's me, or not-me as the case may be. I hope not!)
Border crossings were mostly uneventful. Coming back into the US they asked Dani to prove his shiny new US citizenship, and all he had was the 9x12 (or whatever) fancy certificate they gave him. That was good enough for the border, but it's not the sort of thing you can put in your pocket. I guess that's what passports are for.
Dani's sister ran into some passport problems when she was in Israel a couple months ago, because several decades ago she lived there long enough to be issued an ID number (kind of like US social-security numbers, I gather). Israel apparently requires that if you're an Israeli citizen, you travel with an Israeli passport, which she didn't have. She got a lot of hassle because of that, and will have to fix it before the next time she goes. But I now better understand a comment Dani once made that Israeli citizenship sticks to you "like tar". :-)