Weekend Update

[theyellowhobbit]

Since I'm coming out of a 3-day weekend and at the moment there's not much work I can do, I figured I should update.

On Friday night I went to SCM services, and gave the d'var Torah. I haven't done one of these in almost a year and I didn't get a chance to work on it during the week, so I wrote it on Friday afternoon/on the bus ride to campus right before Shabbat started.

The parsha was tetzaveh, which is about the priestly garments and then about the priest in regards to impurity, etc. So there wasn't much to talk about. I decided to talk about spinning tzitzit¹ (since these are part of a ritual garment) despite the fact that most people in the congregation did not wear tzitzit. In particular I talked about how I now have the opportunity to do it, and it's a really amazing and unique experience, and that people should find their talents and use them to serve God. It was also a lot shorter than 10 minutes. The gabbaim liked the speech since I mentioned that people should lead services or give divrei torah, and a few other people came up to me afterwards and said they really liked it. I responded by showing them my notes, which were about 5 lines long, and I think consisted of:

Parsha Tetzaveh
Priestly garments-->Shiny
Not so relevant to today
Tzitzit
Spinning
A bit about the halacha
Something relevant to today

Yet they thought it was heartfelt and sincere, which I suppose it was. I could have gotten into all sorts of things like my own interactions with Orthodox Judaism and how it sucks to not be able to use your skills for a constructive purpose. But I'm happy with what I said, in its simplicity and brevity.


After services was dinner, and then there was gaming. In between was an hour in which I practiced my haftarah for Saturday morning.
Gaming was called for Lowell Grille, though there were people who had the room reserved until 9, and when I got there at 9 they seemed in no rush to leave. So eventually kat_ravensong and brokenwndw came along and we went to Claverly. It is a good thing I got there early, because otherwise there would have been no way for me to know we had moved there, especially since this is not a normal gaming location.

I played some set while waiting for more people to show. Then I got involved in a game of normal epic duels (as opposed to HRSFA epic duels) and I was on the light side with Luke and Leia, and we won. And I was useful.

I also got to play guillotine, and won that as well. And there was some more set. There was a game of settlers that started during the epic duels and I did not get to play this, and there was no second game because gaming ended ridiculously early. I was a bit sad about this.

I stayed over on inteluser's futon, and we got up at 8 in order to see pastwatcher sing at morning services (which started at 8:45, and lasted 15 minutes). pastwatcher and the person she duetted with were very good. However, I felt very uncomfortable because a) it was in a church and b)it was Shabbat morning. Davening wasn't until 9:30, but still, it seemed a bit sacrilegious for me as a religious Jew to be there. However, I was there as a friend and as a student of religions, so I suppose I can justify it that way. And I think Shabbat was the bigger issue.

After that was breakfast, and I decided I could be late to davening since I was only reading haftarah and wasn't needed for a while. We ate in Annenburg, which is the big building that is cathedral-y and has stained-glass windows and tourists try to come in and get kicked out. So getting to eat there was an experience. Soooo pretty!

Services were not so eventful other than the fact that I happened to have the hardest hafatarah ever trop-wise. There were 4 pazers in a row, plus another one a bit later. Normally pazer is an obscure symbol that rarely comes up, and as such I normally will fake knowing how to chant it, but in this situation that was not an option. So I learned pazer. And made my pazer a bit embellished, which is reasonable considering that I had 4 of them in a row!!!!

Lunch was at my friend JSM's house, co-hosted by MZ. We have this monthly meal making group thingy which is shiny. It was about a 20 minute walk from Hillel to JSM's place, so I went via memorial drive so I could see all the prettiness of it being on the water and having colonial Harvard buildings of awesome.

Lunch itself was small and nice, and there was randomly there ML, a fellow div school student who I normally never see except randomly in the library. So we talked about classes and stuff. Basically we will never intersect because he's interested in theology and I am interested in practice. Oh well.

Saturday night was milk and cookies, preceded by round singing. I wanted to teach people the Yismechu round (it's the slow one in minor that is really pretty.) However, I know all my Jew music through learning it aurally, whereas round-singing HRSFen need sheet music. I don't have sheet music for Jew music. So I decided that in the 2 hours between the end of Shabbat I would attempt to transcribe it. We had a room with pianos, which helped, but I generally suck at notating rhythm. However, with help from inteluser and hKC with their recorder and piano-playing awesomeness, I was able to correctly write it. So now there exists sheet music, though I lacked staff paper so I had to rely on making straight lines which were not so parallel. However, I gave J (another round-singer) a copy and he will eventually type it up. Yay!

So we sang rounds. Lots of rounds. And they were made of awesome. And I realized how much I miss actual singing with music and correct vocal technique and my head voice and whatnot. So I may try out for a choir next year, if I can regain my former singing abilities (which will be hard without regular practice/a choir to be in. It's a catch-22).

Then there was milk and cookies. I lacked a story, so I read some of the limericks from Randall Munroe's Limerick DB. Eventually it was deemed necessary to take the internet away from me. I had warned them that these were mostly inappropriate!

I also told a story from a book pastwatcher brought, and it was a sweet story, so I might have redeemed myself. Maybe.

Then I went home and played Chrono trigger when I really should have went to bed.

Sunday was gaming at LS and DS's house. I got a bit lost on the way, but got there eventually. There were many games played, including Pit (which I suck at but managed to win a round. Finally) and Settlers (which I won because a) brokenwndw was not present and b) I was white, which is what brokenwndw is. Actually, all of my recent wins have been with white. White apparently is made of win.

Then I went back to campus for HRSFA elections (preceded by ice cream with silkspinner which was quite necessary). These were long and long and long and I finished my llama hat and spun a lot of silk for crewgrrl. And they went on and on. I cannot discuss anything about them other than the fact that they happened and were long, but they are thankfully over. We went to Uno's to rejoice afterwards, and I had a glass of water before I ran to catch the 12:45 bus home.

When I got home last night, I thought to myself "I can sleep in until 8:30! Yay! Then I checked my e-mail and was reminded there was minyan and I was leading shacharit because it was the day before my birthday and I wanted to lead it. So I woke up at 7:30 instead and went to minyan. I was early and there were no chairs. We ended up not getting 10 people which was sad, though we finished early which was less sad. Then there was breakfast.

Then there was the HRSFA outing into Brookline for Rachel's birthday so she could actually eat real food at a kosher restaurant. We went to Ta'am China and it was shiny. Then we went home.


Since I was already on campus, I hung out with hKC all afternoon discussing the upcoming D&D campaign he's DMing. I asked him a gazillion questions and he gave me a gazillion answers. I've never been in a D&D campaign before, so I wanted to know things like what stats would be more necessary for me to have with my class, what type of spells should I get, etc. This game is unique in that no one is allowed to tell each other their alignment, and the world hKC created is really cool and he added 2 races and stuff. He also uses random Hebrew when he needs a fancy name for something. For example, the underground Dwarf city is called "Yoradnu" (we will go down) and the elf city is "Ets" (tree). He wasn't sure whether or not I'd mind the "butchery of Hebrew" (his phrase, not mine) but he's using the Hebrew well and correctly so I am a fan of the Hebrew.

His world is also really cool, and I'm looking forward to playing in it.

However, D&D requires lots of numbers and stuff for setting up the initial character sheet, and there are a bunch of confusing things that I didn't get to fill out and need further help with. Since the PCs aren't allowed to know each other's details, I can only ask hKC about this. I can say that I am a priestess and get magical powers of divine favor. I also am a half-elf, and wield a crossbow that shoots knitting needles (presumably point DPNs). However, I am generally not good at hitting things and killing them, and am much better at healing and casting spells to blind enemies and stuff.

Also, D&D has 2 parties: one that meets on Saturdays and one that meets on Sundays. I am in the Sunday party. At some point the 2 parties will interact, but we are running separate campaigns. So this means there's even more secrecy involved. And I can't write about my character's cool back-story and stuff, unless I make an LJ filter for people who are interested in hearing about this sort of thing and are not HRSFen nor will interact with any HRSFen.

Then there was cool movies, and since I was already there I stayed. We watched Pan's Labyrinth, which I've seen before but is a good movie. This meant that I could knit/read and not worry about subtitles since I knew what people were saying (it's in Spanish. I used to know Spanish. Now I do not.)

And then I came home and apparently spent over an hour writing this post. I probably should go to bed soon before I write a birthday rant, which will come later and will be filtered and stuff.

¹Tzitzit are these fringes that go on four-cornered garments. Jewish law requires that when you have a 4-cornered garment >= a certain size with the corners having 90 degree angles, then you need to put these fringes on them. However, this has been traditionally interpreted as something that was only obligatory for men. Technically, women can wear tzitzit, but among Orthodox Jews this is seen as Not Done, and is a Dangerous Feminist Practice. Etc.
Anyways, the thread used to make these tzitzit has to be spun l'shem mitzvah, that is, with the express purpose of it becoming tzitzit thread. I.E. you can't just go to a store, buy thread, and turn it into tzitzit.
There was a debate as to whether or not women could spin tzitzit thread for men since they are not obligated to wear tzitzit. Most sources (including the Shulchan Aruch and the Taz) say they can, and that the problem would be with them tying the tzitzit, which is a completely different act. I suspect the real reason they allowed this was because spinning was women's work, and God forbid a man do women's work! That, or spinning requires a lot of skill and practice and women had this skill and men didn't.
In modern times, all tzitzit thread that you can buy in a store is made out of wool. So if you have a wool allergy, you're in trouble. Unless you happen to know someone who spins, and who can spin thread with the intention of it becoming tzitzit thread.
In this case, the question of whether or not I am allowed to spin it is moot since I'm spinning it for another woman. But I was curious, which is why I looked up the rules.

Comments

[wilperegrine.livejournal.com]

I was reflecting this Saturday on how unbelievably complex the haftarah was. I am impressed.

[bz-mahrabu.livejournal.com]

This is a rare haftarah, only read in leap years, since if this weren't a leap year, then this past Shabbat would have been Shabbat Zachor. (Happy Shushan Purim Katan!)