Weekend in Michigan

I said I'd blog that weekend in Detroit, and here it is. Delayed a bit, because I spent a week in bed with a beastly cold. This was not Shir Tikvah's fault; I spent an extremely comfortable weekend being very well looked-after.

This was a weekend about meeting with the congregation - they get to meet me, I get to meet them. I think this is a nice thing to do, if you're acquiring a Torah. It's often said that the 613th mitzvah is to write a sefer Torah; the Talmud adds that one is supposed to write a Torah even if he had inherited one. It's not sufficient that the previous generation wrote the Torah and passed it on, in the rabbis' view. The Torah has to be experienced at first-hand by every Jew, and the requirement to write one's own Torah symbolises this, the transmission of the living Judaism from generation to generation. In our days and in theirs, most people didn't have the resources to write a whole Torah of their own, so people generally commission a scribe to write their Torah, and do the mitzvah in partnership and by proxy.

Can one fulfil the mitzvah by buying a Torah off-the-shelf? ask the rabbis. If you can commission someone to write you a Torah for your mitzvah, logically you should just be able to buy a new Torah and that would do, right? And they say, well, there's no actual reason you can't do it that way, it's technically valid, but it's just not nice. The symbolism is terrible - we don't go into a shop and buy Judaism ready-made. We acquire Judaism by interaction, and so too we write Torahs with interaction.

Shir Tikvah are doing their main interactions with their Torah via Neil, but I think it's nice that I get to interact with them as well. It's nice for me to have a sense of where this Torah I'm writing is going to end up. Now while I'm writing I can picture it in its new home.

And its new home is very nice. The congregation is very diverse; its website says it's friendly, caring, pink and purple, and I can truthfully say I certainly noticed that. Shir Tikvah also pays a great deal of attention to detail. This struck me again and again - detail, detail, detail. I won't give examples; if you're a Shir Tikvahnik you'll be able to work out what I mean, and if you're not, you'll just have to visit and see.

Parshat Miketz

Now, on the offchance that anyone's interested in hearing me wittering on about parshat Miktez, I'm putting it up here. Behind cuts.

In Parashat Miktez, we hear Paro's retelling of his dream to Yosef. Something interesting there is how what Paro says about his dream is different from how the Torah described the dream, earlier in the chapter. The Torah gives us a narrative; when Paro absorbs that narrative and communicates it to another human being, he factors it through the prism of his own experience.

( I.e. )

And he who offered his offering the first day was Nahshon the son of Amminadab, of the tribe of Judah; And his offering was one silver dish, the weight of it was a hundred and thirty shekels, one silver bowl of seventy shekels, after the shekel of the sanctuary; both of them were full of fine flour mixed with oil for a meal offering; One spoon of ten shekels of gold, full of incense; One young bull, one ram, one lamb of the first year, for a burnt offering; One kid of the goats for a sin offering; And for a sacrifice of peace offerings, two oxen, five rams, five male goats, five lambs of the first year; this was the offering of Nahshon the son of Amminadab.

The Torah repeats this identical paragraph twelve times. This gets – to be totally honest – rather boring, particularly if you're a scribe.( More on that... )

But Josephus, in his Antiquities of the Jews, gives us another perspective: Yosef is scared. Here's Josephus: ( ... )

I've also had a long-standing dislike of Hanukah. ( More about how Hanukah goes )

HORRIBLY WRONG ( and on to the finish... )

It's a journey. Isn't everything.

Judaism: take it home and share it around.

Six years ago at Limmud I took an introduction to Torah reading - seventy minutes every day for four days, how to leyn Torah. I took home the introduction and the skills and practised, and now I'm a pretty decent leyner and those skills I got at Limmud are part of how I earn a living. Two years ago I taught an introduction to calligraphy, seventy minutes a day for three days, and yesterday someone took the time to share with me how she took home the introduction and the skills and practised, and was able to incorporate Hebrew lettering into the glassworking she does by profession, so now the skills she got at Limmud are part of how she earns a living. So it goes on, along and round and up, from hand to hand, Jew to Jew, Limmud to Limmud. I think that's beautiful.

(no subject)

Calligraphy: two years ago I limited my Limmud class to twelve because I wanted to be sure of being able to work with everyone, and I had to turn away several people. This year I didn't limit the numbers, because I'm a better teacher now and figured I could give more than twelve people a good experience. I wasn't expecting thirty people, though. I had to start turning people away when I ran out of pens.