Respite from Shul

Too much.  When our Torah reader took ill, I overextended my skill by pitching in.  I don't think my skill really expanded from the effort.  They needed a ba-al shacharit or a haftarah done on short notice.  No problem, though that haftarah had more tongue twisters than I might have expected.  Need somebody to give a seminar at AKSE Academy?  I'll pitch in.  Too much.  I'm taking a month off, though not exactly since they got a little desperate for another Torah reading at mid-month.  I was not really the last resort but the easiest low-hanging fruit to pluck.

And we have Super Sunday which resurrects some of my worst Jewish experiences.  And two guys who I thought I could generated a learned discussion resorted to sloganeering as its surrogate.  I need a break.  I just lack the patience of a rabbi and any compensation for having that level of patience.

February almost never has five shabbatot but I lucked out this year, probably for the last time in my lifetime.  I put myself on the Gabbai's Do Not Call list.

So what might I do with four shabbatot off?  Haven't been to Chabad in ages.  Usually I worship at Beth Tfiloh one shabbos in February each year.  No real interest in driving to a shul I've never been to before, though I have done that in the past.  Or I could just say no shul in February, other than what I have already obligated.  Depends on whether it is shul that irritates me or my shul that irritates me.  Not sure yet.

Upper Hall

Among my twelve semi-annual initiatives, the most challenging may be to create a single unified storage system for my house.  Eating the elephant takes a lot of small bites.  I prefer to chow down first where I can see the incisor marks but where a good chomp will not result in emergency dental expense.  That starts with my upper hall, a repository for who knows what.  Since I've been purging for a few few days, it's more like who knew what.  Stuff is arranged in the manner of a galley kitchen with various full boxes and assorted containers lining walls.  I found a lot of books, not that hard to relocate.  I found papers.  Mine recycled, wife's get boxed.  We have assorted toys, to Goodwill if usable, to landfill if broken.  We have unworn clothing galore.  Some type of donation on these.  Wire coat hangers go back to the cleaner.  A few office items best relocated to My Space.  Some unused medical equipment to a nook in my closet.  Two bedtop desks, one beyond salvage but with the missing part that would restore the better one to full use.  And vcr tapes galore that are mostly beyond recapture and not important enough for a time capsule or museum.

Once one wall of the galley becomes blank, I can move upstairs a very attractive bench captured from my old office via storage unit.  It would add character to that wall and allow for some discrete but labelled boxes beneath.  And none of it comes into My Space unless that is the best destination.

Super Sunday's Defector

Last week I gave a public seminar on Jewish attrition which is really a subset of religious attrition.  It takes many forms, and unless one is among those Church Centered people that Stephen Covey, z"l, so vigorously downgraded in his 7 Habits, we all probably have some element of this.   I've been on Federation's Do Not Call List for 25 years and I do not expect a solicitation today.  Indeed, many Federations and other fundraising organizations have written off their small donors as not worth the effort or the telephone earfuls that their contributions would bring.  I've not forsaken tzedakah, quite the opposite, just fired my agent for doing this in 1995 and brought this vital initiative In House.

I think the attrition from Judaism that we see now is really Leadership Generated Attrition, the just deserts of how people see themselves as being treated, whether accurate or not.  Of course those machers told each other how wonderful their leadership efforts were.  Defectors were by definition, inferior Jews or ingrates.  Probably not true then and not true now as their leadership clones who have taken up the baton look at how to make the best of their current circumstances.

For me, the experience violated some of the most basic needs of the Animal Kingdom.  We all devote our efforts to looking for food, avoiding predators, and reproducing.  I gathered food and a good deal of professional and personal satisfaction externally to the herd, found a fair number of predators from within, and had to protect one of my offspring.  Even looking at the herd for the security and opportunity it provides, the losers of the rut who are put in subservient positions may start seeking a different herd where they can flourish more effectively.  That's me.  That's a lot of people.  It's not everyone.  They'd have real tzuris if it were.  The disaffiliation composite speaks for itself.  The rut through which the people of title emerge will just have to engage smaller herds.

Underachiever

To get some inspiration, when I retired in 2018 I started going through the daily death anniversaries on Wikipedia and On This Day.  I pick out the Jewish and Islamic names first, then the scientists and other Nobel Laureates, then those who died under age 50 but were able to get a place for themselves in posterity despite their limited years.  Up until about 1600, it is all yichus with a few military heroes.  Then artists appear, then scientists, inventors, and other innovators.  Entertainers and athletes arrive on the list in the 20th century.  Jews do not appear in appreciable numbers until the 20th century.

This year I added another feature to the daily list, people born on that day in my year and a year on either side.  There were athletes and entertainers, but there are also people of science and political and literary accomplishments, all things I might have aspired to in my younger years but never took the risk to pursue.  My reaction is very different to the list of Lives They Lived which is one of admiration.  As I go through my contemporaries, most still alive, my kishkes announce envy of them and disappointment with myself.  To be sure, I have my portion with a terrific family, economic prosperity and a satisfying professional career, for which I have received much nachas.  But it doesn't reverse that disappointment of maybe if I had more focus, dedication, willingness to try and fail, my birthday and ultimately demise might be of note to the public too.

Could Use Some Me Time

Around this time a year ago, not occupied with Osher Institute or other distractions at home, I afforded myself a few days away to visit Penn State, where I'd not been before.  I had to postpone the trip by a week due to snow when I first planned to go, and the following week I braved a deep freeze and enough snow to hamper driving but not accumulate appreciably.  I had hotel reservations but otherwise no immediate plans other than puttering around the university which I ultimately did not do by virtue of school operations suspended for extreme cold.  I visited a winery, got my face numb walking around town, had my left turn signal and windshield washers fail, but go to two fine brew pubs and some driving around.

Time for a second act, this one having to work around the Osher Institute schedule.  Thought about going to Berkeley Springs where they have mineral springs but not much else.  Never been on the Harley or Herr's factory tours.  Been to a sufficient number of wineries near York and Frederick.  Could go the other direction to the Poconos.  Never been skiing or snowboarding, though snow tubing might be safer.  They have indoor water parks there, a little expensive.  Closer than driving to State College.  Not a great winery region.  Drive is about the right distance, close enough to stop wherever I want along the way if a sign captures my attention.  Probably should stop off at the state welcome center nearby and check the brochures, but a few days in the Poconos seems the best mini-escape for now.

Relentless Pursuit of Mediocrity

One shabbos per month, our Cantor takes off, leaving Torah reading to the congregants.  We have started a periodic service where women can be participants with a few strings attached.  While coming to the rescue grudgingly during the Cantor's illness, I thought I could have the subsequent month enjoying shabbos morning someplace else, whether Chabad, Beth Tfiloh, or atop my new mattress as our Cantor makes his return.  It is not to be, at least for one shabbos.  This has been assigned to our Partnership Minyan.  The Aliyah Meister assigned the readings from the weekly portion of Yitro.  All are short except for the one with the Ten Commandments which comprises less than a full column and is familiar to many of us.  Who does the Aliyah Meister ask to do it?  Three highly experienced men.  Based on availability it defaulted to me.  I suggested that in a month one of the women assigned a shorter on can learn that one and somebody with less experience can do the shorter one.  Then she offerred me that shorter one.

Sometimes they just don't get it.  I took the one with the Ten Commandments whose text I mostly know.  Our Logo reads Embracing-Engaging-Enriching.  If you reassign everyone what they did last time and never challenge anyone to enhance their capacity even when the opportunity and the need is glaring, the people can never progress.  This Partnership Minyan has been a showcase with mixed results for a few years.  It's purpose was to provide women left on the sidelines a chance to advance their capacity.  They have the same women and the same capacity.

Does anyone hold responsibility for this?  I would think the Rabbi who approved the project and set its ground rules.  You just cannot have people languish, watch them languish, and not try to remedy this.  In the Rabbi's absence we now have people reading other people's Divrei Torah.  Hello?  We are all university graduates who can write a 5-minute talk on a topic from the week's Torah reading.  Two people do that, one especially well and the other more than adequate.  Reading somebody else's work to me, particularly a short work,  just doesn't cut it, except for maybe an audiobook read by the author or professional actor.  Personal engagement will drive the future of our failing congregation.  We have some in the search for our new location lest we be homeless.  We had it clearing out the building we sold.  However too many decisions default to expediency when the better decision, from Rabbi's contract extension to how to get the weekly portion read at an acceptable level, involves some hardship but a chance to rise to the occasion.

Culling My News Feed

I've never really been a news junkie or a political junkie.  My Uncle Sam used to go to the corner store every Sunday morning and purchase all the New York newspapers except The Times, which he would replace with the National Enquirer.  There were multiple daily papers in those days, all but two folded.  As I moved on to college, The Times could be purchased from a dispenser.  Philadelphia had the Inquirer in the morning and the Bulletin in the evening.  I preferred the Bulletin, of blessed memory.  Once I graduated, I rarely read the paper and really never became a great devotee of Sunday morning's talking heads, though I learned to Washington Week in Review.  I much preferred magazines, some by subscription, some in libraries.

CNN became a novelty once I got cable.  The novelty wore off as the stories became more sensationalized for capturing market share.  As our political process became more toxic and the sources mostly linked to agendas, I've largely not watched anything that I could predict accurately without watching it, which is most things these days.

There is misinformed and there is uniformed.  I'm probably neither.  I protect what I access but I access some things.  Cyberspace being what it is, most comes to me passively in small bites as a news feed each time I try to see who is mad at me on e-mail.

While I am pretty amenable to what people try to tell me, some screening goes on based on source.  Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, and NY Times get shoved aside, usually without looking at the title.  There is nothing editorially objectionable about these but they want my money more than they want my intellect.  I cannot read them without a subscription.  Off they go.

Fox News will let me read anything.  Once an entity establishes itself as offensive, even thrives that way as part of the business plan, even the sports scores and recipes and travel advice go unopened, with that notice slid into my electronic wastebasket.

That leaves me with a lot of stuff to open.  Science from science publications, I like recipes adaptable to Kosher, I watch and read about sports in a limited way, I know where conflicts are, and I can figure out which public figures, political or starlets, are far afield from what I aspire for myself or my children.  I remain adequately informed, and without the sources that think I am either too much of peasant to engage for a price or too stupid to understand when I am being manipulated as part of the business model, I have more good stuff to read and think about than I can realistically engage.

Regretting My Vote

My congregation's obit has not yet been written but last evening's congregational meeting exposed the reality that end of life planning is upon us.  In extending our Rabbi's contract by a wide majority of the vote, including mine, we not only kicked our rusty can down the road but silver-plated it before we did.  Had we not done this, come summer our congregation would be without a Rabbi or saddled with the immense expense of recruiting and investing in a replacement.  And we might be actually homeless.  Eighteen months until can invoke our no fault escape clause will not ruin us.  Having more of the same downward trajectory will.  So we have stability, or the illusion of stability, unless he invokes his escape clause which does not have a waiting period.  In exchange for predictability we gave up the more difficult choices.  We are a losing team.  Losing teams trudge along until a new coach with a new vision takes the helm.  There are no shortcuts for that.  What I saw at the meeting are people being risk averse, avoiding a roll of the dice that could be revival or could be rapid implosion for the certainty of long term depletion.  It was not a good long term choice. 

Planning a Road Trip

Time may have passed me by.  As a late teen I missed out on a few things, partly from limited finances or at lease a sense that I had to be responsible with my parents' resources, and partly being highly focused on entering a career.  I never went to a resort on spring break or took a tour of European Hostels over the summers.  While people pasted flowered decals on VW buses, then hit the road, such an investment in time was unthinkable.

About half century later, far more prosperous than in my youth and now retired, I sometimes wonder if it might be time to catch up.  I've been to many resorts, largely as a week's escape from often demanding work that needed a reset.  This past year I made it to Europe for the first time, transported to multiple places and housed by a cruise ship instead of a Eurorail pass and hostel.  Close enough.

The road trip with an unclear destination and random stops en route still eludes me.  I have taken a few long weekends within driving distance of home but always with a finite destination and a small amount of itinerary leeway.  We stay at our specified hotel as a base, visit the main attractions of where we are going, see if any other local destinations catch our fancy and see what they have for brew pubs.  Rarely the intended destination will require more than a day's drive, but the intermediary motel gets chosen shortly after twilight and resumption to our destination resumes after breakfast.  In a 600 mile route, there may be some great places  Our destination path does not tolerate much deviation. 

What I might like to do instead is pick a direction randomly on my Compass App, a distance that I am willing to drive each day for two days, and then see what I find en route.  I've never done that, and anticipate that my wife will have reasons not to want to join me, but it is something that passed me by that I would like to sample two times as my semi-annual projects.