Goldilocks Syndrome, p. 2

So it finally happened: we visited an Ortho place. Though there were a couple of points where I was nervous about needing to use my transliterated siddur (and being slightly paranoid that people would know I wasn't entirely sure what I was doing all the time), I am happy to report that neither of us burst into flames.

Mrs. Yid and I decided to take the folks over at the MO shul up the road up on their offer and go to their Tisha B'Av service. We probably wouldn't have gone but they said they were going to be showing a film from the OU on the importance and relevance of Tisha B'Av. "What do you think?" I asked her. "Since I'm fairly ambivalent about this holiday I guess it wouldn't hurt to find out more about it," she said. "Plus at least you should be able to get some good blogging out of it." Touche, my Eshet Chayil.

In keeping with my post-Tisha B'Av attempts to practice slightly less lashon hara and slightly more dan lekaf zechut, let's start with some pros.

- The mechitza, while certainly present and notable, was not excruciatingly misogynistic to the degree that I felt uncomfortable having Mrs. Yid sit there. The women's section was approximately a third of the size of the sanctuary, faced the ark, and Mrs. Yid was able to see what was going on. So, at least the women weren't being kept behind a one-way mirror or in a fenced in shed in the back or up in a balcony. And we stuck our noses into their weekday chapel while we were waiting for services to start and found out that all the mechitza there consists of is a waist-high curtain dividing the back portion of the room from the front (I guess they're on the honor system?)

- The rabbi had a very nice voice. His very Ashkenazic accent threw me off sometimes, but the dude could sing.

- The rabbi had a nice mini-drash on connecting fasting with ethical behavior. There was a good line on how "If we can control what goes into our mouths, we can also control what comes out of it."

- There's something nice about knowing that the people at shul are there specifically to be in shul. Yes, there was small talk and socializing, but the guys in the men's section (and by the time we were into services, there were probably about 30-35) were clearly there to daven.

Now some downsides:

- The movie didn't start until about 45 minutes after the flyer said it would. In fact for the first 40 minutes it was just us, a random Chabad guy and a 30-something gal who grew up at Beth Elderly. Eventually the rabbi showed up with his laptop and we all crowded around it in the Beth Midrash. Low marks for logistics, folks.

- The "movie" itself was actually 4 not particularly good 20-minute speeches/drashlets. We watched two and were super underwhelmed. Rabbi Weil's was first and was fairly rambling. He spent a fair amount of time drawing parallels between Tisha B'Av in Jerusalem and the Holocaust (he was very hung up on the fact that both involved people being "shipped like cattle"-- a line he repeated about 5 times, and particularly unfortunate after I found out he grew up on a cattle ranch). He also talked a lot about the 23rd kina where Rabbi Yishmael's son and daughter each get enslaved by Romans, who then decide to breed them. Maybe it was just me, but it seemed like R. Weil was spending waaay too much pathos on what is essentially a creepy pseudo-incest story. I also like how the "happy ending" of this story is the two of them recognizing each other at daybreak and dying in each other's arms. Um, hooray? My favorite part was when Weil mentioned that this kina wasn't written  down until the 1000s-- because "only that generation, that had suffered the Crusades, could truly understand that first generation's pain." Yeah, or they wrote it down in response and as a commentary on their own experiences. Please tell me I'm not the only one coming to this conclusion. I mean, if we critique the Gospels because they happened a whole 70 years after the supposed fact, I don't think we should be mentioning that this "totally reliable" story from our "great mesorah" was just twiddling its thumbs for a thousand years or so before anyone decided to put it on paper.

Weil's last focus was connecting Tisha B'Av to Holocaust survivors and talking about the lasting effects of trauma, which was fine, but his tone was kind of weird. He kept saying things like, "Even though they survived, they didn't really survive. Truthfully, they died in the Holocaust." Maybe it's just me but I found this extremely distasteful. First of all, the fact that many survivors lived with, and struggled with, their memories and trauma is not the same thing as saying they died along with the rest of their families. Not only is this problematic in terms of being extremely general (on a very touchy topic), it verges on being downright dismissive of the lives that survivors worked so hard to rebuild after the war. If I was a Shoah survivor, even if my life afterwards was hard, I'd be pretty pissed at this guy for essentially writing me off as a living corpse. Not a fan.

- The second clip we watched was from Rabbi Weinberg. His tone was slightly cloying (How can our fellow Jews not realize how lame golus is? Because it totally is, right guys? Who's with me?), but at least much less offensive than Rabbi Weil's. I feel like it might be interesting for a liberal Jew to have a conversation with Rabbi Weinberg just to offer him a different perspective on the notion of perfection and ways to attain it. It's not that we don't see that the world is imperfect, it's that we aren't expecting the Messiah to come and fix it.

We couldn't stand to watch the other two videos, but I may get around to checking them out eventually.

- There were only 5 ladies on the women's side, including Mrs. Yid. She reports that they alternated between davening (younger folks) and gossiping (older ladies). She said that her favorite part was when the rabbi folded the bimah around like a crazy transformer toy/Star Trek console. She used an Artscroll siddur for the first time and described its commentary as "Repeatedly starting off with a reasonable to plausible statement, then jumping immediately to a crazy conclusion, and always in the most authoritative tone you could imagine."

- The breakneck speed of the davening on the men's side was pretty tricky for me to keep up with, though I did my best. I was slightly taken aback by how quickly everyone around me was davening, and, from my end, it seemed like more of a chore to get through rather than a particularly spiritual experience for any of them (except maybe the Chabad guy next to me). I suspect this was probably a combination of being really ready to go home and eat and the fact that when you daven multiple times a day it probably loses some of its buzz.

- Not to be overly picky, but... despite the fact that we were clearly new folks there, only 2 people came up and said hello (the one lady in the Beth Midrash, and the rabbi, and he was rather curt and a tad prickly). Again, to give the benefit of the doubt, this was probably due to it being the end of fasting, but still a little annoying since we had been supposedly invited. I was trying to decide what to call the shul on the blog today and right now I'm leaning towards Congregation Rodef Shaarei, because after 3 hours there I was running for the doors. (I would be open to going back there again for a happier holiday, potentially even as part of more community-wide collaboration, though I do think not letting the women participate would probably be a deal-breaker.)

To sum up: I suppose, as always, we have a bit of the goldilocks syndrome going on here. We don't really get a lot out of super touchy-feely anything goes services a-la Bnei Hippy, but the service at Rodef Shaarei wasn't all that meaningful or stimulating, either. Bnei Hippy was a little too centered around everybody's individual issues rather than looking at Tisha B'Av, but Rodef Shaarei and the OU film seemed overly focused on pat answers like, "You have to want geula," or, "We didn't learn from our mistakes and so God let the Temple be destroyed again." I'm certainly open to the idea of using Tisha B'Av as a mussar opportunity, but a theodicy-based view of history doesn't really work for me.

Like I said in part 1, I see Tisha B'Av as primarily a holiday of commemoration. There's room in there for an emotional and personal component, but I personally don't feel that it should be overshadowed by either my own ego or supposed ethical/ideological failings. Sorry Rabbi Weinberg, but I don't buy the argument that my personal lack of yearning for Moshiach is why we still live in an imperfect society.

Next year if we can't find a decent middle-of-the-road service, I may just get a book of English-translated kinot and we'll study and discuss that.

Goldilocks syndrome, p.1

For Tisha B'Av eve, Mrs. Yid and I went to the community-wide service at Temple Burning Bush/B'nei Hippy. (There was a dairy-veg potluck beforehand, but given my food allergies, it seemed best to pre-game on our own, so we had take-out sushi at home.)

It's so rare these days that we attend services elsewhere, so I brought back my old format:

Pro:

- Togetherness. We had 13 different Jewish communities represented at the service. That was pretty cool. Not only that, but we got a letter from two of the Orthodox shuls in town saying that they would have liked to attend but due to davening parameters (mixed seating, kol isha, instruments) they couldn't come-- but that they invited all of us to visit them the following day. Not sure how this was received among the rest of the crowd, but I for one appreciated the spirit of community. Even if you disagree with them, you have to respect people's boundaries and take them where they are.

- Atmosphere. Once again, sitting on the floor with candles and reading Eicha was a very interesting experience.

- Some good drashot. The shul rabbi talked about some of his experiences in Israel, particularly Jerusalem, both before and after 1967, and also brought up the contradiction that we are mourning a city that is no longer destroyed. There was some politics (he likes politics) about Women of the Wall, which I found a little inappropriate, but I was impressed by his conclusion, where he said that, to recall the rabbinic teaching that just as the Temple was destroyed due to sinat hinam, and it would only be rebuilt through ahavat hinam, we as liberal Jews had a responsibility to NOT HATE the Orthodox, to forgive them for whatever acts we've been blaming them for, and a responsibility to try to understand "the other side." "Tolerance and understanding are important, and tolerance doesn't start with the other side reaching out to you, it starts with you working on yourself."

- Some contemplation. Sitting there, listening to Eicha and trying to conceptualize the initial, as well as subsequent, tragedies we were commemorating, I realized that, in my view, observing the holiday didn't really didn't relate to whether Jerusalem had been rebuilt or not. We were remembering what had been lost, the people, the accomplishments, the culture, and so on. While for some people actually observing (or caring about) Tisha B'Av might be a challenge, I don't particularly buy the argument I've been seeing that the dilemma is primarily because Israel has now been "rebuilt." (The rabbi, for instance, mentioned that a friend of his, from a religious Zionist family, could not square mourning for the destruction when the land was being rebuilt, and so he regularly spent Tisha B'Av picnicking with his family in a park.)

This may be trickier in Israel (it might be hard to mourn Jerusalem when you can see it out your window), but for me, this doesn't really seem like a problem. (And no, it's not because we don't have a third temple.) For me, this is about commemoration. A few days ago, I was trying to conceptualize how to explain Tisha b'Av in case my students asked me what it was about, and I came up with this:

Tisha b'Av is like the Jewish 9/11. I'm not super-big on 9/11 commemoration specifically,, but as a concept, I think it's one that non-Jewish Americans can easily understand. It's about remembering what happened, memorializing the people, and trying to generate some lessons from it (in whatever direction that may be). And, as with 9/11, the commemoration doesn't stop once the physical buildings are rebuilt.

For me, Tisha b'Av is a chance to remember that bad things have happened to our people, and to be contemplative about it. As one Reform rabbi I read today wrote, "Yom Kippur is about me. Tisha b'Av is about us."

Now, not to get too far into sinat hinam territory, here were some things that didn't quite work for me:

- Too many shuls. Not that too many were in attendance (we probably had no more than 100 people). Just the fact that there are that many liberal Jewish organizations in the area is a little silly to me-- particularly when the community seems to be shrinking. I won't go so far as to say it suggests sinat hinam per se, but I do wonder how much of this state of affairs is a result of need versus people's inability to get along.

- Instruments. I'm not a huge fan of instrumental accompaniment in shul generally, but it seems particularly odd on a holiday where instruments are specifically forbidden. At least there weren't any bongos.

- English Eicha. I'm not saying you can't chant Eicha in English, just that if you're going to try it (especially with the Hebrew melody) you actually need to do some planning and figure out how to make it scan. On the bright side, the rabbi only tried this with one chapter.

- Trotting out the "93 Bais Yaakov girls" story as an exemplar of Holocaust martyrdom. Look guys, this story has been debunked, like, a lot. Here's an idea, folks. We've already modified the liturgy to deal with parts of theology we disagree with. How about we either phase out or at least qualify these Holocaust narratives that we know to be fictional? This is my same complaint with shuls that include "Yossel Rakover talks to God."

- Too much weird davening. To be fair, the rabbi did give people a chance to daven maariv in the sanctuary with siddurim. But I think only three people opted for that. Everyone else was treated to a guided meditation version of the amidah. Even that I could have potentially been ok with, but things like, "the shemoneh esreh has 18 blessings in it, and 18, as we all know, is the Hebrew word for life. Think about what you want most out of life." (And this was from the Conservative rabbi!) I suppose they were trying to make everyone comfortable, but it didn't do much for me.

- Too much sharing. Related to this, I recognize that this was probably about building community and all, but I really don't care what the people around me want out of life, or whatever else was flitting around in their heads during the not-quite davening session. Maybe I was just a little grumbly at this point, but it's the truth. There's a reason why your davening is supposed to be between you and God.

I have some further thoughts about how segments of liberal Judaism seem to be focusing more and more on emotional rather than intellectual needs and where I think it comes from and might be going, but I'll leave that for a later time.

Next: Tisha B'Av day at our first Orthodox shul!

Sometimes a plateau isn't so bad

The High Holidays have come and gone, and while nothing went perfectly, plenty of things went reasonably well.

Let's back up for a moment. Since leaving college, we have shul-hopped nearly every year:

Year 1: Temple Ol'Faithful with my high school buddy and his family- lots of English, no connection with the shul, and a particularly awkward invitation to lunch on Yom Kippur.

Year 2: Beth Elderly with a college friend- this was during the year we spent a lot of time there while they were trying to keep themselves going without a regular rabbi. During the high holiday services, their aging rabbi emeritus came back so they would have someone to lead. A lot of Hebrew, very little transliteration, a gigantic age gap, etc. We were trying very hard and so were they, but something wasn't quite clicking. (Though they do get two awesome points for inviting us to open the dark during Avinu Volcano Malkeinu.)

Year 3: Our first year of living in the Mission and our only time going to Evil Minion for the Holidays. Zero transliteration, very hard to follow. Also I got sick and couldn't fast. Not very fun.

Year 4: Temple GLBT. Decent mussar but a little overly political for my tastes; also more English than I would have preferred. Was feeling depressed and didn't fast.

Year 5: Temple GLBT, round two. First year with Machzor Eit Ratzon! Finally had the ability to pray as much of the service-- in a traditional way-- as I wanted, which made a huge difference in my experience. Got sick again. No fasting.

So this was year 6, which makes us feel very old. Since we've decided to shore up Beth Elderly's young guard ranks, we returned to the shul for the holidays, and I have to say, it was actually very pleasant. In some ways, not a lot has changed: the building has still seen better days and most of the congregants are as old as my parents, if not older. But in the four years since our last HHDs there, the tone of the shul has really started to develop, at least for us. The rabbi and his family have made a huge difference, as has the appearance of a handful of younger people our age. The shul has invested in new partially-translated siddurim and machzorim, as well as some basic cosmetics like new chairs for the congregants. The regulars are clearly working on trying to make the shul appealing and inviting to younger members.

More than that, though, this time around we've really been trying to invest some time and effort to connect with the shul, or at least key members of the community. We aren't always successful (Shabbat attendance is still a challenge, especially with my new job taking up so much energy), but it's definitely making a difference. People know who we are, and we're getting a little better at knowing who they are, too.

On a deeper level, too, I feel like we're finally starting to get some sort of idea about where we want to be-- or at least which direction we want to go in-- in terms of observance. We certainly aren't at the point where we're going to become shomer mitzvot but I think we're developing a greater awareness of Jewish values (such as kashrut, shabbat, tzedaka) that we want to honor and take seriously, though we're not yet clear about what form that might take.

Feeling more confident and educated about davening as well as greater Jewish identity made a huge difference in my High Holiday experience this year. Also, I'm happy to report that for the first time in a while, I was able to fast! (Unfortunately the next day I came down with a bad cold that I'm still getting over and which caused me to miss Sukkot and Simchat Torah. Having all these holidays coincide with being exposed to tons of child germs is a really bad mix.)

I'm sure I'm reading too much into all this, but I feel like this High Holiday cycle is a decent metaphor for where we are with our lives generally (community/observance-wise, job-wise, housing-wise, and family-wise): no, things aren't perfect, but they're better than they've been in a while. So here's to enjoying getting to a halfway-decent plateau. I'm hoping things will only get better from here.

New experiences, some conversations, and choices

Since Mrs. Yid and I have joined Beth Elderly there have been a bunch of developments:

• I successfully attended morning minyan (next one will be this week) and davened with Zayde's tefillin. Between the tefillin and my Moses-eqsue beard (hooray for summers off!) I am definitely rocking some impressive Ortho-vibes. 

• For our one-year-anniversary, I got Mrs. Yid a new siddur and she got me my own tallis. In related news, we are huge Jew-nerds. 

• I have slowly gotten more comfortable attending Young Guard Havdalah stag. The most recent one was held on top of a fountain and included the rabbi's candle burning through his kiddush cup. I think this will be the last time we use a beer pong cup for this purpose. 

• I have started using Ayn Keloheynu as a basic Hebrew primer. It's slow going, but has been very satisfying to finally see some progress with my reading ability. I'm actually able to sound some words out-- and was sort-of able to follow along with the chanting of Lamentations at Tisha B'Av in the Hebrew.

• I ordered some knit kippot and have started wearing them more. This one is my favorite. I told Abbot Yid I was contemplating wearing one when I start my new job-- if Mrs. Yid can cover her hair it seems only fair I do something, too-- and not surprisingly, he's really, really not a fan. I also got a tallis katan but have concluded that even in San Francisco, that stuff is too darn hot for the summers. Maybe I'll try again come winter.

Also in the mix have been several "community events" bringing together multiple liberal congregations in the city. The first one was Shavuot, which included Temple Burning Bush, Beth Elderly, Temple Old Faithful, and B'nai Hippy. Rabbis from each community led study sessions on different topics and people chose from a programming "menu" to decide where they wanted to go. Mrs. Yid and I attended a session on Hasidic storytelling and a discussion of whether the Torah can be considered true by rational Jews. The second session, led by the rabbi from Burning Bush, was quite fascinating. The rabbi is from an Orthodox background and has a major axe to grind with literalist interpretations of Torah. Funnily enough, much of the talk involved more liberal congregants arguing with him that he was treating the text super-literally in order to set up a straw man. The Reform and Renewal people were actually arguing for the integrity of the Torah against a Conservative rabbi! Very fun. (It made me think a little of the Oven of Akhnai, actually.)

The second community event was Tisha B'Av, which, like Shavuot, neither Mrs. Yid nor I had ever celebrated. Apparently the liberal community in the city had been abuzz by how many people came to Shavuot, because this time in addition to the four original congregations, there was Beth Halfpipe as well as three or four indie minyanim and kehillot. This time the rabbis opted for a whole-group approach. After dinner we had short drashot alternating with some singing. When we were moving into the sanctuary to read Lamentations, one of the singers came up to me.

"I liked your singing."

"Yes, I could see that it moved you."

"So, are you, like, an Orthodox guy?"

"No."

"Ah, I thought that you might be Orthodox because of your beard."

"No, but my grandfather was Hasidic."

"Ah, so you have some Hasidic DNA in you."

"A pintele!" (This got a chuckle.)

Then Mrs. Yid came up and said hi. Looking at both of us, the guy remarked, "You both look very Hasidish." We shrugged.

Turning to Mrs. Yid, he asked, "Do you also have Hasidic ancestors?"

She replied, "No, but I have very venerable Protestant ones!"

"Ah," he said. "So you're a Jew-by-choice?"

I looked at her for a minute.

"Yes," she said, taking my hand. "And honestly, so is he."

Later I went home and Googled the guy. Turns out he's an old friend of Shlomo Carlebach. Zayde would be so proud. (Abbot Yid, not surprisingly, had never heard of Shlomo.)

Hey, we're trying

I doubt that Mrs. Yid or I will ever be nominated to be Chief Sephardic Rabbi of anything. Granted, there are plenty of legitimate reasons for that. But one definite strike against us is that while traditionally it's considered very important to engage in hiddur mitzvah, or "pretty up the mitzvah," around here we apply our shabby-cheap aesthetic to pretty much anything.

Case in point: our first sukkah, courtesy of Mrs. Yid, bless her heart, who, upon being kicked out of jury duty last week and having some time to kill (and knowing what day it was), decided to surprise yours truly with this in our backyard.

On Sukkot, we remember what it was like living in the desert as we sit on folding chairs of old.

It may not be much to look at, and if we're being sticklers about that whole s'chach thing then only that one teeny corner of it with the weeds on it was kosher, but darn it, it reminded me of why I love my wife. These aren't her traditions (heck, they're barely mine), but she's trying. It was also very sweet that she had used the chuppah poles from our wedding that her brother carved himself and lugged across several states. I look forward to getting many uses from those over the years.

After Mrs. Yid finished the sukkah, I went out for Thai food and we sat in the sukkah and ate a lovely, if slightly cramped, dinner. Then we cracked out some chumashim and studied the parsha for Sukkot (I found them incredibly dull; Mrs. Yid was entertained that they all seem to involve God demanding tons of food like a pregnant Queen Bee), and then we both giggled at the crazy prophecies of the Hatfarah portion in Zechariah (my favorite part is when he talks about the mountain splitting open; I couldn't help but think of this).

Anyway, yes, it's only the third Jewish holiday of 5772 and already the gravitas around here has dropped way down. But something's better than nothing. And besides, ours is a highly understanding God. We hope.

High Holidays Debrief

Mrs. Yid and I went to Temple GLBT for High Holidays for the second time-- the only time since college where we've gone back somewhere. A few minor issues aside, I enjoyed myself quite a bit. These last few years I've been unable for fast for health reasons, so this was the first time in a while that I fasted, and I have to say, this may have been the easiest time I've ever had of it.

One issue I've had over and over again at High Holiday services has been liturgy and transliteration-- while I prefer Hebrew to English, most place's machzorim tend to lack adequate transliteration, which means that people like me get stuck out in the cold. This has probably been one of the biggest problems I've had in trying to have engaging High Holiday experiences.

So, in keeping with the spirit of diving into things a little more, I bought my own transliterated machzor, courtesy of Joe Rosenstein at newsiddur.org. It didn't come until after Rosh Hashanah, but I marked it up ahead of time with sticky flags so that by the time Yom Kippur rolled around, I was set and ready to go.

I started the day by putting on Zayde's tefillin. I've been feeling slightly guilty about having them and not using them, but frequently the only days I actually get around to davening are Saturdays, when you're not supposed to use the darn things. Oh, irony. And it turns out you're not supposed to wear them on major holidays, either. So, a double-no-no-whammy for me. Oh well.

Because I was in a spiritual mood I put on Zayde's tefillin anyway, but I didn't say the brachot-- A because I knew I wasn't supposed to be davening with them on Shabbat or Yom Tov, and also because I hadn't remembered to write them down and I was trying not to use the computer. So instead I used them as a sort of mental focus for a short prayer asking for the joy and faith of my grandfather to be in my heart and mind for the day and to help center me during the fast. Halachic, perhaps not, but it felt good to have a physical connection to Zayde.

Once we were at shul, I found that being able to follow the service made a huge difference in my experience, and it was nice to be able to proceed more at my own pace as opposed to taking all my cues from the service leaders. Temple GLBT's machzor was made before I was born, so its transliteration is quite minimal (and my impression is that some pieces of the amidah are significantly abridged), so I wasn't always able to get through everything, but it was nice to have the option to continue if I wanted to. It was also fascinating to observe that for the most part, Temple GLBT was following a pretty traditional prayer structure. Not everything was in there, but people who would expect crazy liberal gay-friendly Reformies to have replaced everything with one long drum circle would have been pretty surprised.

Ever the critic, I have a few gripes. But in keeping with my resolution to try to be less of a bastard, I'm keeping it brief:

- There was no mincha service. It was entirely replaced by break-out sessions. There was a little bit of text study offered but for the most part it was meditation, arts & crafts, or social activism discussion group (the day's topic was "Racism: Bad?") It wound up being ok because we took the opportunity to take a much needed break and dose of sunlight. On the one hand, I kind of like having a break, but it was also a bit of a bummer that with all the alternative options being offered, no one thought to just offer a traditional-ish prayer service for the afternoon. Given how most of the rest of the day more or less stuck to the usual script, it seemed odd to me.

- No Leviticus 18. I was particularly miffed about this because Mrs. Yid and I had studied the parsha the night before and found a lot to debate in it, and I had been particularly interested in how a GLBT-focused shul would tackle it. Apparently, they tackle it by avoiding it entirely and switching it with the Holiness Code in Leviticus 19. I suppose I get it but it felt a little disappointing. Also, the Holiness Code is, IMO, fairly uninteresting. At least Lev 18 has some meaty things people can dig into and discuss.

- Teeny, teeny yizkor service. Lots of niggunim and build-up about how this is "one of the most meaningful services of the year," juxtaposed with very little time letting us actually pray the darn thing. This was particularly irksome to me as I am unfamiliar with the structure of yizkor and was trying to modify the blessings for my three grandparents.

- On a related note, I really wanted to say Mishiberach for my increasingly-ill grandmother, and am rather perturbed that none of her kids have the slightest idea of what her Hebrew name is. (I asked my great-aunt but all she could give was a wild guess.) I guess we're the only ones spending anytime in shuls that call people up for aliyot using both their parents' names.

All in all, I had a very good time. I may still be working on this community thing, but at least I'm feeling comfortable and "competent" when it comes with the actual prayers for the holiday.

Quotes:

Me: I got a new siddur and a new machzor, which is great, because it made it a lot easier to follow along in shul.

Abbot Yid: Um... all I caught out of that was "shul."

A Wake-Up Call

Shiksa Girlfriend and I had a talk recently where she said she was bummed out that we had let our synagogue attendance drop so dramatically. There were lots of reasons for this: she had been unemployed for eight months (yay new employment!), both of us had been stretched kind of thin emotionally and psychologically, and, to be honest, neither of us is all that social (me especially). She said she understood all that, but that she needs to feel like we're a little more part of a community, and that I'm frankly not helping. Specifically, she thinks my shul standards are too high.

I said that it was hard for me; that my parents weren't really joiners and that we weren't raised to be joiners, and that social/group dynamics have never really been my thing, partially because I never really needed to work at it. If I didn't want to be a part of something, I didn't have to. Which meant that I didn't bother.

She said that was all well and good but that if we go around expecting perfection out of every social interaction, especially in a Jewish context, that we'll never get a chance to find people that we do click with. I said that it felt like we had seen what our options were, and none felt quite right-- Evil Minion had great enthusiasm, but felt cliquey and awkward as soon as services were over. Beth Elderly had the exact opposite problem; they had so few new (or young) members that we felt like people were incapable of A- giving us some space to settle in, or B- not projecting various images of Young Adult Leadership TM on us. At this point I would feel guilty going back there simply because they gave us a trial membership for High Holidays and then we never went back after. They're probably still scratching their heads over it.

In a really interesting development, she also said that if this thing isn't resolved by the time we have kids, she will basically look for another community identity to raise them in (probably Unitarian Universalism, but maybe super-low-key cultural Christianity).

Whoah.

At first I was a little shocked at what felt like a trump card or low blow, but I realized that I should really have been thankful of how honest and direct she was being. She wants to share this Jewish thing with me, but I can't really expect her to be the leader when she isn't even Jewish. And unfortunately I'm not really knowledgeable (or comfortable) enough to stand alone or go trailblazing ahead, foraging into the tall grasslands of Jewish community.

So we compromised. We will be doing more shul visits this year. When SG's schedule gets ironed out, we will try to include more Saturday visits into the mix (which will also be a good way to get a fresh look at the different shuls in town). We've already made arrangements for High Holidays at Temple GLBT. This will be our first holidays with them.

Four years of High Holidays in four different shuls. I wonder if it's us? Or them? Or both.

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.

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.

Sukkot Silliness

First, let's get it out of the way. I think Sukkot is stupid.

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Don't get me wrong, I can see how it could be modified to be meaningful- a drash on how we should be thankful about having a roof over our heads, be kind to the homeless, etc, the kind of tikkun olam stuff I usually have very bad knee-jerk reactions to- but if I'm honest? I just don't really get it. Maybe it's because, like Purim, like Shimni Atzeret (can someone PLEASE explain that one to me?), it wasn't one of the Jewish holidays I grew up sort of attempting to emulate at home. Also, "Festival of Booths" sounds absolutely moronic, and half the time people either don't hear the "th" and think you says boobs or something, or they assume it's you and your friends reinacting your favorite scenes from the Phantom Tollbooth like the pathetic fanboys you are. At least on Lag B'Omer you get to burn things. (Incidentally, while Jewing out at college, I explained Sukkot to the clueless with the pithy, "It's the Shantytown Holiday", and people almost always understood fairly quickly. Let's face it, the sukkah looks a damn lot more like a shack than it does a "booth". Who do we talk to about changing this translation?)

My hatred of Sukkot is, more than anything, related to my absolute ineptitude when it comes to construction or, frankly, any real handyman-related activity. One year at college, it somehow fell to me to construct the entire sukkah myself. This was, of course, after a last-minute freakout from the frumer members of the not-Hillel (supposedly, we were like, way cooler than Hillel, and didn't need them! Also, they said we weren't big enough to have funding, so we refused to adopt the name just to spite them. I suggested "Shammai" at a bunch of meetings, but people didn't get the joke- or rather, refused to give me the satisfaction of saying it was funny) about whether or not our sukkah was kosher. You see, we bought it online and it turned out that one of the big-name sukkah vendors was holding out on giving his wife a get (that's a divorce for you there Gentiles). As a result, there were various bans put in place against him. To make matters even more complicated, just about every online sukkah vendor sounds exactly the same- SukkahWorld, SukkahMart, Heshy's Sukkah Emporium, House Sukkah o'Sukkahs, etc. I told them that if we had gone with my choice, CrapShack.com, this could have been avoided, but as usual, people told me to shut up. It turned out that our sukkah was kosher, but frankly, at that point, I wouldn't have given a crap. Worst came to worst, I would wait until after the holiday and then lug the crap back to NY and set up a protest tent sukkah outside the bastard's house.

Anyway, this thing was nice enough- canvas walls, steel pole frame, a ringed shower-curtain style door system, it even had a plastic window peephole with a flap to cover it (to keep Cossacks out, presumably). If it wasn't for such a stupid occaission, it could have been a fun fort.

The problems began when it came time to build the damn thing. As usual, everyone bailed, so me and a buddy, who I'll call well-meaning-but-spineless Joe, or Jello for short, got stuck with it. First we had to pick it up from the campus mailroom and lug the damn thing across the quad- easier said than done considering we were schlepping around a 14-foot long cardboard box filled with steel pipes. Out of my way, trustafarians!

That done, we unpacked and studied the directions. It was here that things turned into a major melt-down. The sukkah could only be assembled via a particularly fiendish device known as an Allen Wrench, or what I call Satan's screwdriver. Allen Wrenches are a pain in the ass, and this particular one was tiny and had to be grasped with the whole hand to turn. To make things even better, there was only one.

I spent the better part of a day building this piece of crap, on my own. Jello wanted to help, but since he didn't have a Satan Screwdriver, all he could do was hold the pipes and get me a chair when I had to connect high things. If it's true that you get bonus mitzvah points for doing crap on your own, then I'm riding this damn accomplishment for the next decade. We stuck left-over pine-tree leavings on the thing and called it a Sukkah. And even then, almost nobody went in the damn thing.

Next year: my roommate and I decide to build our own sukkah, as I'm boycotting the sukkah from Hell (also the not-Hillel was maybe going to use it, though this wound up not happening after I declared a mandatory 5-person minimum minyan for construction to occur and we only got 3- Jello, me, and the incoming student leader after the rest of us graduated). We decided to forgo steel or wood, and instead went to Home Depot to try to get PVC pipe.

Oh my God. Major mistake. First of all, those guys couldn't understand what the hell we wanted to do. "You want to make, like, a giant box?"

"Yeah."

"With PVC pipe?"

"Yeah."

"Why?"

"Look, never mind. The question is, what do you recommend we use?"

"I'd recommend you don't do it."

And other fun misadventures. We needed to pick pipe widths, and lengths. We needed them to cut them. They didn't have the right joints; we had to come up with crazy-ass combination joints on the fly. Finally, we got all the crap we needed and came to the fun part: getting all this PVC into the 4-door-sedan (I sat behind my roommate, human-rubber-band style, holding onto dear life as the pipes, stuck diagonally through both front and rear windows, wobbled precariously on the 25-minute ride home. Also, at some point it started to rain. Again, major mitzvah points.

Once we got it home, assembly again proved to be a bitch, as not everything quite fit right on our patio, and of course since some of the PVC was pretty thin (1/4 inch?), it wobbled like crazy. Also, we had nothing to go around the frame, something SG thankfully fixed by stealing some spare fabric from the theater department and making us some cool curtain walls. And it rained most of the week, as it tends to in that part of the country at that part of the year, and so it was only very occasionally we got to spend any time in the thing, which, if I'm honest, I wasn't that broken up about (though I did feel cheated for not riding along to the Chabad to pick up the lulav and etrog).

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Long story short, I have very mixed feelings about this damn holiday. It is, IMO, one of the biggest pains-in-the-ass outside of Passover, and, like that illustrious holiday, I get very resentful of the subtle ways in which the spirits of long-dead rabbis start to seem like they're just making shit up to screw with you the longer the thing goes on. (I get mental pictures of Rashi saying to a scribe, "And then say they have to stand on their heads! And put their socks on their noses! And if they fall off, they have to eat them!")

So all of that is background to last Shabbos. Shiksa Girlfriend and I went to Beth Elderly for Friday Night, only barely remembering that it was Sukkot. When we got there, they had more folks than usual, which was nice, though we were still pretty much the only 20-somethings (hell, we were practically the only ones who still had pigment in our hair).

Services were nice enough, at this point we pretty much know how these guys operate. It's not quite as Carlebach as I like, but it's pretty good, definitely in our top three in the city. And afterwards we all file outside to the Sukkah.

Ok, this is where things get weird. First of all, these people are basically in a giant wind tunnel because they're pretty close to the Pacific, and second, their roof leaves a lot to be desired. Clearly the focus was on getting the kinderlach to show up and help, not on structural integrity. I'm not saying it's going to collapse on us, just that it's not much of a shelter. As we all stand outside and freeze our butts, the cantor announces that she and some other brave and hearty souls are going to spend the night out there, in the synagogue alley sukkah, in sleeping bags, and have a nice catered, hot breakfast the next morning.

I poke the GF. "If you ask me, they'd be better off skipping the breakfast and getting some space heaters."

We continue to discuss the matter as we shuffle back inside for the potluck. We sit next to an old man, who was singing very off-key during the kiddush but seems nice enough (he makes a point of telling us that the Two-Buck-Chuck won an award a few years ago, and we pretend he hasn't told us three times before), and two, later three, older yenta types.

One of them quickly annoys me. Overhearing us discussing the vegan options, she inquires as to our eating habits. I explain that I'm lactose-intolerant and the kind allowances SG has made for me in order to keep up with her love of cooking and baking.

"That's great," the woman says. "I don't eat dairy because of the cholesterol," she announces proudly.

Um... great?

Things get weirder. As she heard us discussing some of the Sukkot laws (the number of required sides, the issues with the roof, the potential loophole I'm sure other people have contemplated of building your sukkah underneath a skylight), she starts asking me, "So how do you know all this stuff?"

"Books."

She gives me a stare. Who ever heard of such a thing?

A few minutes later, she's asking me about kashrut. "So, is soy cheese, like, you know, cheese? Is it dairy?"

Uh, not as far as I know.

"It depends how you're counting," Shiska Girlfriend interjects. "Some things have a little bit of dairy that don't really affect their nutritional count, or the Friar's digestion, but would technically be considered dairy under kashrut."

I feel a little twinge of pride coming on. Or something.

The woman nods, impressed or maybe just comatose. "So, is soy milk... is that dairy?"

Sigh. We run through this again, culminating with my trump card, "And since soy ice cream is pareve..."

"Oh, yeah. You know, I never thought of that. But then again, I don't eat ice cream, because it's not good for you."

Uh huh. Have another guilt-free blintz and tell me more.

The woman turns back to me. "So, do you keep kosher?"

"No." I exchange a look with SG. That was bizarrely direct.

"Do you observe the Sabbath?"

What is this, a kiruv workshop? Or a National Geographic Special? And who calls it the Sabbath? Are you the freaking reincarnation of Cotton Mather?

Finally, the woman asks me about my education. I tell her I went to a private high school in the city. "Oh, yes, I've heard of it. Now tell me, is this, uh... Catholic?"

At this point my eyes leap out of my skull, run across the table, and kick her in the nose.

"Sorry, sorry, I meant... uh, what's the word... a yeshiva?"

"No. Not even close. Nondemoninational, private... I guess about 1/3 Jews. Very, very, Reform, Jews."

And with that we ran off, to get our bus.

Upon reflection, I'm thinking maybe the woman was reacting to my clothes- I was wearing gray slacks, a white button-down shirt, and a navy blue sports jacket. Plus my new, super-Ashkenazi-style yarmulke.(which SG was kind enough to modify for my tiny pinhead). Maybe this already demonstrably-not-very-sharp woman just got really confused and figured that anyone with a hat that tall had to be frum?

Whatever. The point is that I should probably only use my newfound Chabad impersonation powers for mischief and entertainment. Who's down for crashing a shiur?