Shabbat Pageant

Too much.  Over the top.  My personal connection to Friday night services, known as Kabbalat Shabbat, has cycled considerably over a lifetime.  As a youngster, primarily 1960s, we belonged to a United Synagogue Affiliate, a member of the Conservative Movement.  While the suburban Reform congregations showcased Friday night as the demarcation between the commuting work week and respite, the Conservative synagogues held their traditional services on Saturday mornings.  Friday nights became special events, attended more for the specific event than the sanctity of Shabbat.  My congregation, now defunct, had programming that would violate many of the Shabbat restrictions.  We held Bat Mitzvahs on Friday nights.  A choir would perform liturgical melodies with organ accompaniment once a month.  Programming included guest speakers of community prominence of panels of members doing presentations from campers showing the dances they learned to honoring the graduating High School Class to hearing what a local Civil Rights leader had to say about recent initiatives or legislation.  The services were timed for 8PM, competing with That Was the Week That Was and The Flintstones in the pre VCR era.  My family essentially only went to announced events.  The evening served as much a communal as a worship function, starting late enough so that men could drive home after a long week in the trenches, eat a more elegant dinner than other days, and still get to services.

My two years as a camper, Friday night served a different purpose.  Our parents were told to pack white outfits:  shirt, long white duck pants, while suede oxfords, to be worn on Friday nights.  We assembled for services, rather late due to Daylight Savings Time, then a meal in the communal dining room with singing before Grace after Meals.  Finally we assembled to a public space for Israeli Dancing, with most campers getting the gist of the steps before the summer ended.

College brought a variant of that in a way, recognizing that Friday night was traditionally university date night.  The classes ended, exams over.  Shower, put on a clean shirt and sports coat, services timed to candle lighting, but always quick and efficient.  Then to dinner with chicken soup and roast chicken.  The dining room always attracted a lot more people than the sanctuary, but services remained similarly attended on Friday nights as they did on Saturday mornings.  Commencement done.  Friday nights generally history for me.  Saturday morning became the anchor of communal Shabbos with Friday night reserved for unwinding, some weekends taking medical call, and a meal with kiddush and motzi.  Friday at home, Saturday at synagogue.  However, at our Conservative synagogue, services still began at 8PM where they remained for decades.  Eventually, the Conservative Rabbis, noting marginal attendance, opted to move Kabbalat Shabbat to a pre-dinner hour to enable them and maybe some congregants to have more of an uninterrupted home Shabbos experience. Rabbis sang songs or hosted dinner guests.  Congregants watched Dallas and Wall Street Week.  The Reform Movement kept Friday night as its centerpiece, including periodic programming.

This turned out very useful for me the year I needed to recite Kaddish for my father.  I had taken a new job that required a substatiantial commute.  By the time I returned home on Fridays, the week and driving had taken its toll.  Most of the year Shabbos had already begun.  Chicken got seared and baked before I left in the morning.  My wife finished the meal preparations and lit candles before I returned home.  Then dinner, then Kaddish.  My only realistic option was our local Reform synagogue.  Despite the sad reason for attendance I liked going there, not missing TV at all.

The Reform Movement had issued a new prayer book shortly before.  It offered their rabbis considerable flexibility of content from week to week.  While this congregation had a much different format from my traditional one, the choreography of the service remained fully recognizable.  An usher with name tag handed out a program as people entered the sanctuary. I selected a seat towards the back half, a place that I sought out most times.  They had an organist accompanying their cantor, both people of musical talent.  Periodically their choir participated, but usually not.  A woman lit the candles, irrespective of whether Shabbos had already begun on the clock.  This honor went to a board member or a Bat Mitvah girl, one of their few retentions of gender roles.  Then the service, a mixture of readings and familiar tunes.  Most weeks their Rabbi delivered a message, though sometimes a guest spoke.  Towards the conclusion, children under age 13 came to the Bimah where the cantor chanted Kiddush and the Rabbi blessed the children.  Ill acquaintances blessed, the departed memorialized, and the service concluded with their organist playing the tune to a hymn that varied between weeks while the congregants sang.  Then everyone assembled in an adjacent room for snacks.  It had predictability despite the variances in weekly content that added interest.  Even on special Shabbos weekends, whether partnerships with African American congregations for Martin Luther King Weekend or an invited guest of special accomplishment, the format avoided elements of public spectacle.  After my year of Kaddish, the fondness for the experience remained, so that I continued to attend periodically.  Eventually their Rabbi or their Board opted to move the time from 8PM to 7PM.  That largely ended my Friday nights there, and the few times I ventured out, their attendance seemed at least a third less than it had been.  The format remained unchanged.

My Traditional congregation has Friday night services timed to pre-dinner. Getting there and back, approximately 20 minutes in the car each way, puts my attendance in competition with Shabbos dinner.  I opt to have a pleasant meal with my wife.  I do not know if they assemble the required ten men each week.

And then we have events, times designated to venture beyond the ordinary, yet stay in bounds with fundamental purposes.  My congregation sponsored one of these, a multipronged extravaganza designed to tie different elements of the larger Jewish community, celebrate a milestone anniversary year for our synagogue, and perhaps right some wrongs that left us as victims.  

It had been a tradition for many years that our umbrella agency, The Jewish Federation, would designate one Friday night each year for one synagogue in our county to host the others.  Population migration has brought a significant number of Jews outside the reasonable driving distance, but pandemic normalized Zoom has enabled electronic access.  This is acceptable to all congregations but mine and Chabad, where electronic prohibitions on Shabbos are maintained.  Moreover, Chabad officials do not drive and their sanctuary is too small for a communal event so they have not participated in these geographicallly expanded Shabbatot.  Moreover, our clergy do not drive or ride in motor vehicles on Shabbos so their participation has been limited to our host years, though our officers have been full participants.  While liturgy, acceptance of women, and Shabbos restrictions vary among the county's synagogues, it has been the custom that each host showcases itself.  If only the Reform affiliate allows an organ, all congregations and their clergy accept that under the banner of Achdoos, or communal unity.  Experiencing each other in their own way serves as the foundation of this annual program.

Congregational fortunes have their own life cycles from creation to closure.  Mine started 140 years ago, the incentive for celebration.  In that time it has experienced internal history from locations, mergers, membership growth, programming adapting to the expectations of different decades.  In a much more compressed time, maybe my 70 year lifetime, organizational Judaism has experienced attrition.  My Bar Mitzvah synagogue, class of '64, building cornerstone '54, closed in '06.  My dear congregation as a newlywed, where I only worshipped for one year, swooned from 400 members to 29 over about 25 years.  They had a benefactor.  Like my Bar Mitzvah congregation, they ran out of people before they ran out of money.  My congregation faced a similar trajectory.  Declining and aging members without replacement.  No tycoons created in the 140 years of our existence.  We opted to sell our building which will keep us financially solvent until the actuarial realities catch up with us or an unanticipated influx of younger members find our traditional ways sufficiently attractive to pay annual dues.  With diligence and an interim location, we rented more suitable digs to call our own.  Weekly attendance of about forty makes our sanctuary appear reasonably full.  Accommodating hundreds, a possibility in our previous building, cannot happen.  In the interim, the kingmakers and shot callers from the Federation had to field objections from different leaders who found some host congregation customs or locations unacceptable.  As a result, they relocated this annual Shabbos of Unity from fractious sanctuaries to a central auditorium that serves the entire county, with Zoom links for those synagogues too distant.  One congregation would be named host.  Since Siddurim, or prayer books, are themselves sectarian, our communal brass decided to homogenize this with a more generic prayer book.  And then there needed to be a recovery from Covid restrictions and emergence of in-person worship.

My congregation's turn in the limelight arose this year.  It didn't happen.  Important people of other congregations found our customs unacceptable and vetoed closing down their Friday night activities to come to a central place.  Important people rule, up to a point.  Attrition has occurred with leadership very much in place.  Walking away, the easy default.  Challenging for a better outcome, more difficult.

Our synagogue has a milestone anniversary this year.  Not a typical one like a centennial or one with special Jewish significance like 13, but a three digit year that ends in zero brings an opportunity for hype.  We could use some hype.  Events aimed at those already inside.  The Dominant Influencers decided what we might like.  They think they know, though in 25 years I've never actually had my preferences or vision solicited.  If gathering on Shabbos could be more robust, create a dinner or festive event.  I attended a spectacle.  Admittedly, the Rabbi put in full effort and talent to reversing the affront that marked our initial turn as the focus of Community Shabbat.  Invite everyone who's anyone.  A singing troupe.  Elected officials with their time at the microphone.  A place for Rabbis of all Congregations to lead a prayer.  A barely teen to light Shabbos candles just in the nick of time, while not pre-empting a video our Senator created to be shown just after candles were lit.  We have no instrumental music on Shabbos.  That is part of our Shabbos.  But the show must go on so guitars from the ensemble accompanied our prayers.  Our High Holiday Choir.  Our closing prayer fixture to lead a few verses that overlapped Friday night with Saturday morning.  Shabbos as pageant, maybe with a tinge of parody.

All executions went well.  A few hundred people now know who we are, though not quite in the same way I thought we were.   Good food awaited those who stayed to its conclusion, which I did.

Interestingly, the part I found most meaningful did not occur in the auditorium.  I've met the Governor, Congresswoman, and live Senator before.  I've met everyone who performed other than the ensemble director.  My more meaningful interactions occurred with people I see too infrequently.  A very capable officer who mostly ignores me at shul, cannot ignore me by Zoom Board Meetings, who saw me exercising on the JCC treadmill.  There's a story behind that which I conveyed.  An old friend whose class I attend every week at the Osher Institute, a Dominant Influencer at his congregation on a different tier than ours.  Some words about OLLI.  Another fellow who I've not seen in decades, a contemporary recently widowed.  He had served as president of an agency at a time when I found it most contrary to my concept of what Judaism should aspire to.  He did too, but he had an obligation to his agency.  Never any ill will towards him, as he provided a sympathic if ineffectual ear when I needed it.  No attempt to bridge the decades of separation.  Just small talk for a few moments and glad to see we both appeared well in our late life Jewish obscurity.  I may have reservations about the experience, but those handshakes and greetings with a rugulach in hand confirmed what I knew all along.  The worship and showcasing must take a back seat to good will and kindness among the people who make an effort to be present when they could be home streaming whatever has replaced Dallas on TV.  Thinking back to late Friday nights of yore, my year of Kaddish always included some greetings afterwards.  My childhood congregation invariably brought the Bat Mitzvah of somebody I knew or public school person familiar each weekday but friendly for fifteen minutes after services.  Places where people of title, Dominant Influencers, become subordinate to the quietly talented sharing a handshake and a one liner.  Shabbos has its inherent formality.  People who prepare in advance their time at the Bimah or Torah Scroll.  They acquire merit for the effort.  But you reach long milestones by people remembering how well you treated them.  

Learning Musaf

My turn on the Bimah at my present shul comes about three times every two months, estimated eighteen times a year, though I do not keep count.  The office manager or IT maven keeps electronic copies of the weekly Shabbos bulletin, so I could figure out how many by imposing on them.  Or I rarely deplete the electronic newsletter that comes from the congregation every Thursday evening, so if I really wanted to know how many times I take my turn leading something, I could figure it out.  Three events every two months seems a reasonable estimate.  In recent years my assignments have been to lead Shacharit, the Morning Prayer, and to take my turn when the synagogue's men chant the weekly Torah portion.  About three times a year, the Gabbai will invite me to chant the Haftarah.  In another era, I did a chapter of Esther, but discontinued that when I took a job that would not allow me to return to repeat my chapter the next morning.  And I've done a chapter of Ruth one time.  Nearly all are Shacharit and Torah presentations.

Some of these skills I learned for my Bar Mitzvah, tutored in a Cantillation Class with other Hebrew School boys, then private lessons with our Cantor, who also taught me shacharit.  At summer camp, I learned Torah reading, let the skill lapse for many years, then took it back up when I settled in my current home forty years ago.  I had also learned High Holy Day Torah reading, which has a separate melody.  Most years I have been one of the Torah readers, chanting the entire portion for that morning.

The Internet has largely replaced the private tutor.  While I can perform shacharit for Shabbos morning with no preparation, I periodically expand my repertoire.  Each time my turn arises, I select two, sometimes three, melodies that I did not use the previous times.  For Torah readings, I prefer to use the month's notice to learn one I've not done previously that has a length approaching the limits of my capacity.  All Torah Aliyot and Haftarot are now recorded online in a variety of places.  Leading the service can be taught from a number of Virtual Cantor sites that allow the learner to listen to and repeat segments of pretty much every service.  My Go-To when I want to upgrade my skill has been Mechon Hadar, a blend of Think Tank, Synagogue, and Academy run by two Conservative Rabbis in Manhattan.  

For all that I do, an invitation to lead Musaf has never been offered.  After 25 years with my current congregation, nobody ever asked me if I wanted this assignment, or even if I possessed the skill.  I don't.  I could.  Some months ago, I brought this oversight up to my friend who has the often unenviable task of guaranteeing that a man agree to lead each portion of the service on the next occasion, be it Shabbos or Festival.  As soon as I pointed out this oversight, he agreed to add me to the Musaf rotation.  I responded that I don't yet have the skill but will make an effort to acquire it later in the year.  That's now.

I know the format.  Words have a familiarity.  It's mainly a matter of the melodies.  Musaf comes in three sections.  First the Torah needs replacement in the Ark.  One introductory prayer, beginning in Aramaic, end in Hebrew.  Then a prayer for the Government recited in unison.  Next, a variable prayer, most weeks a Memorial Prayer.  Then Ashrei, then the Torah processional with two prayers.  Not hard to learn these.

Sermon next.  Then the challenging part.  An introductory Kaddish with a tricky tune.  Opening of the central prayer and closing of the central prayer I know.  Then a Kedushah which I am familiar.  Finally some more intense text that I will have to learn.  The morning ends with closing prayers that I already know.

Checked out the sites.  Mechon, JTS primarily.  Listened to the tunes, which are variations of what my congregation does.  JTS melodies are recorded by a professional cantor who I cannot duplicate.  So is much of  Mechon, but they have a woman who sings in a more lyrical way that I can duplicate.  That makes this project within reach.  And as I attend services, I can pay attention to the cantorial parts each week, then go home and practice.  Figure two months to learn this, which would take my debut to shortly after the Holy Days.  Definitely a project within reach.

Skipping Services

Shuled out one more time.  Or really more wanting to avoid the place and its people.  It's not been my best experience of late/  Feeling imposed upon in some aspects, ignored or marginalized in others.  Moreover, I have something of relative importance to do there next shabbos assigned to me under less than my preferred circumstances.  Not stayed home on a Saturday morning in a while.  This time I pondered whether to drag myself there or give myself the shabbos off.

I looked at the program that comes to me passively online every Thursday.  Very long Torah reading, longest of the annual portions, though done with professionalism by our hired Cantor.  Rabbi away.  Ex-President, one who irritated me during his tenure, giving the sermon.  He doesn't give an inept presentation, though hardly worth the special trip.  Regulars doing most of the service, one always expertly, other two above threshold.  None creating an expectation of special.  Within standard, not a lot above or below.  At the end, announcement of birthdays.  Conduct of Saturday morning business would be an apt summary of my expectation.

Nothing inspiring, nothing challenging.  I would essentially be punching my Jewish clock.  Sitting politely.  Getting my weekly 10 ml of scotch when it's done.

Most weeks I feel more engaged.  Sometimes as participant, sometimes as admirer of what the Rabbi or his surrogate puts together.  An admirer of the talent of people who execute their portions especially well.  We have an impressive number of congregants who can do that.  We also have some who have not endeared themselves to me.  I also have encounters extraneous to shabbos that leave either a favorable or unfavorable impression.  Shabbos is about separation.  The impression does not always separate.  This week it does not, nor does it have another form of offsetting some unhappy recent vibes.

Take the weekend off.  Reset for the Board Meeting during the week, prepare my upcoming Torah reading so that I can be proficient for my turn next week.  Best alternative.

Meeting New People

Shabbos brought me to a different environment.  We have a secondary congregation, one which permits my wife and many other very talented women to enhance worship with their skills publicly displayed.  She usually goes alone, at one time leaving early to attend a pre-service class of outstanding quality with their now retired Rabbi.  His successor, a young man of immense potential, does not conduct a class before services so she gets to leave a little later.  I really did not want to be at my home congregation but I had stayed home the shabbos before.  Ordinarily my wife makes the 45-minute round trip alone, but this time I opted to go with her, driving each way, having lunch with her sister.  I even completed my scheduled treadmill session right after coffee, to allow enough travel time.

Sometimes you have to experience upwards.  If I want to enhance my wardrobe, I tour the upscale men's department.  If I want to upgrade my home, I visit a restored mansion.  And if I want to experience what shabbos might be at its best, I sidestep the Chief Influencer at my home congregation to be with different people.  Works every time.

The shabbos morning my wife seeks out is really a parallel service of a large USCJ congregation.  Over the years, the USCJ affiliates have struggled with their top-down leadership models.  They are still highly dependent on clergy for performance, abridgment of liturgy in response to congregational feedback or attendance data, and to some extent a need to have events, including a Bat Mitzvah this shabbos in the main sanctuary.  There is a grassroots, though.  There is also a large building with places other than the main sanctuary that have Torah scrolls and seating.  This congregation had that critical mass of talent intersecting interest, creating their unabridged, really less abridged, option.  And talent was on display.  No Rabbi.  No Cantor.  Each portion prepared and executed by a member of their subset minyan, all done expertly.

Having been there before, though infrequently, there were people I knew, though very few by name without a prompt from their congregational name tag worn by few, and virtually none as people with jobs, families, or avocations.  It is customary to shake hands with those who were honored or performed, which I did.  Roughly the same formality as shaking hands with my Senator, which I've done many times.  And the same formality of handshakes at my home congregation with people I do know.  It's protocol.  Occasionally sincerity, though usually protocol.  The service proceeded through its specified portions.  They gave me Aliyah #6, the longest one of that parsha, followed by the next longest, which kept me at the scroll for a while.  My wife did the Haftarah with great expertise.  The Sermon was by a congregant, some controversial content that a Rabbi would probably not tackle.  And the service ended.  Talesim folded.  Books returned to their shelves.

As we came in round tables with red tablecloths and chairs filled the kiddush area and extended out into the lobby.  A few sky blue tables where people could nibble while standing stood in small nooks at the edges of what the caterer had set up.  The main service had a bat mitzvah, with all in attendance invited for a buffet luncheon.  Making my way to their auditorium, as the main service and mine concluded at about the same time, I placed my maroon velvet tallis bag at one of the many empty spaces, the first at its table.  My wife put hers next to mine.  There were probably a couple of hundred worshipers that shabbos morning, maybe forty at my chapel, the rest in the main sanctuary.  The caterers were pros.  They set up multiple stations, three for serious eating, one for beverages, one for dessert, and one for ritual.  I started with kiddush, selecting about 30ml of grape juice, then washed hands, and took a slice of presliced challah.  The line to the food had begun to accumulate at all stations.  To promote community, the congregation created name tags for their members, kept in an alphabetized rack along the edge of the wall.  People with black lanyards and a tag were members, including the fellow behind me on the food line.  I commented on the elegance of what they had, the building, the volume of members, the diversity of ages of people present.  Very different from my usual surroundings with a forty seat chapel area and everyone on Medicare.  They had increased membership by a hundred or so households, mostly young families, attracted by their new Rabbi.  Kiddush food itself was actually very similar to what we serve on an expanded sponsored kiddush.  Bagels of different types, better than what we have locally. and pre-sliced.  Small portions in plastic of soft cream cheese, though no lox.  Fish bins with tuna and whitefish salads.  Egg salad.  Three salads, lettuce with beets, caprese, Caesar, all pre-dressed.  Roasted vegetables.  A sweet noodle kugel.  Two lines per table, Army style, moved quickly.  By the time I returned, the other seats at my table had occupants, also with full plates.  The two men next to me had suits without name tags.  Nobody with a name tag had a suit.  They were each guests of the Bat Mitzvah.  One lived in a different suburb, the other about a hundred miles to the west.  Both shared my awe with what we experienced before us.  After finishing my plate, which took a while, my wife escorted me to the dessert table where two people from our service were at an adjacent stand-up table.  She introduced me to them.  I had contacted one earlier in the week to offer a name for their misheberach list.  He had a car identical to my wife's, model and color, not sure about year.  He was apparently a journalist, an editor in the regional Jewish media.  Desserts not a lot different than at my home kiddush.  I took a cake and a brownie.  Then onward to my sister-in-law's.

Meeting new people often goes better as a visitor.  At my own place and at Chabad, I recognize everyone there most Shabbatot.  A few I keep my distance, a few I seek out for conversation.  Which depends pretty much on prior experience.  Few approach me.  Visitors are infrequent, and Rabbi has dibs on approaching them.  But as I relearned, different environments assemble different people.  Friday night on a cruise ship will invariably bring worshipers with their stories to tell, whether Messianics or couples from places where we share mutual acquaintances.  Visiting this synagogue brought me into proximity with some very skilled women who could thrive there but would be sent off to prepare kiddush at my place if the Women of Influence would tolerate unfamiliar women in the kitchen.  People had name tags, which could be an icebreaker.  Some people were dressed to the nines.  Those are Bar Mitzvah guests.  Small talk comes easily:  hometown, the food, relation to the hosts for the visitors.  For their regulars where I am the stranger, I become the figure of curiosity.  

Though I know everyone in my sanctuary, I often find it a place that makes the underlying loneliness so common to seniors more apparent.  People have already told their stories, watched the teams during the week, and don't often seem to do interesting things or have thoughts of anything really worth either an amusing or even an inquisitive response.  Not so when I worship among the less familiar.  I'll have to go again, next time as one of their volunteers.  And be more assertive to take better advantage of my own place's experience and people.

No Messages

FOMO.  My interactive electronics, other than telephone with my kids, shut down for shabbos each week.  From candle lighting Friday until the specified conclusion of shabbos on my congregation's weekly newsletter the internet gets placed someplace else, with rare exceptions like needing Waze to get where I need to go.  Festivals extend that.  These last two days.  When they begin on Wednesday night, or on rare occasions Saturday night, that extends to a three day internet free hiatus.  But mostly two days.  They can cluster a bit, like they do each fall for Rosh Hashanah, Sukkot, and Simchat Torah, plus the Shabbatot between them most years.  FOMO more at the beginning of this season.

I find myself in the middle.  Sukkot with its two days off ended, extended about an extra hour as I was having dinner with friends in a sukkah when the Festival time concluded.  I had left my cell phone in the car's cell phone holder, covered with a baseball cap to deter thievery.  When I returned to my car, Festival fully concluded, I just drove home.  No FOMO at all.

Into the house, supine posture on the living room couch, then see what I missed for two days.  Not exactly Nada, but nothing of any importance that would cause me any hesitation about setting the phone aside again next weekend.  All emails but one, some three dozen of them, from commercial or subscription sources, those automated messages that just go out from places that think I might want new tires or have an article that I have to read, or a FB friend had posted a message of some type not really directed at me personally.  Only one real notification, a message from an old friend wishing me a great Sukkot.  The FB notification bell read 14.  Majority were Likes of something I had posted about the Sukkot festival or something else.  Reminder that a Hagar the Horrible strip was open for view would never get opened, nor will a couple of real FB friends making one more post to share guidance from somebody else who shares their political hashkafa, which never gets opened lest I offer a false impression that I buy into something like that.  The text icon had only one message, that I am due to schedule platelet donation, which I already knew. My initiative to block unsolicited political messages over the past month seemed pretty successful.  Reddit r/Judaism, no messages.  They were all off for Sukkot too.  And Twitter, now appropriately Rated X as a public blight, had no responses to any of the few things I had posted.

So, it appears that much of cyberspace is very expendable.  We've probably known that for about a hundred years, ever since a personal telephone in the home became an American population norm.  When it rings we answer it.  Mostly still do.  For a long time, we wondered who might have called while we were away, mostly rationalizing those missed chances to chat with the largely correct assumption that people who really needed to reach us will call back.  Then we got answering machines and caller ID, so the compulsion to answer every ring before it stopped ringing became much less, though for many of my era never fully disappeared.  And in business and medical care, we accumulated secretaries, answering services, and beepers so there would never be FOMO in that setting.

While postal mail is never urgent, many of us are scripted to look out the door for the mail carrier.  Birthday or holiday cards could be open on arrival or deferred.  Letters, bills, bank statements all had their envelopes opened. Same with IRS refunds, and for those of us applying to schools that year, their correspondence was eagerly awaited each day. Solicitations for money, maybe not.  The nature of postal mail has shifted.  There are no letters, maybe a few greeting cards, no postcards of friends on vacation, bills on autopay and therefore either not notified by mail or already paid before the notices arrives.  Instead, we have a few periodicals, some by paid subscription, some a benefit from organizations where we hold membership, many unsolicited.  But mostly the daily mail is from somebody who desires a portion of our accumulated treasure, sometimes for a worthy cause, sometimes to enrich themselves.

And now we have things beyond our telephone calls that really are interactive.  Personally I don't care who or if anyone responds to my FB posts.  At one time when most of my Class of '69 enrolled, who is doing what today had more urgency than it does now.  Birthdays and anniversaries come while I am away on shabbos.  At one time a belated greeting went out, or if I remember I could be the first to convey my best wishes.  Now I'm just not part of FB that day.  Somewhere between sign-up and a fair number of years ago, notes from my friends mostly petered out in favor of pitches for things for me to buy or to believe in.  Those things don't seriously compete with shabbos or yontif when I am electronically away.  And the posts really haven't generated faux conversations for a considerable time

Some users of Twitter and Reddit try to handle their posts as dialog.  I don't.  I write what I want, let the readers do with it what they want.  No reason to respond to most whether shabbos or not.  

Some use their text messages as a conversation.  Good way to collide with something while driving.  And even if not driving, it's never as good as a telephone call for personal interaction with exchange of ideas.

So for two days periodically and one day every week, I have cyberspace rest.  No FOMO, as I am really not part of this global conversation in real time.  But in exchange, I get fifteen minutes of real interaction, those few minutes selecting who I want to talk to at kiddush or who might want to talk to me while we nosh on a mini black & white cookie and some babka.  Those only happen when the cell phones have been set aside.

Taking Shabbos Off

I'm once again shuled out.  Perhaps only my shul, but probably all shuls.  I have no desire whatever to attend any of the community events this week for Remembrance Day or Israel Independence Day.  Maybe I'm Jewed out, though still find Reddit's r/judaism worthy of my input and I will offer my two monthly Jewish donations, now a few days Past Due.  None of this stuff is on my weekly activity list except completing the donations.  And maybe getting a summer JCC Membership, partly for health reasons, partly to improve my social engagement as OLLI goes dormant next month.  But at least for this week I'm off.  Omer count continues, though.

What might I do instead?  Not veg.  Not as I really start feeling pretty decent physically for the first time in a couple of weeks.  A drive somewhere unless it's pouring, maybe a drive to someplace indoors if it's pouring.  Something worthy of my spiritual and physical recoveries.  But Me Time for at least the daylight hours.

Shira Extravaganza

Pleasant morning.  My own congregation has not given me pleasant encounters of late, so I've opted for ten shabbatot someplace else with a few contingencies built in.  This being a special shabbos when crossing of the sea is read from the scroll itself, beyond the telling from our Siddur every morning, our synagogue neighbors arranged a special presentation.  I went there instead.

Whenever I go there I leave with admiration of what is possible when you have a real community that doesn't play favorites.  Mine has become rather bimodal:  friends of a dominant individual and irritants of that Federation type, or the USY Clique on Medicare.  Irritates me no end.  Probably would still annoy me if I were assigned to welcoming half, but I wasn't.  This experience with our neighbors contrasted with that immensely.  They created a Saturday morning spectacle to be sure, and at the evisceration of all the parts of our liturgy beyond the pre-Bar Mitzvah Hebrew School curriculum, but to do what they did took a real commitment to assuring Kehillah, or community.

An old acquaintance, a prominent figure in the American Jewish whirl, once sent me something he had written for his many subscribers in anticipation of Passover one year.  He called it Danny's Four Questions.

1. What do I like to do?
2. What am I good at?
3. Who can help?
4. Why not?

A multiplex of worship, baby naming, congregational guitarist, short remarks from their Rabbi containing wit while at the same time acknowledging the importance of various participants and how the very essence of what makes Judaism worth seeking out appears in so many ways in what we read and what their members did.

The experience of their morning dedicated to the special portion scored a 4/4.  Their baalebatim or clergy seem to think more expansively than ours, and probably respect what their membership can really do more than the Influencers at my shul do.  I will have occasion to return.

Meatballs

Last shabbos dinner on DST, creating the onset of shabbos at just before our usual dinnertime.  Its preparation has largely been my household task, largely because I like doing it.  During my working years when I would return home long after candle lighting, two chicken breasts would get seared in a skillet, then baked in an oven, then put in the refrigerator for reheating most weeks.  For others I would assemble vegetables and meat in the crock pot and let it slow cook for the day.  Other weeks, I would reheat what the crock pot supplied the week before.  Retirement has given me more leeway to prepare the meal during the day, just like the baalaboostas of old did.  Even so, with Standard Time starting shabbos before our customary dinner hour, whatever I make has to hold up for two hours either in a crock pot or a warm oven.

Poultry and beef cubes serve this purpose well.  Beef slabs and ground beef pose more of a challenge.  My poultry supply, usually a collection of chicken breasts or cut-up chickens divided into two portions as soon as they come home from Shop-Rite, has largely depleted to a single turkey breast half allocated for Thanksgiving and a very large space-consuming whole roaster chicken to await guests.  Beef obtained a package at a time when discounted has accumulated.  So this week I went for beef.  I pulled out a package of ground beef, which needs to defrost.

Meat loaf has been the usual dinner from this, but I thought I'd like to try meatballs instead.  Three classical options:  Klops, ablondigas, or Italian meatballs and spaghetti, none of which I have made in a very long time, each illustrating a certain ethnicity.  Recipes on the internet, particularly with Kosher adaptations, seemed few.  Ingredients are flexible:  mostly an egg, bread crumbs, and seasonings, much as meat loaf or hamburger would be made.  However, they are all made on a stove top with sauce, which means they need some attention as they cook.  Defrosting done.  Make a decision on how to best use this package of ground beef this evening so I'm ready to go tomorrow.

Impromtu Haftarah

It was my intent to attend shabbos services with my own congregation this week, but forgo the next.  By now I have a protocol of when to go and when they can make their minyan with other men.  In the absence of a hired rabbi, we have congregants speak after the Torah returns to the Ark.  Rather than invite those who have the most to convey, they settled for a sign-up sheet, which creates the risk of Dunning-Kruger's who overestimate their erudition having too much presence on the schedule.  That came to be this week, but still I was willing to go.  I'm masked out.  We are probably the only place that still has everyone involuntarily masked.  But still my bye week was next week.  What I was not willing to do was go there without my wife, who felt a little tired.  While my first inclination was to stay home too, she suggested I go to Chabad instead, a place that I always enjoy attending, though never frequently enough for the novelty to wear off.  This being the parsha where men listen to their wives and do what they say, not always with the best result, I acceded, driving to Chabad.

My congregation edges slightly over a minyan.  Chabad's assemblage of ten men seems more secure, though despite a later starting time than most Orthodox places, did not reach the magic number until just moments before needed.  I chatted with their door attendant, asking him if he were armed.  He was not, but with a little conversation before entering the sanctuary I learned he was a native of South Africa who did his compulsory military service there before emigrating. However, he never acquired proficiency with a pistol.

After taking a seat, I followed along in the Siddur as best I could, noting landmark passages amid the leader's undertone to find the right page.  Eventually Torah reading arrived.  To my surprise, after the second Aliyah, the Rabbi/Torah reader approached me to ask if I wanted to do the Haftarah.  Now, I can do any one proficiently with a week's notice. Sight-reading more iffy, particularly one I've not done before.  I asked for him to read the next Aliyah, a long one, while I assess whether I am perhaps a Dunning-Kruger haftarah chanter.  Chabad commonly truncates the standard Ashkenazi portion, as the did this week.  While Isaiah has a lot of vocabulary unfamiliar to me, sometimes tongue-twisters, there weren't a lot of these.  With the shorter reading I assessed my ability to pull it off.  At the end of the Aliyah, I consented, looked the words over another time while he continued the parsha, then did a pretty decent effort for the Haftarah.  I learned later, that they have a small cadre of sight-readers, though less than they once did.  A few handshakes followed, and the service continued to its conclusion, this time without a customary sermon, though Yizkor earlier in the week probably captured the rabbi's thoughts from his bimah.

People there recognize me as a member of someplace else, that same someplace else to which a handful of those in attendance once belonged.  People drift off for a variety of reasons, but since status quo usually serves as the default, there is often a measure of discontent prompting the transfer.  One person was sent to Cherem by my congregational Rabbi, another VP basically accompanied her husband as he became more a fixture at Chabad.  A surgeon's daughter married into Chabad, so he also became one of their pillars.  A few decided they wanted a place identifiably Orthodox with a mechitza.  Lots of reasons.  Seeing me there, they assumed some preference on my part to be there instead of my own shul which is true, some irritation, also true, some shul shopping on my part, not really.  But I was pleased that their Rabbi invited me to do something there, while my own place opted for sign-up sheets in lieu of recognition of who might be capable.  

As much as I like worshiping with that group, being recognized for a skill that I offer, Chabad has a difficult reality.  They will welcome anyone and hope to influence you in a favorable way.  You cannot influence them, as their structures and practices are set from afar with an element of immutability.  Communal congregations, including my own, do not have that constraint.  They are a composite of their participants who create their character, or at least can be.  That is until their own leadership impedes that advantage.  Which is why I even consider being someplace other than my home sanctuary for selected shabbatot.

The Rival Congregation

It's been a while since I attended services across town.  I had been a member for 17 years but defected for a variety of reasons, from excessive blue penciling of the traditional service to a Rabbi less than fully cordial to a macher dominated structure.  I moved my allegiance.  My wife joined me five years later.  A dear friend had been systematically mistreated by Important People.  We were not Important People.  Despite a new Rabbi of great talent, he could not change the culture.  We went more traditional, Orthodox Rabbi, full liturgy, no machers of special entitlement, nobody designated as deserving torment, all on the upside, but marginalizing women's participation on the downside.  And that's where we are twenty-years later, with my wife one of the pillars despite her genetics. A span is more than ample for cultures and circumstances to change.  For us, rabbinical retirement and transition, along with a cultural change.  We've become more inbred with recycling of officers, almost creation of the USY-Cliques of our youths.  I was not in the clique in the 1960s, nor am I now.  Everyone's cordial.  Nobody invites friendship, and to an increasing extent, nobody invites new people onto their committees either.  Like a CPR code in a hospital, once you have the key doc or two on site and enough others to compress and bag, you really neither need nor want the room cluttered and send everyone else who responded away.  And if you are more useful than important, even if the utility is limited to an annual dues check that can get successfully cashed before Rosh Hashanah, you will be treated as useful.  My check always arrived on time and never bounced, giving me a share in what had really become a Gated Community.  And we have full liturgy, that litmus test of the traditional Judaism.  Yet on shabbos morning, I follow in the appropriate books, daven shacharit, read my Aliyah or two from the scroll when they need me to, and do a good job chanting the Haftarah on the diminishing occasions when invited. 

It is that Invited, which has atrophied in a disheartening way.  On occasion, I suspect my current seat on the sidelines with summary squashing of any initiative I propose to the current In-Crowd targets me personally, but I give them too much credit to think so.  More likely it reflects a cultural shift, one where above threshold or good enough or easy to execute becomes the aspiration of those with the sometimes thankless task of filling the schedules.  My time in the sanctuary, and I really have no reason to be on-site other than the sanctuary, is devoted to following along in the appropriate book, having the Rabbi compliment my shirt during the Torah processional, and following my tradition, started at my Bar Mitzvah congregation z"l when I was underage, of pouring 15 ml of scotch into my cup in lieu of the hideous Manischewitz filled plastic cups.  In his anthology Jewish Megatrends, Rabbi Sidney Schwarz cited his four aspirations for meaningful Judaism:  Chochma or Wisdom, Tzedek or Righteousness, Kehillah or Community, and Kedushah or Sanctity.  That tetrad written by me in Hebrew letters onto the whiteboard that sits in my line of sight to the left of my desk has become my checklist for what my Jewish experience should aspire to.  And my shabbos morning experience used to score a lot higher than it does now.

What's not on the checklist at all is the means of reaching each of those four objectives.  Extent of liturgy or what the community permits its women to do may be appealing or not.  Who engages you in conversation at Kiddush to enhance personal connection or stimulate your thoughts is very much the essence of Kehillah as is the invitation to be a meaningful participant who designs the activities, not just partakes of the final product.  That cultural shift very much disheartened me, enough to think maybe shabbos morning services might register as more meaningful someplace else.

My community has a lot of potential someplace else's, even more when expanded to Philadelphia 45 minutes to the north and Baltimore an hour and a half to the southwest.  Indeed, my wife often seeks satisfaction at the congregation in which we were married outside Philadelphia forty-five years ago where women of her level of talent have parity with men.  Moreover, she has female peers of comparable skills there.  I saw an Orthodox Rabbi from Baltimore on Jewish Broadcasting Service a number of years ago.  I drove to his synagogue one Shabbat morning, found the experience fully engaging, and until Covid worshiped there quarterly.  My community has a Chabad where I migrate when I need a change of pace, always treated warmly when I go there.  And when saying Kaddish for my father, prior to my retirement, the local Reform synagogue offered the only Kabbalat Shabbat service with a delayed start that would enable me to complete work and have shabbos dinner first.  Lovely people to be among, though they mostly tended to leave me to myself.  Continued to seek out those Friday nights periodically after Kaddish concluded, again terminated by Covid.  "I'm not going there again" never emerged for any of these alternatives.  Yet, none of them were my congregation.  I was always a visitor to a place that really had no obligation to me beyond the derech eretz, or civility, that Jewish people are expected to convey to one another.  Each is what it is, each had a particular objective, be it Kaddish at a convenient time, the warmth of the Chabad rabbi, the intellect of the Baltimore rabbi, or egalitarian Philadelphia without any reduction of liturgy.  I enjoyed them all in their time and their contexts, felt entitlement to none.  For my own congregation where I have a financial share and presence in their Gated Community, I do have some entitlement with a strong measure of tacit reciprocity that strikes me as not having been fulfilled for too long. My entitlement to be a contributor had been sidestepped if not bludgeoned at its highest levels of operation.  I missed it.  To my own detriment, perhaps, I resented feeling this way, no matter how accurate, and even from the perspective of the Clique, justifiable.

Since loyalty evaporated as an anchor, I set a few criteria that would bring me to my home congregation on a shabbos morning.  All invitations to serve as leader of shacharit or chant the weekly haftarah would be accepted.  Torah reader would be suspended to a specified date with the provision that I would only accept invitations to read Aliyot that were new to me, not recycled from prior years except for yom tovim where they are all often repeated and I've done most at least once previously.   But even there, not the one I did the previous year. I had an obligation to my friends the Gabaim who schedule shacharit and haftarah, neither part of the governance, but not to the VP Religion who schedules Torah readers, or to any other VP or committee chairman that excluded me.  My wife has a more acceptable presence.  If she participates, I will be there in support.  And there are special events: Shiva minyanim, friends needing a minyan for kaddish, an honorary kiddush, a visiting rabbi candidate to replace our departing one.  There are enough of these that I will not really be absent, though I doubt anyone will identify the pattern of when I am there and when I am not.

Setting fixed criteria to ration my presence, go on strike metaphorically perhaps, seemed rather easy.  It's not really going on strike, though, as real labor discontents articulate what they want in exchange for their return.  Finding that what I want knowing it will not be fulfilled makes my project much more difficult than going on strike.  Probably what I want may be to respect the logo on the letterhead which announces Embracing-Engaging-Enriching.  I recall the Board discussions, given the agenda item "Branding".  It's purpose in those discussions was framed as attracting new members and their checks, not really changing the culture of the congregation so it can really deliver those goods.  And for me, it didn't.  But it remains a reasonable benchmark.

Where is it fulfilled?   I don't really know, since sitting in the audience as religious services proceed never generates all three.  That comes from interactions beyond worship, being invited to create something that will delight others, having a forum to politely but candidly express what you think without having it dismissed with the wave of a hand, never seriously considering that you've been blackballed or fenced out of the clique.  Perhaps I want to revisit my medical training programs, both as student and teacher, where Embracing-Engaging-Enriching was that coin of the realm which had a way of ultimately benefiting patients a generation later.  That's the model of Rabbi Schwarz'  Chochma/Tzedek/Kehillah/Kedusha.  Being in the audience or partaking what somebody else built for you without having a share in its creation does not really satisfy our letterhead logo, yet that's how it seems to be pursued.

This past week, no requests from either of the Gabbaim to place me on the bimah.  Wife limited to an indivual in the congregation without particular activity that requires her advanced preparation.  Did not meet my directed criteria for going there.  While going no place often offers the best alternative, it is still shabbos where the four commentaries on the weekly portion that I review each Thursday at my screen acquire a public reading.  There's commonality to ceremony along with its variations.  I did not want to stay home.  It's been years since I attended an ordinary shabbos morning at the United Synagogue affiliate where I once had my primary membership.  My congregation rented space in their chapel for two years after we sold our own building, always as something of a supplicant, but also our leadership drifting to its path of least resistance in a place everyone knew and associated with Judaism.  I did not dislike entering the building those two years.  Indeed, I admired what I saw as I wandered around.  An upgraded foyer, modern rest room, a bin with premade nametags.  Their officers, or committee conferences, judged it important that nobody be anonymous.  Guard at the entrance for the security that synagogues now require.  They had a flat screen noting events, from the name of the Bar Mitzvah to activities in the upcoming week.  They created a different type of community from when I had left, much less top-down or dependent on king makers.  Yet in those two years, I had only attended a few hybrid weekday morning services that we formally shared with our synagogue landlords.  Never shabbos.  Never Festivals.  And their High Holy Days are admission limited spectacles that always disheartened or irritated me the years I belonged there, even though I was one of their Torah readers most years.  Of my options, sampling their actual worship seemed my most attractive destination last shabbos.  

And so shabbos arrived.  I left my house in time to arrive about ten minutes after their scheduled beginning.  While parking in their lot is limited, at my arrival no cars sat along the sidewalk on either side of the building.  I captured my space, took my tallis bag from the back seat, then walked to the entrance.  A sign indicated they found it acceptable to skip Covid protective masks that morning, but I still slipped mine on.  No guard sat at the door to let me in, though it was locked.  I waved to some people in the foyer.  The young man finishing the table set-up came to let me in.  A past-President offered me a United Synagogue version of the siddur and Chumash.  After putting on my tallis, then clipping it to minimize slippage, I entered unobtrusively, picked a seat in the back row away from anyone else, and placed my tallis bag and idle Chumash on the seat next to me, though soon moving them to the windowsill behind me as more people entered needing chairs.

And then a few hours of shabbos delight commenced.  Their new Cantor, really an ordained Conservative Rabbi with musical skills, began at the beginning.  It is the congregation's practice to limit the preliminary prayers to ones with tunes, but once to the Morning Service proper, the liturgy was recited in its entirety except for repetition of the Amidah.  This being Rosh Chodesh, or the New Month, Half Hallel was inserted, georgeous chanting accompanied with guitar chords strummed by the Cantor as she chanted.  Torah service there has always been abbreviated to be completed in three years instead of one.  Several people divided the seven portions plus a supplement chanted by a woman from my shul from a separate scroll to commemmorate Rosh Chodesh.  The service itself has elements of commonality shared by shabbos worship all over the world but portions of uniqueness that display the imprint of the congregation.  Much of this occurs during the Torah Service and the sermon that follows.  Three aliyot were read interlinear fashion by a retired rabbi who used to do this in her congregation, something I had never heard previously.  

A worship gathering also does double duty as a public assembly, indeed the term used in Israel for a synagogue is House of Assembly, not House of Prayer.  Congregational business gets conducted during or just after part of the Torah reading.  Individuals from the congregation who are ill are offered a prayer by name for healing.  By then about 50 people sat in the chapel and another 18 were attending electronically by Zoom.  Each ill person noted by an attendee got a blessing.  In the diaspora, we request success of our country, then solicit Divine protection for Israel.  And Ukraine also received a word for the protection its people currently need.  Congregations celebrate special events.  A woman completed her conversion this week.  She chose a Hebrew name for herself, explained why she chose those two names, then received her honor of her first Calling to the Torah.  She is to be married shortly.  Her fiance then had his Aliyah, known as an aufruf.  And after the Torah was put away, the weekly message on the portion was masterfully presented by another ordained rabbi, the same gender spouse of the one who had done the interlinear Torah reading.  Another masterful presentation weaving three key words from the portion to a unified theme.  And while all this took place, the senior Rabbi, who because of geography and circumstance became the Rabbi to the current President of the United States, inserted short comments, insights into the supplements for this Rosh Chodesh day, and more importantly a word or two of prays for each person of honor from the convert, groom, their new Cantor, each Torah reader, the woman giving the sermon, all in real time as they took their moments in their personal limelight.

What I experienced to sum in a paragraph is the pageant that shabbos, or also expanded worship, is intended to be.  It is not as a former college classmate who became Chancellor at the Jewish Theological Seminary once remarked to a journalist, "rote prayers, dull sermons, and people strutting with great self-importance."  This was celebration of time and of people who came there when they could have been engaging in their Saturday morning recreation.  Some Jews were new to this but are now full-fledged Jews.  Many had to devote personal time to enhancing their skills, thinking what the selected passages of Torah were trying to impart.  Many people deserved praise, and the Rabbi never failed to publicly acknowledge each achievement in real time as it happened.  And I was part of that pageant, though  merely a visitor.  And for those two hours or so, if the sanctuary sparkled, I sparkled too. 

At a service's conclusion, it is customary to greet each other, drink an ounce of wine, maybe add a few sweet or savory calories.  How people familiar and unfamiliar are approached may say more about a Kehillah than the worship that preceeded it .  Many people there knew me for other settings, some Jewish, some professional.  I had  ample well-wishers, a few more curious.  What I did get to do was tell the Rabbi and a few old friends how much that morning in their sanctuary glowed.  It did.  I will be back.

Even better would be to export that more than perfunctory appreciation of for what the participants did, those celebratory moments for a brand new Jew, for a sermon guest who was sought out by the Senior Rabbi for her known knowledge, for people new at Torah reading who did more this shabbos than they could do before, a new Cantor inserting her liturgical talent to create beauty to expand some of that glow to my more usual shabbos morning experience. We have our culture too.  It's different.  But as every college Hillel alumni knows, it is that importation of the highlights of multiple elsewheres that generate a unique and inviting presences right here.  

And for the verbal praise:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nN5VwaAsN5M

High Holy Days In View

There are orthodox neighborhoods in which minyanim assemble at the earliest time permitted by halacha, imparting the blast of the Shofar to the neighbors who have no reason to be awake at that hour.  A requirement of the morning services of Elul to usher in the Holy Days as the month ticks down.  Locally, at the Conservative and Reform congregations, those three days of Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur dominate the annual calendar.  Admission to their services provides leverage to collect annual synagogue dues which pay the salaries and keep the utilities going through the next year.  Crowds attend, far in excess of what will populate those buildings any other time of the year, excepting perhaps the funeral of a VIP.  People at the end of summer vacation hit the beach outlets for a discount in appearing stylish when they will mingle with the others who display their prosperity.  But in exchange, they also seem to display their best manners.

In my student days, the Holy Days brought reconnection with friends not seen that summer.  They come too early in the academic calendar to be concerned about exams.  So the conversation goes to what courses are you taking and how did your summer go?  Football openers usually take place in proximity to these Festivals.  In the northern climates, summer clothing goes into storage, long pants, closed shoes with socks, and shirts with long sleeves appear, though the logo sweatshirts will need to wait another month.

Atonement?  For some.  Reset and renewal? For most.  Herding people back into community after some summer scatter?  Usually. 

Other than my teen and college years when I reassembled with friends, those Holy Days registered as less an annual high point than synagogue hype tried to promote.  I learned of shabbos pre-teen.  That focuses my mental Jewish calendar, also a demarcation point but more frequent.  Fewer throngs but synagogue populated more by people who really want to be there.  How did you enjoy yourself this summer gives way to what did you work on that brought you satisfaction, or sometimes might I offer some empathy to your frustration.  There are annual cycles determined by astronomy but also weekly cycles determined by people that have no natural set points. 

In this mindset, the Holy Days are sure to disappoint.  Perhaps even when the highlight of the year, they are designed to disappoint.  Perhaps that's why nearly everyone at the places that showcase them keep a low profile external to their congregation until it's time to ante up for dues next year.  That annual large gathering with pageant makes for kehillah, or sometimes the illusion of kehillah.  Shofar inspires.  Fasting generates commitment or resolve.  People really do return to their studies or to their professions with renewed diligence.  But it seems the weekly cycles of shabbos sustain this more effectively than the synagogue spectacles of the Holy Days which only appear annually.  

I'm still a shabbos person.

Different Approach

Shabbos in recliner in My Space with a small break for an early lunch.  No purposeful activity other that to look at the various lists of projects and intents that I keep, survey what has gone well and what can be done better.  I'm not yet ready to abandon anything that I set out to do.  Minimal TV.  Did not bother getting dressed, even. No shower.  Chewed a melatonin tablet early afternoon to reinforce my attempt at a day's reset and redirection.  I'm reset, beginning with DST, for which I've had ample pre-sleep.  

I would like to try to work more with a timer, as that has added structure to where it was absent.  Starting with iTouch watch I set when I am not permitted in bed.  Writing projects get 40 minutes or so per session, house projects 25 minutes or so.  Exercise, already on a timer, has reinforced what I can do when I force my activity into a specific time block.

Social media is not yet out of hand.  Reddit on snooze, Twitter probably gone, and Instagram never was.  That leaves the FB sink.  What has been successful in the past was a spin of the roulette wheel early in the morning.  Odd number, contribute to FB that day.  Even number, just permitted to check messages twice that day.  I adhered to it, don't recall why I abandoned it.  Today's #5.

And pick the big writing and home project for the week, allotting extra sessions.

Sounds like a plan, an improvement over what I do now.

Adventuresome Shabbos Dinner

Been taking the easy way out of late, or maybe not.  Roasted Turkey half-breast.  Chicken cacciatore takes preparation and last a while.  I've made it many times, tried and true.  Sticking chicken in crock pot with whatever I have at hand has been done by my balaboosta ancestors long before earthenware was heated electrically.  I needed something new.

Found a Syrian recipe for Tabyit.  Not too hard.  Not too straightforward.  It has a few steps.  Had all the ingredients but the tomatoes on hand.  This couldn't be too ancient a preparation if it depends on New World ingredients along with spices that needed transport from the Far East.  Soak rice.  Prep onions and tomatoes.  Make stuffing.  Stuff chicken and secure closed.  Make sauce.  Stick chicken in rice and slow cook as long as I want.  I can do that.  And boil a broccoli crown in time for candle lighting.

Do Nothing Shabbos

A day of rest, but really set aside Biblically as a day to do different things without distraction from usual things.  No commerce but appointment for worship.  No writing but listening to Rabbi's sermon scribbling the misstatements with mental red ink.  Planned dinner and lunch.  Be with different people that day.

In part because Covid closed in-person worship, in part because having done that I've established a clear preference for lounging at home than sitting and rising for two hours for a reward of 15 ml of Jack Daniels at kiddush when it's over, I allocated the day to the creature comfort of sloth, supplemented with some time to expand my imagination which has taken a bit of a battering in retirement.  Good Coffee.  See what's on TV but not watch.  Look at what I have and haven't done since my last planning session the Sunday before.  Imagine what I might do with better accomplishment at the next week's review.  Look at the six-month project titles on the whiteboard in My Space.  Admire what went well, is making satisfactory progress, and what needs either change in direction or better commitment.

I took a shower, a restful one, setting out clean lounging clothing to wear after drying off.  And then came the day's snafu.  While retrieving a bar of soap that had fallen to the wet tile floor, on arising I struck the very top of my head on the built-in porcelain soap dish.  A quick stun, quick neurological checklist OK.  Finished the shower as the hematoma followed its physiological response to injury.

For the last few shabbos afternoons, my treat into twilight has come with chemical assistance.  After lunch, I chew a rather tasty, sweet tablet containing 1.5 mg of melatonin.  In about an hour or so, reclining on the lounge chair in My Space, oblivion sets in for the next few hours.  No hunger, no desire to get up.  Not sleep exactly, but a pleasant stare with my mind sorting out what it wants to sort out until suppertime arrives.  Feeling refreshed with this not quite nap but mental distancing, maybe even reset, it's off to some light nutrition, then more lounge chair until shabbos ends marking the resumption of  cell phone's FOMO.

Head injury preempted that weekly chemical drift.  The weekly news included a celebrity just a few years my junior who died suddenly, thought to be an acute MI until it was determined that he had a head injury not that different from mine.  A lethal intracranial hemorrhage did him in.  Not a good idea for me to alter my own mind from its natural state following my injury.  Melatonin twilight got postponed.

Staying Cheerful

My New Year's initiative began in good faith but collapsed about a third of the way through the calendar year's first Shabbat shacharit when, for failure to acquire a minyan, various fillers were imposed.  The rabbi being away, he gave the President a Dvar Torah from somebody else to read to us.  Probably a Never Event in its own right.  And one of dubious quality that got plenty of mental comments.  Then a rather academic drush from the Cantor to fill space.  From a chapter written by a friend.  Great source for a seminar in an aspect of prayer, wretched having it read to us for as long as it took.  I wanted to leave.  I did leave, to stroll to my car and get an update on my son who just tested positive for Covid with annoying but not life-threatening symptoms.  Then back for the rest.  Little banter.  Maybe Judaism is a series of time boxes that need to be filled, whether worthwhile or not.  

How I respond to something put my way remains my ultimate autonomy.  I could have remained cheerful as intended.  I didn't.  Sometimes you need to take broken things to the local landfill.  My shabbos morning experience has been broken.  Too big an impediment to my personal cheerful mission.

Synagogue's New Home

My first shabbos morning in the new sanctuary, functioning as leader of Shacharit and one of the Torah readers, or I likely would have postponed my return a few weeks longer.  The room, far longer than wide, does not really hold a lot of people, perhaps leaving the impression of full attendance.  Comfortable movable chairs, attractive Ark and chanting table, decent acoustics and in the rear half walls covered in a cherry red with starkly contrasting white trim, though with more lemon yellow less awakening walls in the front half.  Commercial movable rugs seemed more for acoustics than aesthetics.

People mostly the same with the addition of one young couple.  Ritual proceedings very much the same.  Still I much prefer having space that is really ours.  We remain tenants of another congregation but not one with a parallel offering at the same time as ours.  This is better.  It felt more like ours.  I have now been restored to a consumer of worship.  That's not the same as being a contributor to the synagogue where my impression of blackball remains.

Reconsidering Shabbos

Since Covid-19 closed the synagogues, shabbos has been very different for me, some elements favorable, some increasingly destructive.  This has been magnified by the Holy Days.  First, I stopped driving and never used the computer or cell phone except for medical care obligations when I was working.   I did watch TV and listen to the radio, still do.  When I was working I used to go out for breakfast Saturday morning, a residual pleasure that started when I needed some alone time to study for upcoming Board Exams but remained as a respite destination for the remainder of my working years.  I stopped doing this at retirement, redirecting my mornings at the Hollywood Grill to an obligatory breakfast required for platelet donation.  When shul on shabbos morning disappeared, I didn't miss it.  I could stay home, see what's on TV, scrounge some breakfast or at least make keurig coffee.  No FB or email intruded.  I would read some, snack some.  Longer stretches, including some Thursday-Friday-Shabbos yom tovim became more of a sensory deprivation experience, leaving taste of eating as the connection to reality.  I got pretty bored, not realizing how dependent Covid-19 made me on the screen.  I still maintained scheduled exercise those days, a variant of pikuach nefesh, with an electric timer, but amid overall designated sloth, I found the chore of schlepping onto the treadmill more of an intrusion than destination or break from boredom.  And worst, I spent much of the day horizontal, some in a lounge chair in My Space, but too much on the living room sofa, or worst of all, in bed.  A reasonable 45 minute nap at mid-day became two hours, disrupting sleep for the next two days. 

Rosh Hashanah afforded me services both days, requiring 45 minutes of attentive driving each way. Even so, the absence of screens gave way to the horizontal posture again.  Yom Kippur services were more tentative due to possible rain, but they went on as scheduled.  Good thing, because I'd have gone stir crazy not eating for 26 hours at home.  Taste may be the last portion of sensation that survives these screen-free stretches.

Just as a matter of my own health, this will not do.  I am going to have to go somewhere each shabbos or yontiff.  The screen has always been suspended, but until Covid, it comprised far less of my usual day than it does now, greatly magnifying that sense of deprivation.  Going to shul occupied the morning.  Even if I didn't go, I would drive somewhere, maybe attend the West Chester University football game in the afternoon, and on occasion make a day of it by driving to Baltimore for Beth Tfiloh in the morning and some Baltimore area attraction afterwards.  What I am doing now is probably a form of false piety, not driving largely because I have noplace to go than a genuine desire to enhance shabbos.  For my own protection, this really cannot go on.  I will just have to decide what forms of exit from my house remain compatible with shabbos and yontiff.

The First Rise

My anniversary dinner coincides with Shabbos dinner this year.  Normally, this is the only day that we consistently go out for dinner, ready to spend a little extra on elegance, but between Covid-19 and shabbos, some form of elegance at home seems the more inviting option.  No Zomick's mini-challot out of the freezer for this.  I arose at my usual time, did basic FOMO catchup, then downstairs to begin what I hope will become a dinner worthy of the education.  To my surprise, I had not used the good stand mixer since Pesach, so down to the basement, schlep it upstairs, wipe the bowl and beaters, and begin.  Recipe? sort of yes but with a catch.  All kosher cookbooks have a challah recipe. Though not identical, they are variants, usually uniform in proportions of water and flour.  Some call for sugar or honey, most call for oil.  The number of eggs vary as do the final instructions for coating the prebaked loaves with egg white, egg yolk, or whole egg.  I pulled a book not used in a while, sort of followed the quantities adapted to a more empty nesters appropriate one loaf rather than two, though by now I have enough familiarity to add more oil and sugar that what the book specified.  My dough came out a little too sticky but smooth from the dough hook, so I only had to supplement with flour and knead slightly.  Into an oiled metal bowl with a towel over it, affording me a two hour respite while it optimistically rises.  Ordinarily I try to do the dishes as I go, and I will later, but I had a rack of milchig ones from yesterday to finish first.  Let them dry, put away and convert sink to fleishig.  Now I have plenty of egg shells to clear the disposal, something not available earlier in the week.  The cookbooks never remind the baker to separate the challah portion, something I invariably remember to do with no prompting.

Menu also calls for a bread pudding, kept pareve, which I also vary from basic principles.  Have potatoes so it's a potato kugel this shabbos.  Vegetable could either be fresh green beans or cauliflower.  The green of the beans probably makes a better presentation.  I have minute steaks.  I also have a variety of fresh herbs.  Sage and Rosemary in the backyard garden.  Mint and parsley in the front containers.  Basil and thyme indoors.  Some for salad, some for kugel, and maybe some mint in bread pudding.  Anniversary dinner deserves wine, red from Spain sitting in my car a few days.  And a card, also sitting in my car, to be filled out before shabbos.

Having recently crossed the two year retirement threshold, I find myself a little recreationally challenged.  I like writing or expressing my comments to what others have written.  But I also value time in my own kitchen.  More so now that I no longer follow recipes literally but can put my thoughts to what somebody else has written in a cookbook, just as I can with online remarks.

Repackaging Shabbos

Shabbos has been a demarcation time forever, though my personal form of elevating this day has shown a few incarnations over the decades, As a generalization, my personal observance has become more stringent over time, much like a Wall Street graph that shows a long term trend with up and down fluctuations amid the trend.  Coronavirus, that submicroscopic sphere with red spikes on all the pictures, basically eliminated shul as a destination.  It also gave me and excuse not to drive, which I haven't for about a month.  Instead, I lounge around the house, watch big screen TV, read recipes from my many cook books imagining the menu of my next grand creation.  I don't read anything of Jewish content, unless the cook book happens to be a Kosher one.  Torah is reviewed as part of weekly preparation.  I usually have some Jewish reading in progress, currently going through the 150 psalms five per day but since I do it on my cell phone's Sefaria app, this suspends for shabbos.  I still do my scheduled treadmill session as health maintenance since the ability to measure is essential to the goal.  While some variant of services is available as is our Rabbi's weekly sermon, I find each too much like Junior Congregation of old and never returned following a quick sample.

While it's not sensory deprivation, not even spiritual deprivation, the current form constitutes some form of deprivation.  Maybe those few fast quips with people at kiddush are worth the time sitting in the chapel during the service.  Maybe I should get back in the car and admire a park or nature.  I probably might if I were not retired but I can go any time.  Shabbos is really about setting aside, previously trips to the mall but now the car.  But in exchange for setting aside, there is an expectation that something else will be elevated in its place.  For a long time that was my leisurely breakfast out during my working years.  Then it became public worship, or communal gathering in the form of public worship as my attention often focused elsewhere. Now I've given up the car, which is a form of deprivation, but not really elevated anything of value that I found myself unable to pursue during the week.  It's a different style of shabbos, but a very incomplete one, and not an especially gratifying one.