Board Discussion

My Zoom access malfunctioned.  I could not see myself on the screen, though I appeared on the attendance list of participants.  Perhaps others could see me.  This distracted me somewhat from our Board Meeting's agenda as I did connectivity troubleshooting while other people spoke.  For the first time since I joined the Board, I said nothing the entire session.  This is a good thing, especially since I had nothing of substance to contribute. Multitasking never turns out well.  I did not multitask.  I shifted between tasks, listening attentively without concerns of what I ought to say.  At my next meeting, I will likely have much to say.  The week after, I am featured speaker.  Any opportunity to restore Zoom to its full capability cannot be set aside.

So, as more a spectator than participant, what did I hear or sense?  Very little served as a forum where issues are raised, discussions ensue, people challenge each other's perspectives, and votes resolve divides.  That did not happen.  In its place, I heard announcements of what had already been decided.  I heard The Clique commenting amongst each other how wonderful they all were.  One piece of adverse news, the departure of what had been a lifelong member.  Not our fault, unavoidable.  Announcement of our Rabbi's proposal to expand connections within our congregation.  Where can we take this?  There are lots of places to take this.  I heard none.  We need more members.  Why do we need more members?  To generated revenue, of course.  Never a recognition of how much our newbies add by their efforts once among us.  Mostly Hear Ye, Hear Ye.  A pro forma evening in the congregational Echo Chamber.

They need to either have the Rabbi stay for the whole thing or plant a mystery shopper who can have coffee with the Rabbi and President.  I heard, or at least sensed, what might be.  It wasn't.

Choosing My Courses

OLLI Catalog print version came in the mail.  Electronic version arrived in my Inbox some time ago, presence acknowledged but e-booklet not opened.  There is an approaching window of time for submitting course preferences.  If submitted in that time frame, all submissions have equal chances of acceptance into those classes that are oversubscribed, so there is an incentive to complete the selection process on time.  Going about it takes some effort, but it pays to be methodical.  It also pays to have rules.  Start days are fixed.  There is a University intercession the final week of March, which I have designated for personal travel.  Fall semester Yom Tovim all fall on the same days of the week except Yom Kippur which occurs one day after the others.  Spring Yontif is usually limited to Pesach, as the semester ends before Shavuot.  This year Pesach yontif has one Monday, two Tuesdays, and one Wednesday.  That means Tuesday would not be suitable for courses that meet only the second half of the semester, and MW courses in the second half may be at a disadvantage.  There is not much I can do for full semester courses, but it would mean missing consecutive Tuesdays during the semester.

I start by making a grid, fifteen squares, one for each day of the work week, then early morning, late morning, and early afternoon starting times.  I do not like going to late afternoon courses, so stopped considering them a few semesters ago.  When I first began OLLI pre-pandemic, all courses were live.  The center was packed with seniors, filling up chairs in the lounge, chatting with strangers whose names you could read on their ID tags.  And courses were interactive, mostly lecture or discussion format, that one would expect from a college course, though some with an DVD or Great Courses format followed by discussion.  The pandemic altered that dramatically.  The center is never crowded, tables have replaced many of the cushioned chairs, as the cafeteria where people would congregate with either a purchased or brought lunch closed and never re-opened.  Classes became available on Zoom.  For a while only on Zoom but then a more eclectic mix.  Some are only offered electronically, some only in person, others give the student a choice.  There is one very big positive in that classes held in person at either the main center or the satellites a hundred miles away can now be accessed by people who live at the other end of the state.  And some of the best teachers have retired to the beach communities far away from my home.  Yet given the option, I prefer a live class.  And now nearly all have a format where people watch a video.  The professor's PowerPoint presentations and classes where individual participants are assigned a week to present have become infrequent.

With some experience, I've accumulated a list of preferred teachers and those I never want to sit through, and a few who I think the University should simply disallow but don't.  And then there is content.  There's a fair amount of woke.  Those people who think everyone who is of European or male background in the gene pool has harmed them and they need to shout that out.  And there are agendas, whether cleaning the environment, keeping undesirables from replacing us, redistributing other people's wealth.  Those soapbox courses don't get a place on my preliminary grid either.  There is more than enough good history, some science, exposure to travel and culture to saturate my preliminary maybe courses to move onto Round 2 of selection.

I then take a separate page for each day, divide into thirds, early AM, late AM, early PM.  Then going through the preliminary grid, live goes on the left, Zoom goes in the center, half semester courses go on the right.  A few musts stand out, usually live from a professor I've attended before.  I only want to make one trip, so I will not accept a day that has an early morning course and an afternoon course with a big gap in the middle of the day.  And the subject begins to matter more.  I like history and travel, but I also like to get a new skill, whether learning Excel or basic watercolor painting techniques.  Eventually I will have about five courses, usually spread over four days, submitted in time, and mostly accepted by the OLLI computer for registration.  The University offers a Drop and Add time after the classes begin their sessions, but I've never taken advantage of this.  They also offer, for a nominal fee, the option of taking a regular university course at the main campus.  As tempting as this is, I really don't want to drive there two or three days a week, pay for parking, and have homework or papers to write.  Though I probably wouldn't mind, likely even enjoy, sitting in a lecture room with kids who could be my grandkids and having them stare at me.

But ultimately I am an adult lifelong learner.  Osher offers in excess of what I need, from which I must select but a few.

Talmud Class

My first Talmud class in many years.  As a student, now 50 years ago, the Hillel Rabbi, who to this day I regard as my Rav, offered students an introduction to Talmud.  We had a monograph introductory text and xerox of Mishnah in translation.  I attended a few weekly classes, the oldest student there amid some undergrads, and enjoyed being there.  The class included the content of the Mishnah, but more importantly it focused on how to tease out text to elaborate not only on what was expressed but on challenges that each text invited.

Then a very long gap, decades.  My congregational rabbi now retired, decided to have a Talmud class at a long table in the synagogue library.  Artscroll's multi-volume Talmud Bavli had been mostly issued, with a few volumes to go.  This class attracted about ten men on a weeknight, all solidly experienced at Jewish liturgy, reasonably experienced at Torah, and familiar with Jewish law and how it is derived.  While not beginners like at university Hillel, only a few of the men at the table, with no targeted exclusion of women, had previous significant experience with Mishnah or Gemara as primary text.  I did not.  Artscroll produced a useful format.  The page in Hebrew/Aramaic was a reproduction of an actual Talmud.  The English translation tried to stay within that format as best as the editors could accomplish.  So we read from our xeroxes while the Rabbi retained the original printed volume in front of him as we read the original text from the big print in the center of a page, then the translation, followed by a discussion of its implications.

As much as I enjoyed it for the hour or so devoted to it, studying Talmud text this way was not something I would want to do for hours at a time as they do in yeshivot.  Our group of about ten was suitable for a small seminar, the type that the mostly professionals in our group had come to expect from previous university experience.  We all knew that the pros practiced with a personal study partner, sometimes of comparable ability though often of highly disparate experience, depending on the more capable partner to advance the junior partner.  More like a tutor than a peer.

The Artscroll Talmud Bavli sat on the library shelf, all volumes eventually translated and displayed, for many years.  It would be interesting, I suppose, to pull random volumes off the shelf, open to a few random pages, and have a Scout with a fingerprinting Merit Badge figure out who, if anyone, had even opened that page in decades.

Our new congregational Rabbi is an authentic maven of all types of Jewish sources, including Talmud.  He opted to offer as his first series, Tuesday evenings twice a month to study Talmud together.  In the years since I last looked at Artscroll's Talmud, we now have cellphone access via Sefaria.org.  We also have Zoom classroom options.  The Rabbi or his Influencers and Planners, from which I was excluded, opted to begin with a hybrid format.  It is tough to classify the mission of the class as anything but pluripotent.  Those attending live at the synagogue slurped on spaghetti with sauce before the session, bringing a social element to the program.  As a Zoomer, I was kept in the Waiting Room by the host until the discussion was ready to begin, maybe an hour after the announced starting time, though it is likely they may have capitalized on men in the flesh to have a maariv service before the pasta and sauce came out.

Notification was ample.  I had mixed feelings about enrolling, as the Influencers have labelled me a mere consumer without any role in the more fulfilling parts of project design of this or anything else congregational, something I would be dishonest with myself if I denied at least a minor element of resentment.  But the new Rabbi has made being part of the synagogue more fulfilling, totally devoid of Hebrew School flashbacks that had irritated me so, that I owed myself a sampling.

I registered for the Zoom option a few hours before the class.  Within an hour, the secretary acknowledged my interest, forwarding me the class materials.  I read all the English sources in their entirety in two sessions before the announced starting time, something that a fair number of others in attendance did not.   Despite my upper tier literacy, I found them a little difficult to follow.  There were three pieces, ranging from 1 to 3 pages each, a page of footnotes that required navigating on a computer screen.  The connection between the annotated comments and its original source found difficult to correlate.  

While cooling my fingers in the Zoom Waiting Room, those live finished their suppers and somebody let me onto the screen.  The agenda sent to me included schmooze, as connection is a purpose of a kehillah, one that I give my congregation a very mixed and sometimes unflattering review.  Zoom was not part of schmooze, and once in the room nobody really greeted me, nor did I take the initiative to offer a shalom to anyone else.  Attendance seemed about twenty, half live, half zoom.  The people the project attracted had the usual people in attendance but also a few whose presence was less ubiquitous and the dominance of Influencers that give me flashbacks of USY Cliques of my 1960s did not overwhelm.

The session began.  Questions were provided by the rabbi in advance to help focus our attention.  This is mostly a good thing, but with its limitations.  If a doctor looks at an X-ray with no hints, he will see what is on the X-ray.  If he is told that the patient has a cough, he will look for things that cause a cough, overlooking the fractured clavicle.  If a visit to the art museum presents a painting, the viewer will look at the painting's features.  If the painting has a title, like a Biblical figure, confirmation bias and attention shift take over the viewer will describe Abraham's beard or something about the city in the background being pre-devastation Sodom.  Having questions to answer while reading adds focus, but at the price of often helpful mind and imagination wandering.

Talmud is traditionally studied as a partnership, called Chevruta.  The pairs may be of comparable experience or one may dominate the other.  But for that type of learning to be effective it has to be sustained in increments over time, so that sophistication of analysis can progress.  One or two times often leaves you with a setting of pooled ignorance where nobody is really proficient but everyone is a Dunning-Kruger who thinks they are.  And that is largely what I found.  Breakout groups of two to four are easily done in person.  They are possible on Zoom but we did not go that way.  Instead, we had two dominant men among the ten with very little questioning or challenging, which is really how Talmudic study advances, even in a one and done setting as ours.  If subsequent session are still ten people on Zoom pooling their druthers, it may not be my best option for advancing my own proficiency.  And since the social aspect did not materialize on Zoom enrollment, my tenure with the group may need to be reconsidered after another class or two.

Since the Rabbi has the expertise, I think the medical model or law school Socratic method of teaching a group of that size works better for the format they have chosen.  People read the material in advance.  The expert poses a question.  People respond, either voluntarily or by calling on somebody randomly.  Others, including the expert then respond to the response and take the discussion in a new direction.  Or if you want to have Chevruta, then do that, but definitely not the illusion of Chevruta or a discussion group of ten with negligible individual expertise.

Finally, would I have chosen the topic and literature that began the series?  It was interesting, maybe a bit esoteric.  It also wandered a bit.  The original translated passage and its literary expansion were challenging to compare and contrast, as they likely had different purposes.  I think a better topic, one that comprises my past experience with Talmud, would be to select a practice of familiarity.  It could be shabbos, tfillin, why we sit for certain portions but stand for others.  All things for which we already have a personal frame of reference, for which we know the outcome of the discussion.  Then work in reverse, start with the Torah reference and follow the passages of Talmudic discussion that generate not only our current familiar practice but often purposefully reject advocates of other alternatives.  I think that would be much more rewarding than short literary adaptations of Talmudic passages, particularly those for which there really is no end resolution.

So that's my initial encounter.  I bring interest for sure.  I also bring with me a mixed expectation based on a synagogue familiarity.  Dear Therapist of The Atlantic fame realizes people come to these programs with their story already written, as do I.  Her writers usually express themselves as I'm Trapped.  I am not trapped.  OK experience for now, probably not OK experience indefinitely.  I want them to change, to which she usually responds, no you have to change.  Up to a point I'm willing, but Influencers being external to me, eventually the decision to continue becomes a very binary Y/N.  For another week, I can leave it as a Y.

OLLI Live

For logistical reasons, when I had the option of attending a particular Osher class live or by Zoom, I defaulted to the screen because it preceded another course that was only available electronically.  Now that short course concluded I had a choice again.  Since the instructor was a premier lecturer and expert I thought it better to attend in person, even though it meant leaving my house a little earlier and driving about twenty minutes each way, in addition to filling out forms for safety when I arrived on site.  Major disappointment to say the least.  Basically a talking head with slides.  While assigned the largest lecture room in the building, probably less than twenty seats were occupied, compared to about twice that by the weekly Zoom count.  The class reminded me a bit of a C-SPAN class taught at a college where the kids pay while I watch for free, though without graduation credit.  To my great disappointment there were no questions other than me going up to the professor at the end.  At least at an Endocrine Society mass lecture, where people sit far enough from the podium to have to watch on screens strategically distributed in a cavernous ballroom, microphones are distributed and time allotted for audience queries and responses.  This lecture I could have watch just as well on my laptop.

As pandemic dangers wane, some choices will need to be made.  Isolation forced us to use visual electronics for medical care, learning, some recreation, and conducting business.  We've actually had some of that for a long time, whether it might be better to see a sports or cultural event live or to watch the broadcast.  Or sitting in a big lecture hall or small classroom.  A concert sounds more authentic live.  A football game I'm less sure, as the cameras can focus on the most important action, though much can be said about being among thousands of your community members surrounding you rooting for the same team as you.  It makes you part of that community, something a TV screen cannot.

For school, live has emerged as better, as the interaction seems as essential to learning as seeing the content of what needs to be learned.  Indeed, we've always done homework or studied for exams solo but exchanged the spectrum of perspectives live.  Medical care also has its pluses and minuses remotely.  Exams, patient reactions do better live.  But we've always supplemented that with telephone.  The screen becomes more of a replacement than a supplement.  It allows tapping into experts from afar, something our Talmudic sages looked askance at, but very useful for those with frustrating conditions that require unique levels of expertise.  Most conditions don't.

Still, it was helpful to learn what our electronics can and cannot do.  They do not seem to be able to expand conversation.  We probably learned that pre-pandemic from our social media or the earliest days of AOL chat rooms.  They can make global experts available irrespective of geography, as we learned early in the pandemic when venerable agencies sponsored free lectures with levels of expertise not previously accessible to most of us.  But for ordinary interactions, the verdict on electronic participation seems more mixed.  It is fine, even preferable, for my talking head class, as it has been for watching lectures pre-recorded for C-SPAN.  This is how I will attend the rest of that course.

Schmoozer Shortage

Pandemic generated behavioral changes nearly two years in evolution, long enough for new norms to emerge. Meetings now by Zoom which has also nudged into family gatherings, though not yet socialization with friends and neighbors, which remain largely fallow.  It has brought forth a certain etiquette, among them not interrupting a person speaking.  Unfortunately, our norms of conversation don't go that way.  Deborah Tannen in her You Just Don't  Understand devotes a chapter, maybe more, to the importance of spontaneity in verbal exchanges.  These include instant clarifications and also responses at the time they mean the most to the original listener.  We've lost that with Zoom.  Social media doesn't make a good surrogate.  People tweet or post or send an email.  We receive the message which takes us to a branch point of respond with words or emoticon or move on or delete.  We do it within our own time frame, usually long after whatever stimulated the original thoughts have long passed.

Engaging people requires a certain amount of schmoozing which comes in many forms.  There are parties where people circulate while holding something liquid, typically a disinhibitory liquid.  We once had real conversations, eroded by TV in my youth and irreversibly by more sophisticated screens now.  Once you could go to the doctor and have a history taken.  Now you fill out a form and get x-rayed.  After shabbos services, when food is served, traditional small talk has gotten smaller.

Those vital interactions, known in Yiddish as schmoozing, still exist but less accessible.  One more civilization reversal in the guise of progress.

Redistricted

Our US Constitution mandates a census for the purpose of apportioning legislature representation, misused since the early days of our republic with favorable and unfavorable sequelae that have accrued over time.  States have legislatures too.  Our state uses the Federal Census in its districting.  One of the rewarding projects I have undertaken of late has been to serve as my election district's representative to the Democratic Party.  Good people on the committee, nearly all younger, I assume a little less prosperous, and perhaps a little left of where my worldview stands.  They seem committed to the underserved, which is good, not terribly analytical, which may not be good.

Proposed redistricted maps came out, placing my home smack it the center of a different district, a notably more prosperous population of professionals and tract housing.  Looking at the demographics, we have slightly more Asians than Blacks, which I assume reflects employment of scientists and a priority for the top schools when deciding on a home purchase.  There are no religious demographics included but the new district pretty much absorbs most of our state's Jewish citizens.  

I'm a little sad about being displaced, as I really liked the other people on the Committee and the elected officials who nearly always attended our Zoom meetings.  Whether a homogeneous or a diverse voter base is preferable, I'll leave to the political scientists. These new borders seem to create a district of what some call Bobo's, people like me, those educated, prosperous Americans who invest in the education and security of our kids, those people George Packer in his landmark article How America Fractured into Four Parts https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2021/07/george-packer-four-americas/619012/ called Smart America.  The other district, my current one by number, has a much higher Black representation, less wealth, and aspirations more reflective of the article's Just America.  The current rep, a Black fellow with a good heart and impressive energy, has done his best to legislate mostly small projects that truly enhance the lives of those people, leaving the larger projects with broader impact to our State Senator whose origins and agenda are that of Smart America.  Yet despite the economic divide of who lives within Election District 7 now, there doesn't seem to be much conflict.  Even if bounced from the monthly meetings once the new districts take effect, these are good people to help out when it comes time to support candidates.  As it is now, they schedule all civic events on shabbos.  Perhaps the new district, where there is more of a critical mass of Sabbath observers, will offer other alternatives.

If They're Really So Good at This

 

ADL Seminar.  Lasted but a few minutes before I left.  Covid isolation has introduced me to opportunities not previously available.  Arguably atop the list has been free seminars via Zoom sponsored by top notch agencies who invite world class experts who will take questions even from a peasant like me.  These will hopefully continue once Covid becomes part of history.  The Anti-Defamation League, whose previous director I placed atop my most admired fellow Jews, stepped down, keeps a low profile so not to overshadow his successor who from my assessment can be easily overshadowed, has a legacy exceeding a hundred years of advocating against anti-Semitism in particular but other forms of ethnic animosity as well, or at least their public expression if not private thought.

Ethnically driven physical attacks and verbal assaults have expanded after a few decades of attempted brotherhood.  World War II gave genocide its deserved bad reputation, but we still had future slaughters in Cambodia, Rwanda, and what is left of Yugoslavia.  Anti-Semitism appeared in a different form in France and Germany as Islamic immigrants expressed their imprinted ideologies about twenty years ago but remained marginalized in America until more recently.  Unlike Europe, for every incident in America there has been an overwhelming public response condemning this activity but a more tacit response in the privacy of voting booths giving it an OK.  

Back to the seminar of short tenure.  Anti-Semitism has become more public in America and the ADL has in its mission  to resist it.  The form morphs to meet circumstances from denial of employment, university admission, or social club membership in my grandparent's time, a very visible lull in my parents' time, and now exploitation of easy public access of any view, no matter how ugly, by social media or other electronic global communication.  The ADL opted to focus on social media, where I must say, being something of a technologically deprived geezer, my own cyberspace niche really does not receive anti-Semitic provocations.  May be more prevalent to the younger folks whose subscriptions link them to campus events.  I do get some FB pseudoFriends posting some stuff rather unflattering to the Black population but more a byproduct of their political affiliation that has placed Jews IN and Blacks OUT.

Most Zoom panels sponsored by agencies invite experts of different backgrounds to give their presentations.  This one had only ADL staff, competent no doubt, but not diverse of mind.  And from the introduction they pitched the ADL's origins and legacy.  As they did this, the obvious question arose.  If they've become America's premier agency at combating Antisemitism, why do we have a resurgence on their watch?  Maybe they really aren't as good at this as they would like us to think.  

Medicine takes a parallel path.  The people in the pulmonary office's waiting rooms have more portable oxygen than patients in their primary doctors' waiting rooms.  The endocrinologist's patients have HbA1c of 10% a year into treatment.  Maybe experts address meltdowns better than we prevent having meltdowns.  I would think if the ADL were really an effective agency, over a hundred years their mission would have moved from combating overt antisemitism to ethnic hatreds not as well controlled or keeping residual anti-Semitism in the sewers with the manhole covers sealed in place.  But they really have not effectively addressed root causes or enduring remedies, leaving them to engage in skirmishes as they arise.  Probably have better ways to approach this ongoing challenge.

Transitioning the Year

Most people have found the 2020 calendar year something of an adverse experience.  And from a population perspective it was with global civilian deaths, threats to the primacy of the voters in America, restrictions on travel for everyone, and much loss of personal contact.  It was also a time of innovation.  I can attend seminars with the top minds in the world electronically, previously inaccessible to me.  Scientists who understand what's on those posters that I just walk past at meetings assembled to create a number of intricate immunization options in short time with unprecedented ingenuity to distribute these innovations to a global population.

For me personally, I didn't get real sick, but wondered about it for a few days in April when my sleep pattern reversed and a headache took over, reversing over a few days.  I wonder if I was hypoxemic.  That led to a purchase of a pulse oximeter, which I've not had to use.  I feel good for the most part.  My weight records show about a 5 pound reduction in weight, not change in waist circumference, but pretty consistent exercise performance over the course of a year.  I got away for my son's wedding.  I read more than my predetermined quota of books.  As Zoom enables connections to the world I've signed on my share of the time.

Some fundamental relations are different. My emotional attachment to synagogue has withered and probably won't be restored.  Some people and institutions have demonstrated that while they meet the minimum of B'tzelem Elokim, my respect requires more than the lower threshold. My B-list has gotten longer.  And I have enough stuff, almost enough experiences, so my wants have become fewer.  Some Me Time, Family Time, and a few reliable forums to express myself in a responsible way.

So the world moves from one year, a difficult one, to another with the optimism that it will play out as less burdensome than the last.  It probably will.  I can try to make it a more congenial time in my own way.

Congregational Board Meeting

It was my intent to appear in name but not photo and not say a word at the recent Board of Governors Meeting, to which all congregants are nominally invited.  And that's exactly what I did.  No agenda on my part but a lot of observations on the Board's agenda, what went well, what did not, the missing parts, and the significance of what was discussed and how it was discussed in relation to trend toward congregational denouement.  There have been no personal invitations from anyone to me for any meaningful participatory role that requires any discernment on my part. Bimah skills are really a form of my possessions, which seems to be what they want.  Yet I might be the congregations most astute observer, so if that's the role it needs to be pursued in a meaningful capacity to the best of my INTJ gift to me from God, perhaps.  

Grand Rounds begins with a patient, followed by a discussion of what the patient has.  Board Meetings begin with a Rabbi statement.  He spoke about the role of diversity of expression and tolerance for it.  Much better discussion topic than presentation topic.  Actually pretty easy to skewer or in the spirit of the presentation challenge in a polite way using Torah sources from the weekly Parsha of Bereshit.  As the congregation rides to its destiny, so did creation.  The congregation has loose ends.  So did Creation.  As twilight moved toward shabbos but not quite arrived, ten final creations came in to being just in the nick of time for the first shabbat.  The first of the divine afterthoughts?  פִּי הָאָרֶץ  Korach's dissent was a necessary part of our history and later heritage.  It was planned for from the time of creation with a means of dispatching unwelcome or hazardous dissents.  וּפִי הָאָתוֹן also appears.  They knew Bilaam would one day arrive and a means of suppression dates back to creation.  Derech Eretz doesn't really arrive until Talmudic times, once the experience and downside of withholding civility becomes more tangible.  I would not expect the Board members to appreciate that.  I would expect the Rabbinical comments to be more profound than they seemed to me.  But it's the failure to challenge what the titled propose, be that the Rabbi or the Officers, which more than anything has harmed our congregation one cumulative whack at a time.  And the Board discussion played out in that pattern from there, one of immense Group Think, with reasonable challenges, nods to the head, but not a whole lot of why or alternatives.  Definitely not one those stimulating discussions I viewed as the norm in my university or professional years or see routinely a few times a week on Zoom as agencies of all types previously inaccessible to my peasant class assemble people who have large funds of knowledge and experience to joust with each other verbally and invite questions from listeners which invariable expand the expert discussion.

Our Congregation has two very big challenges that don't do well with Group Think.  First we are homeless, cashing out for expediency with desperation on the horizon though not yet arrived but now with the reality of having a large amount of cash that will be spent down in a predictable way without a means of replenishing either the funds or the people who generated it over a protracted time.  That situation is largely unique to us, a direct result of decisions that went through our governance one drip at a time for a long time, much like creating that stalactite that you knew would eventually appear but not be appreciated until it does.  

We share the second challenge, coronavirus limitations with everyone else.  This has been a very mixed experience for most individuals.  Some institutions were able to draw on their creativity, others more content to adapt business as usual to the altered circumstances.  I used to attend shabbat services with reasonable regularity.  I understood why better in my college years than my maturity years but had enough of an aspiration for a satisfying Jewish experience to change congregations when Beth Sodom transitioned from a fast quip to more of a situational imprint.  Has covid given me a better experience or a worse experience?  Depends.  I don't miss shabbos services nearly as much as I thought I would, stopped driving until being at home devoid of electronics and mobility became a form of sensory deprivation.  I wasn't an individual participant in the congregation as it became more virtual.  We can argue whether I was blackballed from intent or insensitivity but with Covid it didn't really matter.  

There are places that used their resources or created new resources.  My acquaintance Ron Wolfson had an op-ed in The Forward summarizing how different congregations invested in making their Holy Days ones to remember. https://forward.com/news/national/456279/theres-no-going-back-what-rabbis-learned-from-the-extraordinary-high/  Admittedly, his professional circles are the uber machers who work out of Jewish Cathedrals, with resources to hire professionals and special talent, but all successful projects begin with somebody's imagination.  They also require an element of what have others put on their menu that will enrich our plates, and once imagined, then the internal why not? And while anyone could pop into these worship pageants, most people defaulted to their own congregation for this year's Yomim Nora-im experience.  As I skip services that I don't really miss, not exactly picking Hallel as a central necessity around which my Jewish spirit revolves, I also get an awareness of what was already there that I underutilized, things like yutorah.org or the commentators of outorah.org, and what has come on the scene that would not have existed without the necessity of Zoom.  I have access to great minds in the form of AJC or Moment Magazine seminars.  I must say, one of my most heady experiences has been having my question with my name attached announced and submitted to a worldwide audience to be answered by an expert previously inaccessible to a guy off the street like myself.  Now that I can differentiate expert from title, I read and respond to tweets more, though very selectively.  The Jewish world is global and you need not be a Macher or an inveterate schmoozer to partake of it.  If my own congregation assigns me observer status, I can be an equally good observer immersed in the most vibrant of Jewish institutions as well.  The need for my own congregation seems much better defined post covid, and I find myself a little more intolerant of not being a desirable participant there when my mind is valued at some of the most elegant Jewish institutions in the world who are content with my inquisitiveness and not in quest of my possessions.

The meeting itself had a single agenda item, a new building to upgrade our congregation to an address rather than a postal box. Ironically, as we transitioned from our longstanding building to the CBS Homeless Shelter, the Rabbi opened many a congregational meeting with the concept that the congregation was the people, the building assembled the people.  Not at all the view of this BOG meeting.  In fact there was a secondary item on reaching out to congregants alloted ten minutes at the end, whizzed through with the illusion of self-congratulation by what seems the Jewish Covid-19 version of the USY Clique, though far more important to the congregation's destiny looking forward than whether the building under scrutiny has suitable architectural features and unmolested parking.  Everyone at the virtual BOG meeting had their say, something offered to me as well but declined, though it was more a series of brief monologues than a series of exchanges.  A long way from the Talmudic tradition of Chavrusa or even my usual doctor-patient exchanges in the exam rooms or bedsides.  A vote was taken, accepted by all present.  I suspect it won't matter if Congregational Development in a precarious time is subordinate to anything else on a governance agenda.

So we really didn't have those final ten minutes.  I can say my household got a call from the individual who I would have assigned to himself.  He spoke to my wife, didn't have the saichel or the script to ask if I were home and invite my opinion.  But in AKSE fashion, memberships are counted by checks received and not by the totality of who resides in the household.  BOG can either create the culture or reinforce what is already there.  I would have expected the Rabbi of stable tenure to challenge some of this more than he has.  I do get a birthday call, "how ya doin', nice to talk to you." Never what do you think.  There was a landmark book written about thirty years ago by a linguist Deborah Tannen called You Just Don't Understand.  While the theme of the book was imprinted gender variations in speech, she also identified to broad patterns.  The male pattern was to convey information, the female pattern to use speech to generate connectedness. Since the BOG phone call I was not important enough to receive eluded me, I do not know if the content was one of telling people what the BOG put into their AKSE Trough for congregants to have their fill or whether it had more of a conversational, exchange agenda that creates connectedness as Prof. Tannen described it.  There is data, a quest that only comes naturally to a few of us.  Zoom gives clues.  I know how many people sign in to yizkor or attend a Rabbi class, as Zoom takes attendance.  It's not many, never as many as who populated that BOG session that I observed.  Harder to say if its a few people latching onto all offerings or different people having expressing different preferences.  Exploiting this information offers a lot more benefit to the congregation than  making projections of when the proceeds of the building sale fully deplete.  Might we need a Cruise Director to toss everyone into the pool and make sure they are all having a good time dancing to rhythm?  It is necessary to evaluate major initiatives with big financial implications.  But as many Rabbinical and a few Presidential messages made very clear, our future depends on the identification of people with the congregation, a bond that invited participants retain but observers or correspondents, no matter how skilled or experienced usually don't. No Board Meeting, and few committee meeting, should have anything other than enhancing connectedness as its central agenda item.

Talk about the building.  But conversation to create connectedness has long been neglected, more so as our Nominating Committees make the governance more inbred.  I saw quite a lot of recessive genes expressed amid the Board's proceedings.

High Holy Day Mode

This September has its events, though Covid-19 makes them different.  I've done summer travel, this time to St. Louis for my son's wedding, far from leisure respite summer travel, though I did make it to the Delaware Beaches twice.  OLLI started online, excellent first sessions each class.  However, OLLI has been a lot more than classes for me.  There is college and pro football on TV.  Cutouts of fans in the stands is kinda phony.  About once or twice a year, I like being in the stands.

Our constant may be the Holy Days.  Selichot by Zoom probably is not that different than Selichot live, as the spectator element overwhelms the participatory experience.  It may be more difficult for the college crowd which uses the midnight assembly early in the school year to renew acquaintances for the coming academic year.  Rosh Hashanah, though, is a participatory experience.  Shul may be a spectator sport not a lot different than football for many, but there are meals and greetings.  Cyberspace has been an improvement over the Postal Service for conveying good wishes over distance.  But there is no surrogate for kissing the Torah with tzitzis during its procession, or for those who only come to shul on the Holy Days, those few handshakes that will not reappear for another year if granted another year.  My congregation has established what I think is a poor surrogate for the pageant of shul on Rosh Hashanah, though to be fair they had to sift through what they though the community would find most meaningful and the halacha most essential.  My offshoot assembly will try to make things more of a personal experience, weather permitting and with safety limitations.  It's not as good as the real thing of sitting adjacent to somebody you've never met before, negotiating the crowd to get to the kiddush table at the end, or watching somebody else's kids run around, but there is much to be said for following along live in the machzor as the prescribed ritual unfolds.

Some parts of the Holy Day experience may be strengthened by the relative confinement.  I seem to be more devoted to making a special dinner, especially if the live services proceed and I can take some to my sister-in-law.  I've pondered and explored various menus, willing to be a little more adventuresome.  I find myself less focused on clothing or appearance, though I plan to wear my finest things with attentive grooming, at least on Rosh Hashanah.  No point paying for a manicure if you won't be shaking hands, though.

What I've not done, and probably should, is any study for the upcoming season.  There are all sorts of insights from yutorah.org and many other online sources that I've just not been motivated to pursue.  There will only be one brief dvar Torah at Rosh Hashanah each day.  Our Rabbi's I can watch or listen to at my convenience though I have not been a great devotee of his public presentations.  This year I should have more of an incentive to explore the Holy Day season but haven't.  Maybe check out some options on this.

Each Torah mandated Holy Day will arrive on time and conclude as specified.  The Covid-19 reality seems to make those days more personalized and less programmed.

Engaging in Cyberspace

When email first became available to me about 25 years ago, the possibilities spurred my imagination of finding old friends and keeping in touch more easily.  I still utilize it but the novelty has long since evaporated.  For the most part much of it tries to sell me something and goes unread.  Facebook now sends me Memory posts of 10 years ago.  It's been that long.  I reconnected with a fair number of people.  Friends never became close friends.  The regular posters worth engaging might number a dozen, not a lot different than email.  Twitter allows brief interaction with intellectual superstars and people with spheres of influence.  But most of it is toxic and not really interactive.

Coronavirus has introduced us to Zoom, the virtual meeting.  I've been to online meetings at work in the past.  They never had the spontaneity of an on-site meeting.  Zoom sessions haven't captured that either.  What they have done is provide access to any number of topics discussed by experts who can then field mostly anonymous questions selected by a moderator who already knows what the question is.  It enables me to attend sessions that would not otherwise be offered to me, which is an important start.  Conversation it isn't, but those chat rooms of the 1990's or Medscape or Sermo's rapid posting of comments had their limitations as well.  For all the technological advancement, there's still nothing like actually being there.