Shavuot
Yesterday was Shavuot, the holiday that commemorates the giving of the
torah. (Also agricultural stuff; all the festivals are dual-purpose
that way.) There is a tradition to stay up all night studying torah;
most people don't manage all night (I didn't), but for the third year
in a row we had a community-wide study (tikkun leil shavuot)
from 10PM to 1AM, and people who wanted more could go to their choice
of a few congregations that were continuing.
I do regret the loss of my congregation's tikkun, which was a coordinated program led by my rabbi and usually going until about 2. But I'm glad to have the community-wide one, where rabbis from all over come and teach classes. It gives me a chance to study with people I would never encounter otherwise, and I strive to go to classes taught by people who are new to me. Sure, it's unpredictable, but it's an adventure. :-)
The first class I went to this year was on prophets -- not the individual ones, but rather the common characteristics, what prophecy means, etc. This was taught by the community scholar at the Agency for Jewish Learning. An interesting take-away: I had always taken the passages in D'varim (chapters 13 and 18) about false prophets to refer to people claiming to be prophets who aren't -- deceivers, in other words. But the rabbi brought another interpretation (I don't know if this is his or if it's classical; he didn't cite a source), that the false prophet is an actual prophet who is misbehaving. If correct, that interpretation helps with the question of how a false prophet could perform miracles; it's not that Joe Shmoe is doing legerdemain to spread his false message, but that a prophet who actually did perform these acts on behalf of God then twisted the message. Even prophets can go astray.
I try to attend classes with new-to-me teachers, but when I saw Rabbi Staitman on the schedule (for the first time this year) I knew I had to go. I took part of a talmud class with him many many years ago (it was in fact my first formal Jewish education) and loved it, and I continued to take classes with him when I could (and asked him to be on my beit din). There was a kerfuffle at his old congregation some years ago and he didn't seem to be doing much adult education for a while (at least that got publicized) after that. He told me at the tikkun that he is now at Beth Shalom, that he teaches adult classes there, and that they should be fixing their web site soon and then I'll be able to find out what and when. Yay.
His class was on midrash about the ten commandments from a (12th-century?) collection called "Beit Ha-Midrash" (yeah, generic). Half of it (the odd-numbered commandments, peculiarly) has been translated into English; I'll need to write to him to get the title (and editor) of the translation, which he had there but I've forgotten. I enjoyed this class, which managed to spend the hour just on the swearing of oaths with plenty of material left untouched.
The third class I went to was taught by the rabbi of Beth Shalom, as it turned out. It was a little more cerebral and was broadly about the idea of mitzvot and why we do them. Just because God said so? Because the rewards are good and the punishments bad? For some other reason? His thesis was that it's all about mitvzot being a vehicle for facilitating relationships between us and God. Maybe also between us and other people; not sure. Somebody asked why we needed the threats and orders, then, and I perked up enough to say: because the torah has to speak to all of us all the time, and not everybody is ready at every time to engage in relationship-building. Sometimes we just need to be told what to do, and maybe it'll be better later. This seemed to resonate for some people.
We again joined forces with another congregation for the morning service and had a decent turnout. This year one of their rabbis gave the talk and I had issues with it. Sigh. Collaboration is hard sometimes. (The issues were about judgment, not about scholarship. I thought this was the wrong venue for that particular talk.)
We had more of a kiddush than we're used to after the service -- real food, not just cookies. So people stuck around a little longer, which gave us the chance to talk with people we don't normally encounter. I enjoyed that. Then I walked home on the hottest day of the year thus far and sat under an air-conditioning vent for a while when I got home.
I do regret the loss of my congregation's tikkun, which was a coordinated program led by my rabbi and usually going until about 2. But I'm glad to have the community-wide one, where rabbis from all over come and teach classes. It gives me a chance to study with people I would never encounter otherwise, and I strive to go to classes taught by people who are new to me. Sure, it's unpredictable, but it's an adventure. :-)
The first class I went to this year was on prophets -- not the individual ones, but rather the common characteristics, what prophecy means, etc. This was taught by the community scholar at the Agency for Jewish Learning. An interesting take-away: I had always taken the passages in D'varim (chapters 13 and 18) about false prophets to refer to people claiming to be prophets who aren't -- deceivers, in other words. But the rabbi brought another interpretation (I don't know if this is his or if it's classical; he didn't cite a source), that the false prophet is an actual prophet who is misbehaving. If correct, that interpretation helps with the question of how a false prophet could perform miracles; it's not that Joe Shmoe is doing legerdemain to spread his false message, but that a prophet who actually did perform these acts on behalf of God then twisted the message. Even prophets can go astray.
I try to attend classes with new-to-me teachers, but when I saw Rabbi Staitman on the schedule (for the first time this year) I knew I had to go. I took part of a talmud class with him many many years ago (it was in fact my first formal Jewish education) and loved it, and I continued to take classes with him when I could (and asked him to be on my beit din). There was a kerfuffle at his old congregation some years ago and he didn't seem to be doing much adult education for a while (at least that got publicized) after that. He told me at the tikkun that he is now at Beth Shalom, that he teaches adult classes there, and that they should be fixing their web site soon and then I'll be able to find out what and when. Yay.
His class was on midrash about the ten commandments from a (12th-century?) collection called "Beit Ha-Midrash" (yeah, generic). Half of it (the odd-numbered commandments, peculiarly) has been translated into English; I'll need to write to him to get the title (and editor) of the translation, which he had there but I've forgotten. I enjoyed this class, which managed to spend the hour just on the swearing of oaths with plenty of material left untouched.
The third class I went to was taught by the rabbi of Beth Shalom, as it turned out. It was a little more cerebral and was broadly about the idea of mitzvot and why we do them. Just because God said so? Because the rewards are good and the punishments bad? For some other reason? His thesis was that it's all about mitvzot being a vehicle for facilitating relationships between us and God. Maybe also between us and other people; not sure. Somebody asked why we needed the threats and orders, then, and I perked up enough to say: because the torah has to speak to all of us all the time, and not everybody is ready at every time to engage in relationship-building. Sometimes we just need to be told what to do, and maybe it'll be better later. This seemed to resonate for some people.
We again joined forces with another congregation for the morning service and had a decent turnout. This year one of their rabbis gave the talk and I had issues with it. Sigh. Collaboration is hard sometimes. (The issues were about judgment, not about scholarship. I thought this was the wrong venue for that particular talk.)
We had more of a kiddush than we're used to after the service -- real food, not just cookies. So people stuck around a little longer, which gave us the chance to talk with people we don't normally encounter. I enjoyed that. Then I walked home on the hottest day of the year thus far and sat under an air-conditioning vent for a while when I got home.