Chappy Chags

Shiksa Girlfriend and I moved over the summer, so we decided to take advantage of our new location and go to Evil Minion for High Holidays. Rosh Hashanah was pretty nice, except that Evil Minion, which usually provides excellent transliterations for Shabbos, decided to go an alternate route with the Birnbaum machzor, which provides... none. I attempted to follow along the best I could with my Mishkan T'Filah, but for bizarre reasons there are large chunks of the service which aren't in there and which I didn't even know I was missing (psalm of the day? since when?). That was kind of frustrating. The singing was nice, and the shofar blasts were great, but needless to say, we skipped out on Musaf-- for me, the money-quote is always, "Longest Amidah of the year." Sorry, but there's no way I'm sticking around for that, particularly when I can't even follow along. So we left early and went grocery shopping instead.

Fast-forward to Yom Kippur. Evil Minion was set up at a secret location (another shul sanctuary, while that shul in turn had been displaced to yet another secret location-- yay High Holiday mysteries) and we were looking forward to going. Unfortunately, I came down with this flu-bronchitis-death rattle a few days before, which really took a giant crap on my holiday. Fun times included chatting with my parents and trying to convince them that no, I hadn't planned on fasting while sick. No, really.

Abbot Yid: You'd better not fast.

Me: I wasn't planning on it. I'm bummed, but it's fine.

Abbot Yid: Well... good. Cause I'm telling you, God doesn't care. And even the most hard-ass rabbi would tell you what I'm telling you. Got it?

Me: Yes, just like I did the first time.

Abbot Yid: Seriously, don't do it.

Me: Fine!

It was nice to see some old friends for the holiday (though my persistent hacking made it hard to daven out loud, much less kibbitz). It was very surreal to have to pay so much attention to my breathing/voice volume during prayer to avoid setting off my cough.

The singing was quite impressive-- the Minioneers split the davening up six or seven ways so you got to hear a nice spread. Oh, and because having no functional machzor had sucked so hard on Rosh Hashanah, Shiksa Girlfriend and I sped to the internet and got... much to my chagrin... a transliterated Art Scroll Yom Kippur Machzor. Sigh, I have drunk the Art Scroll kool-aid. Oh well, at least I got a funny post out of it.

Incidentally, not fasting on YK (for the first time in ten years) was a very odd sensation. I kind of felt like I had a bit of an inferiority complex, and then I tried to compensate by not eating a lot during the day... things got kind of weird by the end.

It has come to my and SG's attention that this is our fourth year together, and our fourth year celebrating High Holidays in a different shul. Wandering Jews, indeed.

Reappraising

I happened to be chatting up a colleague and mentioned my and Shiksa Girlfriend's ongoing (not so often these days, though) shul-search. She said that she and her husband went to a place that they liked, and invited us to join them. Knowing that SG was restless to shul-it-up more, I accepted.

It turns out we were heading back where we started: Temple Touched By God. We got there just in time for the later service, aka the young adult meat market. We found my colleague and her hubby. Hey, Mishkan T'filahs! Awesome, this is a lot better than last time when they had weird self-published and poorly transliterated booklets. Also, I can't recall exactly, but I felt like they included a lot more Hebrew this time around, probably because now everyone can follow along.

There are still style issues that turn me off: I don't really feel the need for a 5-piece band for Shabbos (especially when two are mandolins), neither am I really interested in us all pretending to be Bob Marley as we try to combine "Redemption Song" with "Mi Chamocha"-- which seemed especially tacky with an African rabbi visiting for Shabbos. Incidentally, cool guests with interesting stories are a big plus; though I would have liked someone, at some point, to have given an actual drash. I didn't expect the visiting rabbi to give one, per se, but all the regular rabbi seemed to want to talk about was the shul's upcoming fundraiser for... well, that part they never quite explained. Also, SG commented that given the size of the crowd (easily 200 people), they "sang like wusses." I said that I think part of it has to do with the fact that when there's a whole band, singers with microphones, and quasi-improvised songs that the cantor didn't bother to give anyone the words to, people don't feel like they're being asked to sing as much being given the opportunity to accompany the "professionals." Certainly a far cry from Evil Minion, or even Temple GLBT.

Oh yeah- has anyone ever heard this song? Does anyone know what it's about? Because a congregant sang it, super-emotionally, like she was having a stroke or something, and not only was that super-weird, but the lyrics were super duper confusing.

From a distance the world looks blue and green,
and the snow-capped mountains white.
From a distance the ocean meets the stream,
and the eagle takes to flight.

From a distance, there is harmony,
and it echoes through the land.
It's the voice of hope, it's the voice of peace,
it's the voice of every man.

From a distance we all have enough,
and no one is in need.
And there are no guns, no bombs, and no disease,
no hungry mouths to feed.

From a distance we are instruments
marching in a common band.
Playing songs of hope, playing songs of peace.
They're the songs of every man.
God is watching us. God is watching us.
God is watching us from a distance.

From a distance you look like my friend,
even though we are at war.
From a distance I just cannot comprehend
what all this fighting is for.

From a distance there is harmony,
and it echoes through the land.
And it's the hope of hopes, it's the love of loves,
it's the heart of every man.

It's the hope of hopes, it's the love of loves.
This is the song of every man.
And God is watching us, God is watching us,
God is watching us from a distance.
Oh, God is watching us, God is watching.
God is watching us from a distance.

Is "distance" good or bad? Isn't the whole point of this song essentially that the reason things are bad (the visiting rabbi had just talked about growing up without running water and about how he was trying to raise money to make sure everyone in his village had mosquito nets to protect them from malaria) because God is too far away and assumes we're just fine? I can't tell if I'm missing the point here, or if everybody else was.

I guess what it comes down to is that when Touched By God actually does Jewish things, like Hebrew, I can appreciate the creative touches. Now that I have more familiarity with a traditional service and I'm comfortable with the structures of prayer, I don't mind what tune we use, or even if we skip around a little. When it comes to outright borrowing or slapping together disparate sources that have nothing to do with each other, much less connections with the service or ritual, things get a little trickier for me. I don't go to shul to hear people sing Bette Middler or Bob Marley songs. I don't object to people doing it, but that's not why I'm there.

Still, at least when we left this time, we didn't leave mad or confused. Maybe a little smug, but hey, it's a start. Will we make it our regular stomping grounds? Probably not. But I could see us going back periodically.

... No chance of giving B'Nei Hippy another try, though.

Shul Awkwardness

I feel very conflicted about Beth Elderly. On the one hand, they are some very nice folks, and certainly very welcoming to us. On the other hand, they're starting to treat us like semi-disappointing wayward grandchildren. I suppose this is partially our fault for coming back quasi-often but not fully committing to the shul-- they must think we just like to tease them.

Two weeks ago, walking to my night school class I bump into a self-proclaimed shul mucky muck I'll call Ezekiel. Ezekiel has repeatedly glommed onto me at shul, used-car-salesman style, trying to either play Jewish geography (we fail), or to entice me, not very subtly, into making a bigger shul commitment. Despite having met over a half-dozen times, he again forgets my name, but recognizes me thanks to my resemblance to Gimli with a stetson. Not wanting to pass up this moment of destiny, he booms through the subway station, "Hey guy from Beth Elderly!" Funny, I thought HE was the guy from Beth Elderly, I'm just a twenty-something who occasionally drops by. We kibbitz for a while and then he asks why he hasn't seen me in a while. I tell him we've been busy and exhausted from crazy schedules. The fact that getting there requires a 2-train trip spanning almost an hour does not improve its standing. He asks if there's anything the shul can do to make itself "more of a priority for you." Um, no, I just said there was nothing the shul was doing wrong, and as I don't expect it to install rocket launchers to its foundation anytime soon to fly over to my apartment for a "quickie minyan", I think we're just going to have to settle for quasi-regular attendance.

Later that week, we went to Beth Elderly, which as a plus side is close to the ocean, which at least gives us something pretty to watch while we're waiting for services to start. They were trying some new tunes that night, which I liked in theory, however in practice the cantor's dirge-style is very uninspiring, and the rabbi's tone-deafness does not really help. At one point someone tried singing "Shalom Aleichem" to the Carlebach melody but it broke down halfway through. The rabbi also tried to modify a negro "Christian spiritual" (redundant?) but had neglected to remember the melody- he urged us all to youtube it after Shabbos, though. (Supposedly it connected with the Parsha that week, which discussed building the Mishkan.) Undaunted, we pressed on through for a painful few minutes-- I also liked how he seemed concerned that some congregants might be weirded out by the idea of singing "Christian" lyrics, so he encouraged anyone who wanted to sing Hasidic niggun style to do so.

After services, Shiska Girlfriend got blindsided by Shul VP, about whom observations have been previously made. He cornered her and asked her for "better contact info." She said he already had it. He countered by saying, clearly not, because you haven't been showing up to our events! Touche, Mr. Vice President. SG gave him the same spiel I had given Ezekiel a few days earlier. He had another trick up his sleeve- he offered to organize a carpool for us! No, really, that's... ok. Very nice, but also kind of... creepy?

Finally, one of the nice old shul ladies- all 4'5" of her, with the cutest wispy goatee you ever will see, sidled up to me after the potluck and mentioned how nice it was to see us again. "Always a pleasure," I replied. "You know, you should come by more often- not just for potluck, but more services, too. Don't worry, we always have food- Judaism is the religion of the stomach!"

Great, a food bribe! Reminds me of when a classmate tried to coerce me into taking her to a middle-school dance by offering me a Kit-Kat. As an aside, this proposal would be slightly more impressive if most of the foodstuffs here didn't usually consist of variations on cold penne salad.

Look, people, the 30 pairs of grandparents I never had or really needed, you're nice folks (except for a few of your cranks-- but a few of those seem to pop up everywhere, don't they?)and we will continue to keep you in the rotation-- in fact, these days you're essentially the de facto shul for us, tied with Evil Minion. But as anyone on the dating scene knows, desperation is not very attractive. We like that you pay attention to us and are so eager to welcome us into the tent, particularly given Shiska Girlfriend's Tzipporah-like status. But we are not in a position to save your shul. We are not your pioneer "New Guard" that can take over kiruv for you as you attempt to broaden your target demographic to the under-40 crowd. We are not experts in youth culture, "hip"-ness, or, for that matter, Shlomo Carlebach melodies. We wish you the best and are hoping to come along for the ride. But we're in our twenties and you're all... decidedly not. We are not the leaders you're looking for. Get it together and take a few steps back, please.

Rosh Hashanah at Beth Elderly

Shiksa Girlfriend and I couldn't decide where to go, but we did know where we didn't want to go:

- Temple Burning Bush with their Used Car Salesman rabbi
- Temple GLBT which is full of people who are nice but more than a tad nuts
- Beth Halfpipe with its oh-so-confusing building

So we opted for Beth Elderly instead. They were very nice and gave us a trial membership for cheap, so I am now officially for the first time ever *technically* a synagogue member. (That goes double for SG.)

We shlepped out there for Erev Rosh Hashanah and stopped in for dinner at the greasy spoon nearby, a fun city institution pretending to be a 50s diner while staffed entirely by barely English-conversant Chinese people. While we were eating I happened to spy the VP of the shul sitting in a nearby booth with his wife. I was amused for a few reasons. First, the shul just got done writing up a new series of kosher bylaws for any food brought into the shul, and this place is totally not kosher. Second, the couple was berating the poor waitress (who, granted, looked like she could care less) for screwing up their hamburger order.

"I wanted it medium rare!"

"No, you said medium. This IS medium!"

"This is medium done. It's totally different!"

And on and on. SG was knitting a hat and reading a book about prostitute empowerment or something, so she missed the show. For my part, I kept ducking behind her head so Not Very ViP wouldn't see me. The waitress disappeared for a while, considerately giving the couple time to loudly bitch about her. "I keep telling you," VP said to his wife. "You have to spell everything out for them." (This seemed slightly unfair to me, given that it can't be that easy to take orders in a second language, or maybe that's just the classes I'm taking on ELL kicking in with sympathy.)

Then the waitress came back. But there was still a problem.

"This is just rare. I wanted MEDIUM rare, darn it!"

Sweet crap. Even I was getting ready to kill them. We paid and left just in time to see her bringing them their food for a third time and testily asking, "You just had water, right?"

Beth Elderly has a new rabbi, who seems nice, though hardly charismatic. He reminds me of the nebbishy Jewish friend from a crappy 90s sitcom like Caroline in the City. Very sweater-vest, if you know what I mean. Anyway he has a wife and a cute baby girl, though they've chosen to name her after a Middle Eastern body of water. Sitting in front of us was a couple in their early 30s with matching giant masses of dreadlocks, which they both stuck paper-thin yarmulkes on top of like little flags when they went up for their aliya.

The service was fine, though the rabbi's sermon weirded me out a little bit- he was trying to talk about the three "days" of RH tied-in with Malchuyot, Zichronot and Shofarot as "the three jewels in the crown" of Rosh Hashanah. This forced imagery wouldn't have been quite so bad had I not seen the same terminology used in a very bad John Hagee sermon a few years ago. The gist of it involved Hagee telling his followers, "It's ok if you have crappy finances, because you'll get a nice crown for it in the afterlife. It's ok if you suffer or die for being a Christian, because you get a Martyr's Crown, and it's even fancier!" (It was at this point that I turned to Sam and asked, "His theology is essentially coming down to promising people invisible hats, yes?" Sam: "Sadly, yes.") So that was a tad weird.

Next morning we set out for Shacharis (morning prayers). I enjoyed sleeping in slightly early, though having to take multiple trains to get there was not terribly awesome. We also forgot to eat breakfast, which is never my preference (as I told SG, "There's no reason to turn Rosh Hashanah into Yom Kippur"). We got there about an hour into Shacharis, but they only seemed like they had been going on for about twenty minutes- I couldn't tell, but maybe they didn't get a minyan until late. I was super-excited to whip out my gigantic-yet-awesome copy of Mishkan T'Filah, which I had lugged all over town. It was very cool being able to follow most of the first service, and understanding the intricacies of the liturgy order, the transition, knowing what and when they were doing this thing or that thing, just really interesting. (SG alternated from looking over my shoulder and being our place-holder with the Sim Shalom Machzor.)

The Torah service was fine, though, to be honest, I couldn't really stay with it (I can only follow along in English for so long before I get bored- also I felt bad for SG who was just sitting there feeling faint. A few good exchanges:

Me: "Ah, Rosh Hashanah. Time to hear the same story about Abraham almost killing his kid. Hey, what do they say about the Isaac thing in Sunday school?"

SG: "It only comes up as it being a prefiguring of Jesus. You know, on account of him being his only begotten son and all."

Me: "But he had Ishmael too."

SG: "But he was illegitimate. Also, vaguely Muslim, so he doesn't come up."

Me: "But he also had six other sons by a concubine."

SG: "And guess how often that came up."

Also...

Me: (During the Torah service) "How are you holding up?"

SG: "Not too bad. It's almost over, right?"

Me: "Well, sort of. But then there's the haftarah reading, too."

SG: (Dirty look) "Are you serious?"

Me: "Afraid so."

SG: "That's it. I call snack break."

The reader was very good, though it was hilarious to watch the cantor stumbling over blessing every single member of various families coming up on the bimah for aliyot. Also, there was something very weird with some of those kids' Hebrew names- who names their kid Sinai?

Funny moments: the gabbai came up to us halfway through Shacharis and asked us to do an aliyah (sound familiar?). Then, before he could give us the signal, the rabbi accidentally (?) skipped several prayers in the service. Which led to a good two minutes of irritated muttering from the gabbai, sitting like, right next to us. That was a tad awkward. Finally they got their act together and we were up. Because the universe has an ongoing sense of humor as whacked-out as mine, guess which song the congregation was singing during our aliya. I swear, I couldn't look at SG the entire time.

Musaf was fine, though at that point we were definitely reaching the point of masochism/macho Jew-itude. (When I used to go to Temple Ol'Faithful in High School, we always left after the Torah service and first Shofar blowing.) But we stuck it out and were rewarded with some halfway decent choir work, the full prostration (still too slow this year, next year, more decisiveness. I'll be freaking kowtowing to that Ark first thing!), and part 2 of "Three Jewels in the Crown," a theme that does not necessarily improve with further installments. Incidentally, the cantor demonstrated she is totally capable of leading songs without near-constant warbling. Now if only someone would convince her that those songs sound MUCH, MUCH better.

Oh, and I saw four Middle-Schoolers whom I subbed for last year. They flipped their lid and came over to say hi. They asked me my first name and were shocked when I told them, even more so when I agreed that they could use it if they saw me outside of school (the joke's on them: I'm working somewhere else this year).

All in all, it was a good day. Got there around 9:20, finished around 2:00. Not too arduous, and it was super-cool to put Mishkan T'Filah to action.

Though SG says next year, she might skip Shacharis altogether.

Coming up: Sam is visiting for Yom Kippur. Fun times may ensue.

Confused at Beth Halfpipe

Shiksa Girlfiend and I were hard at work trying to decide where to head to for Friday night services and decided to finally grace the other (other) Conservative shul in town with our presence. We had never been to it because it has, until recently, been under protracted and extensive building renovation. Unlike some of the other games in town whose existence or reputation I had been vaguely aware of during my adolescence, this place was starting off with a completely blank slate. It could totally go either way. We left it up to the fates (angels? sefirot? fortune cookie?) and headed off.

I will be very honest. It was very hard to get past the place's architecture. The first thing you see when you walk up is a giant sandstone semi-circle sitting on top of the building. Supposedly this is a menorah but all I saw was one of these, hence our super-witty nickname. Underneath the pipe was a series of gray aluminum boxes. That plus some open-air courtyards made up the whole shul. More on architecture in a minute.

The rabbi was very nice- we had been expecting the older, Soloveitchik-like guy from a year ago, but it turns out he had gotten bored and fled the backwoods of San Francisco for someplace with some REAL Jewish opportunities-somewhere in Georgia. The new rabbi was in his late 30s. Services were in the small chapel, whose wood paneling, according to a brochure I snagged, was supposed to resemble or mimic Sequoias or something, but just reminded me of somebody's rumpus room from the 1960s.

I was wearing a cool new blue fedora (post-to-come on inane hat conversations with Mama Yid) and Shiksa Girlfriend was wearing a longish skirt on account of it being cold and dreary. Anyway, apparently we looked ridiculously Orthodox because the rabbi shook my hand, then offered it to SG, who was looking around at all the paneling (not a fan) and missed her cue. She gave him a befuddled "What's going on?" look, but he mistook it for a "OMG, you awful man! I'm shomer negiah and horribly offended that you would try to touch my milky-white maiden hand!" look and very embarrasedly yanked his hand away, which SG then insisted on grabbing just to show him that the issue was her being slightly spacey and not Ortho.

Services were very basic- a small group of people, mostly late-middle-aged. I checked out a Conservative version of the Mishkan Tefillah that I hadn't heard of- which was pretty user-friendly, if a little cluttered on the page (sorry, but four columns is a lot, especially when you throw in sidebars for poetry and other crap). The rabbi had a nice voice, though everyone else seemed somewhere between tone-deaf and voicebox-cancer-survivor.

Particularly cool (at first, anyway) was that after the service, the rabbi offered to show new people around the shul. It was a very nice gesture, but it also unfortunately gave us a first-hand look at just how wacky their building is.

He led us to the main sanctuary, which, according to SG, looked like "two movie theaters crammed together face-to-face." (I would have gone for, "not terribly functional lecture hall".) The walls were made of this weird slat-wall wood that looked like it was supposed to be in a hardware store holding up tools or something. The rabbi gave a whole spiel about "we were trying to pare it down and think about just the bare basics of what a synagogue, like, is. Some people are confused by it, but that's the whole point of minimalism, right?" We both gave polite but skeptical looks. The rabbi continued to dig himself deeper by pointing out that "this is totally like the synagogue at Masada. Nowadays all the focus is on the rabbi and the ark, but we want to take the focus back and direct it at EACH OTHER." I spent the next several minutes thinking about how much worse various services I had been to would have been if there had been a fellow congregant staring at me, face-to-face no less, the entire time. Also, how about using a reference that's less than two thousand years old? I will admit that their digital light-up yizkor wall was kind of cool, though it seems like a real waste of money.

All of their hallways were re-done to use pre-existing space from neighboring common walls, thereby saving them a lot of space. An unfortunate side effect of this was that it made us feel like we were walking through the steam tunnels in someone's basement (sparse florescent lighting did not help). We concluded by walking through a small courtyard that showed the rabbi's fishbowl-like-office (he pretended he liked it) and their Beit Midrash/library which had a 70s-style conversation pit (which I actually liked, but SG just had to be negative about).

I will admit that I feel slightly guilty about nit-picking a shul simply on the basis of weird architecture- especially after going to the new Jewish Museum (not a fan) and leafing through a whole coffee-table-book of crappy synagogue pictures. But the bottom line was that it contributed to the feeling of a place that was sterile and lifeless. (No one would argue that Beth Elderly's building is all that awesome, but it feels like they use what little space they have to their advantage.) That may change, and I hope it does. And to give it a fair shake, we should go back in a few months to check them out again. But for a first impression- not so great.

Passover a smashing success, guests say

Everything went (almost) perfectly. All eleven of us were fed (stuffed), everyone loved my Haggadah, and clean-up only took an hour and a half.

Some notes for next year:

- Supervise Mother Superior Yid when she makes chicken liver; there were a lot of tiny bits of egg shell in there.

- Corollary to this: buy an egg timer for hard-boiled eggs.

- Next time, try to come up with seating arrangement which doesn't have the youngest and most Jewishly-knowledgeable people clustered around the center of the table, leaving the middle-aged and clueless folks stuck out at the extremities.

- Stop political conversations before they piss away half-an-hour that you had reserved for Grace After Meals and Hallel.

- Stand up for yourself and tell people that you're sorry it's kind of late, but we are going to finish Chad Gadya whether they like it or not, it's only five more damn verses.

- Go slower with Hebrew prayers and songs, maybe lose the intonation (Mama Yid was very confused by this) or go over it with people ahead of time.

But all in all, very, very good. This was definitely the first seder my parents had that they enjoyed. Which is saying a lot. And now we have more food than God. And, sadly, apparently way more matzoh than most of our peers.

Now to hibernate for the rest of the week to avoid having to eat it.

Countdown to Seder

P-Day is here, and in slightly more than six hours, Shiksa Girlfriend and I get to host our own seder. For eleven people. Because we're geniuses like that.

The breakdown is:

- Shiksa Girlfriend and Me
- My parents, who have been lovely enough to contribute food, wine, money and time (oh, and hosting space)
- My gay godparents
- My best friend from high school and his older brother
- SG's co-worker
- The mother and father of two different best friends from elementary school that my parents have stayed in touch with.

Another way of looking at this is:

- Four non-Jews;
- Six Jews;
- And whatever the hell Shiksa Girlfriend counts as.

The dietary restrictions:

- One "vegan plus meat"; Abbot Yid.
- One "no dairy"; me.
- And one vegetarian.

Our menu:

- Fruits and Vegetable appetizer plate, complete with variety of dips and humus (piss off, kitniyot).

- Chopped chicken liver with hard-boiled eggs and onions (thanks, Mom!)

- Haroset

- Chicken Matzoh Ball Soup

- A Gigantic Salad

- Aloo Palak (Indian spinach puree with potatoes)

- Red Lentils (also done Indian-style)

- A Mega-Brisket (thanks, Dad!)

- Roast Chicken

- Walnut-Pecan praline and fruit; along with soy ice-cream.

I predict we will be eating this meal through next month.

Oh, and I made my own Haggadah. We read it all the way through last night. It takes about 1 hour pre-meal and 30 minutes post. Found some errors last night; must fix those.

(Check out excerpts on Friar Yid.)

I'm being paged. Gotta go.