Scenes from a Three-day Yom Tov
Sep. 15th, 2007 07:58 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rhuLong, and so cut over and over again....
General observations
Anyone else notice that the new 48-hour candles burn more evenly and reliably?
Tani and Alissa had a wonderful yom tov and managed to behave well for the times they were in shul. Yay. Alissa knows the names of the shofar notes and will sing them to you quite happily.
Food humor
Many people eat symbolic foods on Rosh Hashanah. The best known is apples and honey, "for a sweet year." Some people eat fish heads "so that we may be like the head and not like the tail."
We didn't eat fish heads, "so that we would not go out to see a movie without paying to get in."
We didn't eat oysters, "so that we should not be like the oysters, but be like the walrus." (We'd have eaten walrus, but walrus isn't kosher.)
Noah Feldman's article redux
Our shul has three concurrent services (because that's the only way to fit everyone in). I was in the bet medrash service, where the speaker on the first day used Noah Feldman's infamous NYT Magazine piece as a jumping-off point for a meaningful discourse on memesis and mortality. But he fell into a trap that Feldman had set by referring to Feldman's wife, as Feldman did in his screed, as "Korean-American." That's not the problem; the problem is that she's not Jewish, has not chosen to become Jewish, and therefore cannot halachically give birth to Jewish children. By describing her as "Korean-American," Feldman was able to imply that Orthodox Judaism is racist; while there are, alas, individuals for whom that is true, Judaism (Orthodox or otherwise) looks at a person ba-asher hu sham, in the place where that person is. By uncritically repeating Feldman's classification of his wife, the speaker unwittingly fell into the trap of supporting Feldman's implication of Orthodox bigotry.
The shofar blasts on the first day had a unique pattern for the teruah note: five units of quarter note, eighth rest, eighth note. Second day, same toke'a, the teruah was a more traditional five units of quarter note, eighth note.
Tashlich
Tashlich was lovely. It was a gorgeous day; there must have been about 500 people there. I had my annual greeting with Dan Bricklin, which is always a high point of my Rosh Hashanah. (Alas, I was being tugged ahead by two wonderful children so we didn't get to chat much.) Alissa started "pulling bad thoughts out of my hair" to throw into the pond.
Dear Metropolitan Diary....
Every year, two families that live across the street from the pond host a community gathering on their front lawn. Cookies, soda, fruit, etc. They always have a few bowls of zwetchen on the table. So I was expostulating to a friend about zwetchenkuchen.
Me: So we were at Russo's, and the kids saw the bin of zwetchen, and they start jumping up and down, shouting: (demonstrates): Zwetchenkuchen! Zwetchenkuchen! Zwetchenkuchen!
Behind me, I hear a voice: "Andrew, I didn't know you were a Yecke." [A Jew of German origin.] It was Alan K., a casual acquaintance from shul.
Me: Of course I'm a Yecke.
Alan: Cookie dough or soft dough?
Me: Cookie dough.
Alan: On top of the dough or embedded?
Me: On top.
Alan: Landsman! [i.e., "I'm so glad to find someone from the same country as my own family!"] Susan, come here. Andrew makes zwetchenkuchen!
Susan: Cookie dough or cake dough?
Second day talk.
The talk on the second day was much shorter, and made me ponder: God needs our doubt. For the first 5.9 days of creation, God had a memshala, an absolute rule imposed on creation. How so? There was no one with the ability to accept or reject God's dominion. Once humankind were created, God's rule changed nature from a memshala to malchut, monarchy, whose distinguishing characteristic (in the Hebrew lexicon) is that it is willingly accepted by the governed. When we say "Today is the birthday of the world" after shofar blowing, we do not mean "today is the anniversary of let there be light." We mean "today is the anniversary of the creation of humankind."
But if we really had absolute faith, emunah sheleimah, we would not have the option of rejecting God.
It is only because we have doubts that we are able to make the decision to accept the yoke of the kingdom of heaven, the ol malchut shamayim, upon ourselves. It is only because there are others who have made other choices that our choice is provably a choice. And it is that exercise of our free will that allows God to be coronated as Sovereign, as it were, and not merely acclaimed as Ruler (as is done by the angels, who lack free will).
Eruv crisis, or why I love my rabbi.
On the second day, as we walked home from lunch, I noticed a police officer and a barricade at the intersection of Bullough's Park and Mill St. I was wondering if perhaps the movie crew had returned, so I wandered down there with the kids.
Turns out a truck had caught on some of the overhead wires and pulled down a utility pole and all the wires associated with it, along with a pole-mounted transformer that had gotten pretty well smashed when it hit the street. As if that wasn't bad enough, this pole is one of the interior boundaries of the Greater Boston Eruv. And Shabbat was coming.
The eruv was certified "up and kosher" before Rosh Hashanah, and under normal circumstances that can be relied upon even though Shabbat isn't until two days later. But in this case, we had knowledge that refuted the presumption that the eruv had remained up.
Uh oh.
We walked the two blocks to the rabbi's house to inform him that "we have reason to think that the eruv is down." As we knew he would, he told us not to tell anyone else. (We had come face-to-face with the knowledge of the accident, so for us the presumption was no longer valid, but as long as others didn't encounter the knowledge, the eruv would remain kosher for them. And people wonder why Orthodox Jews have no problem with quantum physics and wavefunction collapse. :-)
Later, we saw the rabbi examining the scene of the accident. We went home and figured out what we would do for Shabbat with the eruv down.
As we were finishing dinner, there was a knock at our door. It was the rabbi, coming home from maariv services. Rather than translate as I go, I'll simply type what he said twice; pick the paragraph that makes sense to you.
"I wanted to tell you it's mutar to carry tomorrow. I checked my sefarim while I was at shul, and here's what I've determined. Bullough's Pond is a karpif, and Rashi holds that unless it's actually used weekly it has to have an internal set of lechis. But Rashbam and Rambam hold that if the water is clear enough to drink or launder clothes, it's habitable, and so while lechatchila we hold lechumra, bedieved, we can rely on the more meikel poskim."
"I wanted to tell you that it's permissible to carry items between buildings tomorrow. I researched in the law books at the synagogue, and here's what I've determined. Bullough's pond is a nominally uninhabitable area (since you can't live in the middle of a pond and the city doesn't allow boats so you couldn't even argue that a houseboat is possible there), and an eruv can only enclose habitable areas. One important rabbi from centuries ago ruled that a pond is considered subordinate to the surrounding neighborhood if it is used regularly, for example, by people drawing its water for drinking or using it to launder their clothes. Otherwise, it has to be excluded from the eruv by creating an interior boundary. However, two other influential rabbis of a few centuries ago ruled that as long as the pond was clean enough that its water could, realistically, be used for those purposes, then whether it was regularly used or not was not important, and the pond can be considered subordinate to the surrounding habitable area and does not require exclusion. So, normally, we prefer when making determinations in advance to hold by the stricter interpretation, in the actual event when it is not possible to attain the stricter standard, it is permissible to rely on the more lenient interpretation."
Then, to make sure I got the point, he said: "And I'm carrying my housekeys in my pocket right now."
He knew that as long as he left it as a discussion of legal theory and halachic potentialities, I'd rationalize adhering to the stricter standard. I don't really need the eruv. I can wear my tallit to shul under my raincoat and use the books that the shul provides rather than bring my own. My kids are old enough to walk to shul and to survive for a few hours without lollipops, their own books and toys, etc. But it's a lot easier when the eruv is up.
And once he said "I'm carrying my housekeys" he forced me to rely on the eruv, because if I didn't carry something to shul today, I'd basically be saying that I don't trust him, that I consider myself more machmir than him. And that would be incredibly disrespectful.
This is why he's a great rabbi. He didn't rely on the superficially easy strict ruling. He found a reasonable basis for making practice practical. And then he thought about my personality, and how to make sure that I would not take the strict, seemingly easy, but really hard, way.
Shabbat
I was asked to daven shacharit this morning. My siddur worked perfectly. I never had a moment's doubt about the modifications for the Ten Days, including "Oseh Hashalom bimromav" in Kaddish titkabel. I kept things moving at a brisk pace ('cuz who wants to sit through yet another five-hour service?) but was full of subtly ornamented nusach.
So of course one person complained afterwards that he thought I was rushing. He's the kind of person who wants to sit through another five-hour service. :-)
This afternoon we took a walk to the pond, and there was a family there whom we didn't know, but with the kid fishing (catch-and-release). Tani was fascinated; he has been asking for a while to learn to fish and all I know about fishing is that sometimes salmon is on sale for $7.99/lb at Whole Foods. But what really impressed me was that for the two hours we were there, Tani not once asked to try the rod or touch the tackle box or any of the rest of the equipment, and when Alissa tried to touch the tack box Tani said to her, "Alissa, that's muktzeh. It's Shabbat." He had really internalized that and remembered it the whole time. Good for him! [kvell]
That's all I can remember right now. Off to do dishes and print out four days of crossword puzzles.
General observations
Anyone else notice that the new 48-hour candles burn more evenly and reliably?
Tani and Alissa had a wonderful yom tov and managed to behave well for the times they were in shul. Yay. Alissa knows the names of the shofar notes and will sing them to you quite happily.
Food humor
Many people eat symbolic foods on Rosh Hashanah. The best known is apples and honey, "for a sweet year." Some people eat fish heads "so that we may be like the head and not like the tail."
We didn't eat fish heads, "so that we would not go out to see a movie without paying to get in."
We didn't eat oysters, "so that we should not be like the oysters, but be like the walrus." (We'd have eaten walrus, but walrus isn't kosher.)
Noah Feldman's article redux
Our shul has three concurrent services (because that's the only way to fit everyone in). I was in the bet medrash service, where the speaker on the first day used Noah Feldman's infamous NYT Magazine piece as a jumping-off point for a meaningful discourse on memesis and mortality. But he fell into a trap that Feldman had set by referring to Feldman's wife, as Feldman did in his screed, as "Korean-American." That's not the problem; the problem is that she's not Jewish, has not chosen to become Jewish, and therefore cannot halachically give birth to Jewish children. By describing her as "Korean-American," Feldman was able to imply that Orthodox Judaism is racist; while there are, alas, individuals for whom that is true, Judaism (Orthodox or otherwise) looks at a person ba-asher hu sham, in the place where that person is. By uncritically repeating Feldman's classification of his wife, the speaker unwittingly fell into the trap of supporting Feldman's implication of Orthodox bigotry.
The shofar blasts on the first day had a unique pattern for the teruah note: five units of quarter note, eighth rest, eighth note. Second day, same toke'a, the teruah was a more traditional five units of quarter note, eighth note.
Tashlich
Tashlich was lovely. It was a gorgeous day; there must have been about 500 people there. I had my annual greeting with Dan Bricklin, which is always a high point of my Rosh Hashanah. (Alas, I was being tugged ahead by two wonderful children so we didn't get to chat much.) Alissa started "pulling bad thoughts out of my hair" to throw into the pond.
Dear Metropolitan Diary....
Every year, two families that live across the street from the pond host a community gathering on their front lawn. Cookies, soda, fruit, etc. They always have a few bowls of zwetchen on the table. So I was expostulating to a friend about zwetchenkuchen.
Me: So we were at Russo's, and the kids saw the bin of zwetchen, and they start jumping up and down, shouting: (demonstrates): Zwetchenkuchen! Zwetchenkuchen! Zwetchenkuchen!
Behind me, I hear a voice: "Andrew, I didn't know you were a Yecke." [A Jew of German origin.] It was Alan K., a casual acquaintance from shul.
Me: Of course I'm a Yecke.
Alan: Cookie dough or soft dough?
Me: Cookie dough.
Alan: On top of the dough or embedded?
Me: On top.
Alan: Landsman! [i.e., "I'm so glad to find someone from the same country as my own family!"] Susan, come here. Andrew makes zwetchenkuchen!
Susan: Cookie dough or cake dough?
Second day talk.
The talk on the second day was much shorter, and made me ponder: God needs our doubt. For the first 5.9 days of creation, God had a memshala, an absolute rule imposed on creation. How so? There was no one with the ability to accept or reject God's dominion. Once humankind were created, God's rule changed nature from a memshala to malchut, monarchy, whose distinguishing characteristic (in the Hebrew lexicon) is that it is willingly accepted by the governed. When we say "Today is the birthday of the world" after shofar blowing, we do not mean "today is the anniversary of let there be light." We mean "today is the anniversary of the creation of humankind."
But if we really had absolute faith, emunah sheleimah, we would not have the option of rejecting God.
It is only because we have doubts that we are able to make the decision to accept the yoke of the kingdom of heaven, the ol malchut shamayim, upon ourselves. It is only because there are others who have made other choices that our choice is provably a choice. And it is that exercise of our free will that allows God to be coronated as Sovereign, as it were, and not merely acclaimed as Ruler (as is done by the angels, who lack free will).
Eruv crisis, or why I love my rabbi.
On the second day, as we walked home from lunch, I noticed a police officer and a barricade at the intersection of Bullough's Park and Mill St. I was wondering if perhaps the movie crew had returned, so I wandered down there with the kids.
Turns out a truck had caught on some of the overhead wires and pulled down a utility pole and all the wires associated with it, along with a pole-mounted transformer that had gotten pretty well smashed when it hit the street. As if that wasn't bad enough, this pole is one of the interior boundaries of the Greater Boston Eruv. And Shabbat was coming.
The eruv was certified "up and kosher" before Rosh Hashanah, and under normal circumstances that can be relied upon even though Shabbat isn't until two days later. But in this case, we had knowledge that refuted the presumption that the eruv had remained up.
Uh oh.
We walked the two blocks to the rabbi's house to inform him that "we have reason to think that the eruv is down." As we knew he would, he told us not to tell anyone else. (We had come face-to-face with the knowledge of the accident, so for us the presumption was no longer valid, but as long as others didn't encounter the knowledge, the eruv would remain kosher for them. And people wonder why Orthodox Jews have no problem with quantum physics and wavefunction collapse. :-)
Later, we saw the rabbi examining the scene of the accident. We went home and figured out what we would do for Shabbat with the eruv down.
As we were finishing dinner, there was a knock at our door. It was the rabbi, coming home from maariv services. Rather than translate as I go, I'll simply type what he said twice; pick the paragraph that makes sense to you.
"I wanted to tell you it's mutar to carry tomorrow. I checked my sefarim while I was at shul, and here's what I've determined. Bullough's Pond is a karpif, and Rashi holds that unless it's actually used weekly it has to have an internal set of lechis. But Rashbam and Rambam hold that if the water is clear enough to drink or launder clothes, it's habitable, and so while lechatchila we hold lechumra, bedieved, we can rely on the more meikel poskim."
"I wanted to tell you that it's permissible to carry items between buildings tomorrow. I researched in the law books at the synagogue, and here's what I've determined. Bullough's pond is a nominally uninhabitable area (since you can't live in the middle of a pond and the city doesn't allow boats so you couldn't even argue that a houseboat is possible there), and an eruv can only enclose habitable areas. One important rabbi from centuries ago ruled that a pond is considered subordinate to the surrounding neighborhood if it is used regularly, for example, by people drawing its water for drinking or using it to launder their clothes. Otherwise, it has to be excluded from the eruv by creating an interior boundary. However, two other influential rabbis of a few centuries ago ruled that as long as the pond was clean enough that its water could, realistically, be used for those purposes, then whether it was regularly used or not was not important, and the pond can be considered subordinate to the surrounding habitable area and does not require exclusion. So, normally, we prefer when making determinations in advance to hold by the stricter interpretation, in the actual event when it is not possible to attain the stricter standard, it is permissible to rely on the more lenient interpretation."
Then, to make sure I got the point, he said: "And I'm carrying my housekeys in my pocket right now."
He knew that as long as he left it as a discussion of legal theory and halachic potentialities, I'd rationalize adhering to the stricter standard. I don't really need the eruv. I can wear my tallit to shul under my raincoat and use the books that the shul provides rather than bring my own. My kids are old enough to walk to shul and to survive for a few hours without lollipops, their own books and toys, etc. But it's a lot easier when the eruv is up.
And once he said "I'm carrying my housekeys" he forced me to rely on the eruv, because if I didn't carry something to shul today, I'd basically be saying that I don't trust him, that I consider myself more machmir than him. And that would be incredibly disrespectful.
This is why he's a great rabbi. He didn't rely on the superficially easy strict ruling. He found a reasonable basis for making practice practical. And then he thought about my personality, and how to make sure that I would not take the strict, seemingly easy, but really hard, way.
Shabbat
I was asked to daven shacharit this morning. My siddur worked perfectly. I never had a moment's doubt about the modifications for the Ten Days, including "Oseh Hashalom bimromav" in Kaddish titkabel. I kept things moving at a brisk pace ('cuz who wants to sit through yet another five-hour service?) but was full of subtly ornamented nusach.
So of course one person complained afterwards that he thought I was rushing. He's the kind of person who wants to sit through another five-hour service. :-)
This afternoon we took a walk to the pond, and there was a family there whom we didn't know, but with the kid fishing (catch-and-release). Tani was fascinated; he has been asking for a while to learn to fish and all I know about fishing is that sometimes salmon is on sale for $7.99/lb at Whole Foods. But what really impressed me was that for the two hours we were there, Tani not once asked to try the rod or touch the tackle box or any of the rest of the equipment, and when Alissa tried to touch the tack box Tani said to her, "Alissa, that's muktzeh. It's Shabbat." He had really internalized that and remembered it the whole time. Good for him! [kvell]
That's all I can remember right now. Off to do dishes and print out four days of crossword puzzles.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
fishing
Date: 2007-09-16 02:33 am (UTC)(Not that I didn't find the rest of your post interesting, of course.) And I've just taken a picture of your puzzle, still not touched, under my "to do" pile of paperwork. I'll put uploading it to onto my to-do list. :-)
(no subject)
Date: 2007-09-16 03:51 am (UTC)Second-day talk: interesting! I'd previously made the "God needs us to choose" free-will connection, but hadn't made the jump to "malchuyot requires it".
You have a very cool rabbi!
(no subject)
Date: 2007-09-16 11:52 am (UTC)They sell them in the local Jewish groceries, and the purpose is to have a source of flame over yom tov.
(no subject)
Date: 2007-09-16 05:07 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-09-16 06:41 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-09-16 11:54 am (UTC)Of course.
She's built up quite a napkin collection. :-)
Indeed. It's a very classy lawn party.