🎭 Theatre Writeups, 🛣️ Highway Updates, 📰 Musings on the News, and other 🗯️ Rants and Roadkill Along the Information Superhighway
Today was S&F’s first day at religious school at our new congregation. For all her fears, it went well. She made a new bucko, and we got t’ talk t’ a bunch o’ grown up buckos, perhaps startin’ some new buckoships too. I think this new congregation be goin’ t’ work.
[Why am I writing like this? Arrr. Today be Talk Like A Pirate day, bucko!]
Yes, 50. Perhaps a few more.
This morning’s services were good. They were led by Rabbi Sarah (last night was Rabbi Jim, the senior Rabbi). Both have good senses of humor. Jim’s came into play when they couldn’t get any match to work to light the candles (the air conditioning kept blowing them out). Sarah’s came into play when the cantor pointed to the wrong place for the Torah reading.
The sermon was good. It started out with Rabbi Sarah taking out a mirror, and adjusting her lipstick. She then used the metaphor to urge each of us to do our own “looking in the mirror” to see what we could change, and to take the time to look inside, not just the surface. She also made some interesting observations about the akida (binding of Isaac, for those less familiar): (1) that the first time the word “love” appears in the Torah, it is in the akida, and (2) although Abraham and Isaac start out loving, by the end they don’t even walk back together, and there is no further mention of them ever talking again. Thus, this single act moved them from love to estrangement. Interesting.
Oh yes, the 50 massed shofars. Evidently, they had a class and trained quite a few shofar blowers this year, many of them children. They had them positioned all around the sanctuary. That first Tekiah was quite startling, and they kept up the strength (although the adults should have held the Tekiah Gedolah a bit longer—it was under a minute). My wife found them “interesting”.
Although we had planned to go back to children’s services, the 30 minutes between the end of our service and the start of children’s service didn’t give us time to get lunch and get back. We’ll plan better next time (and it will be easier, as we don’t need to eat on YK, and can pack a lunch for S&F).
An update and some observations on our weekend (to date).
Come as You Are Shabbat
Our weekend started Friday evening with a Come as You Are Shabbat at Temple Beth Hillel. This started with munchies followed by a service in the round. As we’ve said before, we like the place. The service was led by Rabbi Sarah. During the service, the little todder was wandering all around, and the Rabbi just kept picking her up, putting her on her lap, and playing with her. Later, of course, we learned it was the Rabbi’s daughter. Just a lovely, informal evening. Afterwords, we picked up dinner from Zankou Chicken (which has the best garlic sauce in the world, yum).
Southern California Games Day
During the day Saturday, I went to the Southern California Games Day (gf_guruilla went to the Internet Graduation of a friend [yea Nina!] and shopped for buttons). Got to play a batch of games: 10 Days in Africa × 2; 10 Days in the USA × 2; Coloretto; High Society; Speed Circuit (Monte Carlo’s Monaco Expansion Track); Ticket to Ride; Ace of Aces; There’s A Moose In The House (after all, we were at the Moose lodge!); and Burn Rate. I also picked up a copy of Girl Genius: The Works. Lots of fun, marred only by an annoying either cluster or rebound headache.
110 In The Shade
gf_guruilla picked me up at the Moose Lodge, and we went off to the Pasadena Playhouse to see 110 In The Shade, a musical from the same folks that wrote The Fantastiks and I Do! I Do!. The playhouse did a wonderful job with the musical—great actors, great orchestra—and we thoroughly enjoyed ourself. They really should put on I Do! I Do!: it is simple to stage (two actors, one bed, that’s it) and delighful.
An Eeeery Sight
We drove home to a scary sight, bringing up memories of last year. We live in North Hills California, which really has one hill, and is all urban. However, it borders on communities that border on the foothills (such as Granada Hills and Sylmar). Evidently, around noon Saturday, a fire broke out near the I-5/Route 14 junction. We drove home to the sight of an orange glow cresting the top of the hills. This morning, the skies are filled with smoke (great for our allergies), and the sun is an angry orange (as it was in the play). I haven’t yet turned on the news to get a report of the fire, but I sure hope this isn’t a repeat of the Simi Fire last year, where we had to evacuate my wife’s folks as the fire neared Chatsworth, and we saw the glow as the fire approached Northridge over Porter Ranch.
To those that smoke: please, please, please never throw anything out of your car. We don’t need these damn fires!
And now it is off to do the TBT Newsletter, perhaps my last (or next to last) issue as editor.
We just got a call from the president of our new congregation, welcoming us to the temple, and asking us to let him know if anything is not to our satisfaction. We surprised him with our answer: Give us a year, and if we don’t like something, we’ll get involved and work to fix it.
Still, we have never had a congregational president call us and welcome us to the congregation. Not even a membership chair. Not in the congregation we just left, nor the 3-4 congregations before that. Color us impressed.
Tonight, we had a delightful dinner with Rabbi Sheryl Nosan-Blank and her husband, Ari. We met Sheryl (pre-Ari) three years ago when she joined Temple Beth Torah, and she has become a very close family friend. We were there for her wedding last year; in fact, she got married under our Chuppah (Wedding Canopy). [A note of clarification: Instead of handing down a wedding dress, we made our own chuppah, to which we add the names of every couple married under it. We have six so far, with only one ending in divorce. That’s a pretty good record.]
Rabbi Nosan-Blank, alas, is leaving our fair community to join Temple Or Rishon in Orangevale California, up Sacramento way. Those folks who read this, are Jewish, and who live up that way: you’re getting a gem. We encourage you to visit her congregation after she arrives in July, and let her know that Daniel and Karen sent you.
We will miss her very much (although we have one more Shabbat service with her to attend). After she moves, we won’t see her again until she lets us know when the baby naming is (she’s due in late October).
Today was a day of religious contrasts.
It started out with my having to attend a funeral for a long-time contributor to LA ACM. This funeral was held in a Catholic church, and it was my first time seeing a Catholic service and mass as an adult (I think I saw one once as a kid). I found myself looking at the beautiful building, but for someone non-Catholic, there was nothing in the service. They didn’t provide a key to the canned responses, so someone who wasn’t Catholic was completely lost. I guess if you’ve been brought up in it, it works; I found it difficult to understand.
This evening was another story. As folks may have guessed, we’re back to “shul shopping”. Tonight, we went to Temple Beth Hillel in North Hollywood. You would think an 800+ family congregation would be cold. Not this one. It was even warmer (i.e., friendlier, or haimish) than our current small congregation. The repartee between the Rabbi and Cantor was great (especially when the Rabbi had trouble finding the starting place in the Torah because someone had misrolled the scrolls). The people were extremely friendly, and were glad to have us there and were extremely accessible. This is a good place.
Tomorrow is a family day, as we go to Malibu for the Y-Princesses Spring Family Campout, when “Little Bunny” graduates from the Y Princesses program.
I grew up in a 100-200 family Reform congregation (Temple Israel of Westchester, later Temple Jerimiah). That’s the size I like. I also liked Temple Emet of Woodland Hills, which was 250 families, before it merged.
Today, it seems there is either the very small congregation, or the very big congregation. Right now, our current congregation is about 50-60 families. We looked at a potential new congregation, one of the smaller in the valley. 800. That’s an order of magnitude. It seems the 250 size family Reform congregation is gone in the San Fernando Valley.
At least we liked what we saw today.
