Shabbat, Teatron, and CTFWDG

[theyellowhobbit]

As you know, I was supposed to be leading women's kabbalat shabbat this week.

When I got to Hillel the board said the Sephardi minyan was meeting in the living room (where women's kab. shab. was supposed to be) even though they haven't met all year. And there was a mechitza. Turns out that they saw the mechitza and thought "oh, it must be the Sephardis." But no one was showing up and I began to wonder what was wrong.

SAS webmail has been on and off since Wednesday, and a lot of people in the OCP are in SAS, especially the females. So they must have not gotten the announcements, and after a while when we still only had like 3 people, we gave up, and now it's not going to happen until January. Thus I am convinced that I am the cause of SAS webmail's malfunctioning, since if anyone else had been leading women's kabbalat shabbat this wouldn't have happened.


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Friday night dinner was the senior girls' meal. I felt a little out of place, being one of the few non-OCP people. And most of them were the popular type of OCP as opposed to nerdy OCP. And they all were drinking.

In the middle of the meal, the fire alarm went off, so we were forced into the stairwell until they could verify whether or not there was a fire. So the senior girls decided to sing. And they were very loud. I say "they" because I stopped and decided to join the saner people. Especially since many non-Jews who had no clue what the heck was going on were also in the stairwell. So I thought that this was a big chillul Hashem (desecration of God's name) and thus refrained from the debauchery. And eventually went in and they decided to sing and dance in the hall, all drunk, and things were pretty intense, so I bentsched a bit earlier than everyone else and left.

Then I visited cynara_linnaea's meal, which was winding down. And things were comparatively sane there. So we chilled and then we left and I went back to my room, spent 2 hours reading in bed (and finished my book by Elizabeth Peters. I'm soooo addicted. Leave it to Rachel to get addicted to a series of archaeological murder mysteries written by an Egyptologist.) And then I went to sleep.


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This morning I led a singing psukei, which was quite singingy. Though not quite at JitW level, where I really could have gone all out and there would have been lots of energy... Oh well. Pretty good for CJC. And we finished pretty early, before OCP was done with the Hinuch shiur (and CJC was worried about being late to kiddush. Bah!). There was ice cream cake at kiddush since it was sponsored by levana_b's parents in honor of her upcoming birthday.

And there's a poster up on campus that advertizes an uncut movie, and then "Right Wing Brain Washing." So levana_b said that A.B.'s brain was on self-clean last year. Mine was on tumble-dry low my sophomore year.

Then I went to superducky1's meal, which was really nice (and also all-female.) We sang Tom Lehrer's "The Irish Ballad" and talked a lot about Monty Python.

And there was the following conversation:

Me:I was thinking of taking a mash shift next semester, but then I realized I didn't want it, since there's a knitting circle on Wednesday nights I want to go to.
superducky1:What are you, like 47?
N:I've seen a lot of younger people knitting. It's becoming a trend. I think it's cool.
superducky1:Well that's because you're 47.
Me: Your mom is 47!
superducky1:Actually, she's 53

And the room burst out laughing.


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After lunch I chilled in my room and read and tried to think of a d'var. 2 things about the parsha that bother me- 1. the commentators criticizing Dina for going out into the city of Shechem, and pretty much blaming the victim. It goes against my core beliefs. You don't blame the victim. It's just plain wrong. 2. The commentators trying to justify Simon and Levi's actions, when I think the outcome of their tribes overall in Jewish history shows a reprimand for them cause Simon got swallowed up by [I think Benjamin perhaps?] and the Levites had no land and lived in cities.

But I didn't want to be too radical, and I was looking at the commentaries, and the one that said that no one in Shechem came to Dina's aid. And I thought "This is a city. How is it that everyone knew what was going on and therefore deserved to die?" So I was thinking "what did Shechem look like?" And I wish I had been thinking of my d'var earlier in the week when I could have looked at site reports.

But a lot of cities in ancient Israel (and Moab as well) are made up of 4-room houses, that did not allow for much privacy, and the buildings were all very close together. So archaeologically, if one were to look at Shechem, assuming I'm right and it looked like the other cities I'm thinking of, there must have been people around who could have come to Dina's aid and didn't.

Not that I think that justified Simon and Levi's actions, but at least there's some context now.

Yay archaeology!


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Shabbat ended and I went home to check e-mail before the Teatron auditions. Ben had e-mailed me back from an e-mail I had sent on Thursday telling me I should e-mail Dr. Erickson about our independent study idea [which Ben really likes cause we'll be studying the Bronze Age and he's sick of Iron age which is what his dissertation is about.] And he asked for the progress report draft I told him I had. And there was an e-mail from the SAS server saying that my e-mail to Ben had never been delivered on Friday! So much for me making my self-set deadline.

So I e-mailed it to him again on his non-sas e-mail, and 5 minutes later got a response from him to my original e-mail thanking him for sending the draft. Oh the irony.

And then I wrote the thing for Dr. Erickson, and went off to auditions.

I brought ice cream. Yay, ice cream! I also brought my patiche, for Lesley (our awesome director) to see. She wants to use it as a model for the ice pick that will be in Trotsky's head.

I think my audition went well. I read against A.A. for Mrs. Trotsky. I really like the 5th variation, where Mrs. Trotsky is all evilly laughing. I hope I get casted for something, since there are a bunch of parts, I might stand a chance. I've never performed at Penn ever, and this is pretty much my last chance.

And there was this really cool guy, J. who is interested in teching. I guess if I don't get in I'll be teching with him, which will be fun.


And what better way to end a Saturday night than with Capture The Flag With Dart Guns?

It was amazing. We ran around the Engineering buildings shooting eachother. And in both the free-for all and the actual CTF my team won. Though in the latter we were accused of camping. I tried to be out doing more of the active capturingness.


So that's it. I have no clue what I'm doing tomorrow, though I'm sure I can make a huge to-do list

Comments

[masteraleph.livejournal.com]

For future reference (and it's just as well you didn't use it, since I did a year or two ago), R' S.R.Hirsch has a good commentary on the rape of Dena, where he basically disagrees with all of the Rishonim (and artscroll) on Dena.