NHC round-up (part 1)
I'm home from the National Chavurah Committee gathering (which I've
come to think of informally as "JewCon"). As you might have guessed,
I didn't write entries while there, so you get a dump in arbitrary
order now. :-)
(Also, I won't be able to catch up on LJ. If I haven't already commented on something you wanted me to see, please ping me? Thanks.)
magid and I arrived mid-afternoon on Monday and checked in. The first scheduled activity relevant to either of us was a newcomers' orientation at 4:00, which gave me an hour or so to unpack, get settled, and walk back to campus. We were both staying in the lake-side townhouses, described as a "7-to-10-minute walk" from the campus. The packet contained a map. We went our separate ways.
Let's just abbreviate what followed as "an accurate map would have helped". It didn't look like I missed anything of import in the orientation session, though. After that was a general opening session, dinner, and an evening program. magid and I were drafted to help set up chairs for a performance, so we stuck around for that.
Speaking of performances, when I got home from Pennsic and checked the convention wiki, I saw for the first time that the planned activities included a talent show. Hmm, I said -- there will be singers there. Some of them will be good sight-singers, probably. And so a crazy idea hatched. I took four copies of Salamone Rossi's Halleluyah Halleli (which I've sung before); tigerbright and teddywolf (the other two people I knew there besides magid) were game for it, and I figured that could work. Either we'd find an alto or we wouldn't, and either they'd learn it (without stressing) or not, and if things aligned we would perform it.
So there we were at some meal talking about it, and someone else at the table overheard and said "I know that", and he joined us -- which still didn't give us an alto, but that was fine. A pick-up group was still fine. He turned out to be a cantor. After our first practice he thought of three possible altos we could ask, but two declined and one didn't get our message in time.
In the end we did not pull it off, but we all had fun just singing it together, and at the end of the final gathering someone said "hey, maybe we could do this as a class in some future year", and everyone thought that was cool, and everyone any of us mentioned it to also thought it was cool. So who knows -- maybe next year's NHC will include a choral track. With six classroom hours it might be possible to learn two or three songs, depending on the students. (I can't help next year -- NHC 2009 conflicts with Pennsic. Maybe the cantor will do it; he seemed kind of jazzed by the idea.)
There are two (daily) class slots, morning and afternoon. In the morning I took a class on sh'mirat ha-lashon, or guarding one's speech. (The name Chofeitz Chayim might be familiar to some of my readers.) The instructor was very good, and I plan to write more about this class later.
In the afternoon I was signed up for a class that looked like it was going to be primarily text study around creation. There's tons of midrash and commentary on just the six days of creation; it's a target-rich environment. I apparently misunderstood the class description, though, and after the first session it was clear that I was in the wrong place. (Lots more mysticism than I have the background for, for one thing.) After a bit of running around (to get permission of both instructors) I was able to change to a class on prayer-leading for the last three days. (Texts and theory, not a lab class.)
There were also workshops (one-shots). Some that I took were very good and some less appealing; either way it's over in an hour, so I saw it as a chance to explore. One that was very good was called "Bloodletting, fatal attractions, and curious adjustments in early modern Jewish law"; the session I attended was about the medieval ban on polygamy. It was a case study: a man had married in Ashkenaz, where the ban was in effect, then moved to a Sephardi country that has no such ban, then married a second wife: what do we do with him? (In general the rabbis came down against him.) There was a second session with different cases which, alas, I could not attend. I enjoyed this, so I probably would have also enjoyed the class called "law and the law", on interactions between Jewish law and secular law. I heard it was quite good. (It was taught by a lawyer who brought case studies.)
Classes and workshops both ranged over a wide spectrum, from text study to crafts to movement (e.g. yoga) to social action. magid took a class on quilting, for instance, and I was impressed by what she produced. (The class had an exhibit at the end of the week.)
One afternoon someone announced an ad-hoc session to study midrash rabbah on that week's torah portion. I've heard of midrash rabbah :-) , so I decided to go. For a while we were the only two there, and then we were joined by a third. The other two were way more advanced than I, and the leader's plan was to read it in the Hebrew. Things slowed down when it was my turn to read (inferring vowels) and translate; I did better than I expected but not as well as I would have liked. A specific area to work on is recognizing the same root (= same base word) in altered forms; I get this sometimes but not always. Chances are decent that if it's a significant word and I encountered it as a verb, for instance, I'll probably see its nominal form or a different verb conjugation later in the passage.
The days were full, with the traditional egalitarian minyan at 7AM and the last scheduled evening activities starting at 10PM. I never went to the earliest minyan; I instead tended to go to the later, less-traditional, ones, both because they were later and to explore. There were usually three or four options in the morning (only one in the evening). I'll write more about services in a different entry, including the ones where I chanted torah.
It was obvious at the opening session, and remained obvious through the week, how tight this community is. Many of the younger adults have gone every year their entire lives, for instance. And because all the regulars are so connected and comfortable, it felt hard for me to break in as a newcomer. In many ways this is their Pennsic -- an established gathering with lots going on, lots of people you haven't seen for a year, and maybe fewer cycles than anyone would like to spend on the folks with green dots on their name tags. It was Wednesday lunch before someone I didn't know sat down at a table next to me. (I'd sat by other people previously but found breaking in hard.) This was probably not helped by this being their largest gathering thus far, at about 370 people.
There didn't seem to be a lot of people my age -- lots older and lots younger, but no so much the 40-somethings. I was struck at that opening session by the realization that I was largely sitting among people who were probably at Woodstock and their offspring. Not everyone by a long shot, but this was the vibe. (I do not intend any criticism here, to be clear.) I understand that one of the goals of a (new?) scholarship program is to reach out to college students and young adults who aren't already connected. That's probably wise.
There were some logistical issues. The person who was to be chair this year had sudden, serious medical issues in June, so someone else had to take over. That would explain some of the glitches I saw, but probably not others -- like that their online registration form was perfectly happy to take my money for a pre-ordered T-shirt, but they didn't actually have that T-shirt for me. (It happened to everyone who ordered online, I'm told.) These are not chair-level issues. There were other minor issues; I don't need to catalogue them here. Everyone I spoke with on the staff was friendly; there were no bad intentions here. Just, maybe, suboptimal processes.
The food was good and plentiful. magid said this year was much more starch-heavy than last year, and there weren't a lot of cooked veggies, but there was a salad bar so that helped. There was pizza at every lunch and dinner, at the beginning of the line, for those who needed something to get through the rest of the sometimes-long line. :-) There was no meat (they'd kashered the kitchen for dairy only), so there was ice cream available at all meals. (Maybe not breakfast; didn't notice.) I didn't think of root-beer floats until I saw someone else do it Friday night.
Not having drinks available except at meals was a little odd for me. (I'm used to drinking small amounts all day.) I saw very few water fountains -- actually, I think I saw only one. If you had a bottle you were welcome to fill it at meal-time, just as you were welcome to take fruit or cookies for later consumption. The wiki had said to bring a water bottle, which I didn't, so that's my fault -- the wiki also said to bring a flashlight, swimwear, extra towels, and a bunch of other stuff I deemed either superfluous or incompatable with air travel. I assumed the water bottle was for hikes, which I didn't plan to go on. Now I know.
I had a good time, aside from the feeling-like-an-outsider problem. I don't know when I'll next go back; even if it weren't for the Pennsic conflict I would be unlikely to go every year. Next year isn't an option; I'll see how I feel about it the year after that if the dates work. Next year, maybe Jerusalem will be an option.
(Also, I won't be able to catch up on LJ. If I haven't already commented on something you wanted me to see, please ping me? Thanks.)
magid and I arrived mid-afternoon on Monday and checked in. The first scheduled activity relevant to either of us was a newcomers' orientation at 4:00, which gave me an hour or so to unpack, get settled, and walk back to campus. We were both staying in the lake-side townhouses, described as a "7-to-10-minute walk" from the campus. The packet contained a map. We went our separate ways.
Let's just abbreviate what followed as "an accurate map would have helped". It didn't look like I missed anything of import in the orientation session, though. After that was a general opening session, dinner, and an evening program. magid and I were drafted to help set up chairs for a performance, so we stuck around for that.
Speaking of performances, when I got home from Pennsic and checked the convention wiki, I saw for the first time that the planned activities included a talent show. Hmm, I said -- there will be singers there. Some of them will be good sight-singers, probably. And so a crazy idea hatched. I took four copies of Salamone Rossi's Halleluyah Halleli (which I've sung before); tigerbright and teddywolf (the other two people I knew there besides magid) were game for it, and I figured that could work. Either we'd find an alto or we wouldn't, and either they'd learn it (without stressing) or not, and if things aligned we would perform it.
So there we were at some meal talking about it, and someone else at the table overheard and said "I know that", and he joined us -- which still didn't give us an alto, but that was fine. A pick-up group was still fine. He turned out to be a cantor. After our first practice he thought of three possible altos we could ask, but two declined and one didn't get our message in time.
In the end we did not pull it off, but we all had fun just singing it together, and at the end of the final gathering someone said "hey, maybe we could do this as a class in some future year", and everyone thought that was cool, and everyone any of us mentioned it to also thought it was cool. So who knows -- maybe next year's NHC will include a choral track. With six classroom hours it might be possible to learn two or three songs, depending on the students. (I can't help next year -- NHC 2009 conflicts with Pennsic. Maybe the cantor will do it; he seemed kind of jazzed by the idea.)
There are two (daily) class slots, morning and afternoon. In the morning I took a class on sh'mirat ha-lashon, or guarding one's speech. (The name Chofeitz Chayim might be familiar to some of my readers.) The instructor was very good, and I plan to write more about this class later.
In the afternoon I was signed up for a class that looked like it was going to be primarily text study around creation. There's tons of midrash and commentary on just the six days of creation; it's a target-rich environment. I apparently misunderstood the class description, though, and after the first session it was clear that I was in the wrong place. (Lots more mysticism than I have the background for, for one thing.) After a bit of running around (to get permission of both instructors) I was able to change to a class on prayer-leading for the last three days. (Texts and theory, not a lab class.)
There were also workshops (one-shots). Some that I took were very good and some less appealing; either way it's over in an hour, so I saw it as a chance to explore. One that was very good was called "Bloodletting, fatal attractions, and curious adjustments in early modern Jewish law"; the session I attended was about the medieval ban on polygamy. It was a case study: a man had married in Ashkenaz, where the ban was in effect, then moved to a Sephardi country that has no such ban, then married a second wife: what do we do with him? (In general the rabbis came down against him.) There was a second session with different cases which, alas, I could not attend. I enjoyed this, so I probably would have also enjoyed the class called "law and the law", on interactions between Jewish law and secular law. I heard it was quite good. (It was taught by a lawyer who brought case studies.)
Classes and workshops both ranged over a wide spectrum, from text study to crafts to movement (e.g. yoga) to social action. magid took a class on quilting, for instance, and I was impressed by what she produced. (The class had an exhibit at the end of the week.)
One afternoon someone announced an ad-hoc session to study midrash rabbah on that week's torah portion. I've heard of midrash rabbah :-) , so I decided to go. For a while we were the only two there, and then we were joined by a third. The other two were way more advanced than I, and the leader's plan was to read it in the Hebrew. Things slowed down when it was my turn to read (inferring vowels) and translate; I did better than I expected but not as well as I would have liked. A specific area to work on is recognizing the same root (= same base word) in altered forms; I get this sometimes but not always. Chances are decent that if it's a significant word and I encountered it as a verb, for instance, I'll probably see its nominal form or a different verb conjugation later in the passage.
The days were full, with the traditional egalitarian minyan at 7AM and the last scheduled evening activities starting at 10PM. I never went to the earliest minyan; I instead tended to go to the later, less-traditional, ones, both because they were later and to explore. There were usually three or four options in the morning (only one in the evening). I'll write more about services in a different entry, including the ones where I chanted torah.
It was obvious at the opening session, and remained obvious through the week, how tight this community is. Many of the younger adults have gone every year their entire lives, for instance. And because all the regulars are so connected and comfortable, it felt hard for me to break in as a newcomer. In many ways this is their Pennsic -- an established gathering with lots going on, lots of people you haven't seen for a year, and maybe fewer cycles than anyone would like to spend on the folks with green dots on their name tags. It was Wednesday lunch before someone I didn't know sat down at a table next to me. (I'd sat by other people previously but found breaking in hard.) This was probably not helped by this being their largest gathering thus far, at about 370 people.
There didn't seem to be a lot of people my age -- lots older and lots younger, but no so much the 40-somethings. I was struck at that opening session by the realization that I was largely sitting among people who were probably at Woodstock and their offspring. Not everyone by a long shot, but this was the vibe. (I do not intend any criticism here, to be clear.) I understand that one of the goals of a (new?) scholarship program is to reach out to college students and young adults who aren't already connected. That's probably wise.
There were some logistical issues. The person who was to be chair this year had sudden, serious medical issues in June, so someone else had to take over. That would explain some of the glitches I saw, but probably not others -- like that their online registration form was perfectly happy to take my money for a pre-ordered T-shirt, but they didn't actually have that T-shirt for me. (It happened to everyone who ordered online, I'm told.) These are not chair-level issues. There were other minor issues; I don't need to catalogue them here. Everyone I spoke with on the staff was friendly; there were no bad intentions here. Just, maybe, suboptimal processes.
The food was good and plentiful. magid said this year was much more starch-heavy than last year, and there weren't a lot of cooked veggies, but there was a salad bar so that helped. There was pizza at every lunch and dinner, at the beginning of the line, for those who needed something to get through the rest of the sometimes-long line. :-) There was no meat (they'd kashered the kitchen for dairy only), so there was ice cream available at all meals. (Maybe not breakfast; didn't notice.) I didn't think of root-beer floats until I saw someone else do it Friday night.
Not having drinks available except at meals was a little odd for me. (I'm used to drinking small amounts all day.) I saw very few water fountains -- actually, I think I saw only one. If you had a bottle you were welcome to fill it at meal-time, just as you were welcome to take fruit or cookies for later consumption. The wiki had said to bring a water bottle, which I didn't, so that's my fault -- the wiki also said to bring a flashlight, swimwear, extra towels, and a bunch of other stuff I deemed either superfluous or incompatable with air travel. I assumed the water bottle was for hikes, which I didn't plan to go on. Now I know.
I had a good time, aside from the feeling-like-an-outsider problem. I don't know when I'll next go back; even if it weren't for the Pennsic conflict I would be unlikely to go every year. Next year isn't an option; I'll see how I feel about it the year after that if the dates work. Next year, maybe Jerusalem will be an option.