No Response

Sent an inquiry last week to the three ritual officials of AKSE.  We had a week in which the Rabbi was away on shabbos morning.  The Torah reading proceeded in its entirety without those annoying Aliyah Sound Bites that interrupt the natural flow of the chanting and choreography of honors that I've come to expect.  So I asked them if there were any standards of interrupting a Torah reading.  None of them even had the courtesy to acknowledge the question.  I posed it to a reputable Webbe Rebbe who provided me the answer in a day.  There are two conflicting positions of recognized Poskim.  One says the Torah reading should not be interrupted, the other says it may be interrupted to honor somebody or to teach Torah.  So that interaliyah running commentary meets threshold, leaving me with the option of limiting my exposure to it, something I've already done.  Since sending my  inquiry, two of those three gentlemen asked something of me, one to conduct Shacharit, the other to chant a haftarah on relatively short notice.

And last week the head of medical technology stopped by my office late in the afternoon on no notice to promote his agenda on behalf of the hospital.  One inquiry to him in the past unresponded.  Detracts from his agenda.

And finally, there is a controversy over medical specialty recertification for which the Endocrine Society invited comment.  I'm sure a lot of people put in their two cents, as did I.  There was no acknowledgement, though to be fair the new Society President sent a note later that he and other medical society officials had met with them to express their constituents' displeasure.

In our era there seems no shortage of forums for expression, and the things we comment about get seen.  But without the response, which has become decreasingly obligatory as these venues expand, engagement suffers.  AKSE's logo:  Embracing/Engaging/Enriching.  This time I had to seek that interaction and knowledge externally.