Chanting one's way through significant chunks of the Torah while teaching about it in half-a-dozen different contexts on off weeks has an awfully bracing impact on one's Pentateuchal literacy. But every now and then, I realize that I do not know nearly enough. A case in point: not long ago, I was sitting with my husband trying to explain the existence of Gashlycrumb-style versions of Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince -- for instance, here and here. For some reason, my usually well-read spouse had never heard of the Gashlycrumb Tinies, so I found myself explaining their premise and expanding on the extent to which the inventive-deaths acrostic format could be used to cover almost any Literary Work In Which Plenty of Characters Bite It. "A is for Achilles, struck in the heel," I muttered. "A is for Arthur -- no, that needs to start with something easier. Agrivain, maybe?" Then my eyes lit on the ever-present pile of Torah-reading books on the coffee table, and inspiration struck -- rained down from the heavens -- er, descended like fire -- well, you get the idea. "A is for Abihu, struck down by the Lord," I enunciated gleefully. "B is for Balaam... uh, something something sword. C is for -- oh, hang on --" ("You'll need to use the Hebrew alphabet," my husband said. "That won't scan," I replied, "but at least I won't have to find a pre-Persian X.")
What I Have Learned From This Exercise falls into two major categories: (a) there are a lot fewer names beginning with Tet than I would have expected, and (b) there are a lot of people who die in the Torah by not terribly well-specified methods. Nevertheless, in honor of the approach of Simchat Torah, I bring you the latest draft of my -- ahem -- erudition. Anyone who gets all the references without looking at the footnotes can consider themselves a certifiable certified Torah Geek. And anyone who considers the Bible a book full of charming children's stories... just think about how much of a cakewalk this would've been if I'd included Joshua and Judges. (Kids ought to love it, actually. But they'll just have to imagine the appropriate illustrations.)
Aleph for Abihu, struck down by the Lord
Bet is for Balaam, cut off by a sword
Gimel for Gomorrah, dissolving in fire
Dalet for Dathan, sucked into a mire
Drat! See comments --
Gimel for Gad, who died out in Goshen
Dalet for Dathan, buried in slow motion
Hay is for Haran, who merely died young
Vav is for Vofsi's son*, plagued by his tongue
Zayin for Zimri, impaled in mid-bout
Chet is for Chur, who's just written out
Tet is for Tovia**, dead on the last page
Yud is for Yitzchak, who reached his old age
Kof is for Kozbi, whose prince was at fault
Lamed is for Lot's wife, turned into salt
Mem is for Miriam, healed before dying
Nun is for Nadav, in strange fire frying
Samech is for Sichon, slain by martial might
Ayin for Og -- same deal, different fight
Pay is for Pharaoh, who got in some licks
Tzadi for Tzelophehad, who gathered some sticks***
Kuf is for Korach, devoured by earth
Reish is for Rachel, dying through birth
Shin is for Shelomit's son who was stoned;
Taf is for Talmai, slain in Hebron.****
* -- Nahbi the son of Vofsi was one of the ten spies who reported falsely on the land of Canaan and who, according to Numbers 14:37, died in the resultant plague God sent against them. There aren't a heck of a lot of "Vav" names out there, y'know.
** -- According to assorted medieval commentators with too much time on their hands, a clever reading of Exodus 2:2 yields "Tov" or "Tovia" as the original Hebrew name of Moses. As I noted above, there are even fewer "Tet" names than "Vav" names.
*** -- At least, the midrashic tradition links the nameless man who is put to death for gathering sticks on Shabbat (Numbers 15) with the deceased Tzelophehad whose daughters sued for their father's portion of land in Canaan (Numbers 27).
**** -- This is also cheating, as Talmai appears in Numbers but is not killed till Joshua and is not identified as killed until Judges. Unfortunately, "the elders of Taberah" doesn't fit the meter -- and "Hebron" looked like my best rhyme for "stoned" in any case.
Is it just me, or does it actually make a lot of sense to live outside in little temporary shelters if you are expecting a giant apocalyptic earthquake (v'khol khomah la-aretz tipol) at right around this season? And why have I taken decades to figure that out? The hot-and-cold-running apocalypticism of Sukkot amuses me deeply, especially when it tries to play nicely with the pagan harvest festival (cue lulav jokes) and the Temple-dedication festival (someday I will abandon a novel about Jonah's wife) and the sheer fun of building and decorating one's very own playhouse.
Our sukkah, for those who are curious, came from The Sukkah Project and is the insanely easy tubular steel model -- I put it together in about an hour, which would have been faster if my husband hadn't been out of town and I'd had someone eleven inches taller than my friend L. to hold the other ends of things up. It fulfills the halakhot and everything, plus it looks surprisingly good. We never got around to decorating, though -- I even dropped by the local five-and-dime to look for cheap harvest-themed stuff, but all they had was Halloweeny.* So I got an orange fuzzy headband with little floating bats to wear to class on Halloween, but no Sukkah decorations, and for probably the only time in my life I am "dwelling" in a tasteful minimalist space. Actually, it has adequate wireless high-speed Internet and seating; all it needs is a tatami mat and a banner spelling out "chag sameach" in katakana. And I have a lulav (cue even more lulav jokes) and an etrog and a basket of cute little pumpkins and gourds, one of which looks exactly like a Pac-Man ghost only green and whie, and oh my God someone stop me before I start going into craft stores --
-- sorry. Where was I? Oh, yes, Sukkot. Apocalypticism. (Craft stores and apocalypticism are pretty close together in my brain, anyway.) So we're building these little earthquake-safe tents, and we're thinking about inviting the Seven Shepherds of Israel into them (personally, I'd rather have Buffy, or at least Deborah, for an apocalyptic battle), and we're staring in complete disbelief at the "home rituals" section of Siddur Sim Shalom where the Sukkot section features a prayer that we all get to dwell in the messianic sukkah made from the carcass of the Leviathan** (what about the righteous of Israel with fish allergies, huh?), and I find it all extremely entertaining in that very special way that makes me want to bring the small TV and DVD player into the sukkah so I can watch Buffy S3.
But today is chilly and overcast with light rain -- not the least bit apocalyptic, plus we all know rain is Right Out as a method of ending the world -- and all my classes (not to mention the special events) are over for a whole 36 hours. I think I may have recovered enough from Yom Kippur to contemplate baking pumpkin bread, aka How To Use Up All That Leftover Honey, because baking is really the only reasonable response to this weather. Tonight we are going over to our friends' sukkah, and tomorrow morning I get to use my best Spooky Voice to read about earthquakes and Final Battles and pestilence and blood and torrential rain and hail and sulfur and birds of prey gorging themselves on carrion.**** (This, for the record, was my Bat Mitzvah portion. That probably explains a lot.)
So, in summary: Sukkot -- the perfect holiday for someone who likes her mythology M-rated. Er, chag sameach?
* -- This block is actually kind of into Halloween decorating; at one point, D. suggested we put the sukkah on the front lawn, add plastic bats and fake gravestones and Yaakov lanterns, and do recreational martyrology readings. Maybe next year....
** -- Not so much because of the Leviathan but because SSS usually avoids that sort of thing. Still, it offers a whole new reading of the Pinocchio story, doesn't it?
*** -- I was going to link to the JPS Haftarah translations that JTS offers, but I realized that they don't have the Haftarah for Shabbat Hol Hamoed Sukkot up, just the Torah portion. Gee, I wonder why not? (Ezekiel 38:18-39:16, if anyone's curious.)
I have a horrible, shocking confession to make -- no, not that kind of confession; that was yesterday* -- a confession to make about Yom Kippur services. I went to all of them, by the way, every last little bit except for the first three minutes of mincha (never fear, I made it in plenty of time to be warned against bestiality), and I fasted and wore non-leather shoes and stood all the way through Neilah and generally behaved like a Nice Jewish Person for twenty-five hours straight. However -- and this is the shocking part --
-- I do not like Kol Nidre.
The sad part is that I do like the Kol Nidre prayer (declaration?) itself, with its linguistic patchwork of Aramaic and Hebrew, its quirky legalism (on a symbolic level, absolving oneself of inadvertent vows for this year would make better sense), its historical resonances, and of course its lovely traditional melody. What I cannot stand is the entire service that goes by that name. For one thing, Kol Nidre proper is supposed to be said before the beginning of Yom Kippur, which if you go to a shul that pays attention to things like sundown (no, I don't know what I was thinking either) means that it steals time from your pre-fast meal and any candle-lighting you might have been contemplating. Then there's the way everyone in creation, including people who never go to shul any other time**, turns up, so that the service is typically conducted in a venue with all the warmth and hominess of a football stadium and you wind up sitting two-thirds of the way back. And because all those people turn up for the first time in a year, you get the rabbi reminding them to show up more often and sermonizing on his/her favorite sermon topic of the year (the one the regular shulgoers have already heard half a dozen times), with a side of What Kol Nidre Means (hint: some of us do remember this from year to year and would prefer a slightly higher-level discussion, or alternately a hall pass).
Then there's Kol Nidre. Ah, yes, the cantorial highlight of the -- well, see, I don't like cantorial highlights. I like to sing (or chant) with reasonable tune and kavvanah, not listen to a virtuosic performance -- and I'm a perfectly normal first alto, which means high-tenor cantors put me someplace deeply unpleasant in my vocal range for the occasional chorus we're allowed to join in on. Congregation Beth Boondoggle has the added delight of being almost completely tone-deaf to gender considerations on the bimah, so that for Kol Nidre we had a bimah stacked with male rabbis, male cantor, male former presidents holding sifrei Torah (the only female former president apparently declined to participate)***, and some women over to the side in their choir robes acting as backup chorus. Oy.
So, anyway, Kol Nidre goes on for about a million years, and eventually someone remembers that there are a few lines toward the end that we're supposed to participate in (only nobody except the choir has music, and I somehow always wind up sitting a few chairs away from The Yeshiva-Trained Gentleman Who Still Shouts Out All The Prayers Whenever He Feels Like It,**** so if there's a tune I have minimal chance of figuring it out), and finally it's over... and then we start Yom Kippur. Y'see, Kol Nidre also upstages the actual Yom Kippur evening service; if we weren't already counting the pages till "Morning Service," we sure are after sitting (standing) through that puppy. It's a lovely ritual; it just doesn't particularly go with the subsequent service. And after Kol Nidre, cantors tend to be feeling their oats a bit -- at least, that's my theory, because our guest cantor took so long to get through the first line of "Ashamnu" that night that I started calculating how many of the sins in each line I could commit before the chorus ended, and most of the subsequent prayers and piyyutim were similar in tooooooooooooone.
This is not a good way to start any holiday; it is an especially bad way to start Yom Kippur. Sure, we can't eat when we get home, but there are considerations other than food. If I can't usefully participate in the service (by, say, reciting prayers) I would prefer to be reading something interesting (the next day I remembered to bring a volume of Gemara along -- I learned this from watching the Yeshiva-Trained Gentleman) or quietly offering personal prayers ("Dear God, when You kept Moses up on the mountain for forty nights, did You realize you were establishing a precedent our cantor would try to top?"). Spending Erev Yom Kippur wondering whether the shul has established a new custom during which we remain in services for the full twenty-five hours is hazardous to my spiritual health, not to mention my physical health (I hear you can damage teeth with all that gritting) and the health of anyone foolish enough to get between me and the exit door on the way back out. I would, in retrospect, have done better to stay home with my machtzor and just be extra-especially careful about vows for the next year.
It was a huge relief to get back to services in the morning. For one thing, I got to attend the downstairs service, where the space is smaller, everything runs a good bit faster, and I know virtually everyone involved. For another -- and I realize that I have not given the correct impression in this post so far -- I actually love Yom Kippur services. I am just a bit of a liturgy geek (OK, you can all stop laughing now) and YK is amazing and fascinating and challenging and exhausting and infinitely nifty. There are inclusions, which change with time of day. There are bizarre Torah readings. There are Haftarah readings which appear to be designed expressly to undercut the Torah readings. There are piyyutim up the wazoo. There is the fun of knowing that for one whole day you can kick off your shoes in shul and actually feel holy instead of guilty.***** There is the strange giddiness of fasting. There is the fascination of seeing how various people interpret appropriate fasting-wear (I want a kittel so I don't have to think about it myself). There are sermons, but that's why I bring extra reading and wish I had a pillow to support my husband's head. In short, Yom Kippur is one of my favorite holidays.
I just want to skip Kol Nidre. Or at the very least I want to categorize it as seasonally-appropriate self-affliction.
* -- And if I never have to confess to "xenophobia" again I will die a happy woman. Look, I realize that the original Hebrew (ashamnu, bagadnu) is an acrostic, and I realize that both Conservative and Reform machtzorim can't resist offering an English equivalent for the umpty-gazillionth rep of said acrostic, but... find a new "x," guys, please! (Xanthic. Xeric. Xylophilic. Oooh, I know -- xenolalic!)
** -- If you are only going to attend one synagogue service a year, might I suggest Simchat Torah? Dancing, singing, a satisfying sense of moving through a cycle, and two Torah portions for the price of one. Also, in many shuls they do big group aliyot so everyone gets one; that's not going to happen at Kol Nidre, mostly because it's not a Torah service.
*** -- I realize that for some people there might be an issue of forming a valid Beit Din up there, but for that (in the most rigid sense) you only need three men. We had, like, eight. Also, hello, it's an egalitarian Conservative congregation.
**** -- Yes, we have these in Conservative shuls. In Reform shuls, you just get the annoying Gentleman Or Lady With The Really Nice Designer Tallis Set Who Insists On Full-Body Davening Right In Front Of You.
***** -- Of course, you get to feel guilty about basically everything else, so... hmmmm.
I have a Simchat Torah post in mind. I have a Sukkot post in mind. But all I can think to say about Yom Kippur this year is that I spent yesterday afternoon and evening cooking for the break-fast, and we will be having good food and awesome desserts. Also, the apple sorbet I made for Rosh Hashanah was very nice, thank you for asking, and I think I have worked out the necessary formula for accurate baking in the oven in the new house -- but I still want to replace it -- and... hmmm, I'm really into this kitchen thing, am I not?
Being fixated on food is probably the ideal spiritual state in which to embark on a twenty-five-hour fast -- although at this point the idea of not cooking for a day sounds pretty good -- but I suppose some years are like that. Oddly enough, it's not that I have bushels of free time in which to cook: I'm teaching five days out of seven (not counting the bit where I'm giving a d'var on Saturday), D. is equally overworked from various deadlines, and what with the holidays falling in midweek, we are just trying to get through the end of the month with our sanity intact.*
So why am I cooking? Well, the obvious answer is that we need food for both biological and ritual purposes, that I am enjoying inviting people to our new house, and that this our first set of holidays as a married couple (face it, nobody does special cooking for Tisha b'Av). But it's also an excellent distraction from the vague sense that I don't quite know what I'm doing for a living next year (I know! brownies!) or that I wish my old house would sell already (honey cake!) or that I have half a dozen slightly overdue projects on my plate (apple-walnut bread) or that I just had one of those classes where the students stared uncomprehendingly at me the whole time and I'm pretty sure I was speaking standard English (did I mention the sorbet came out great?). Baked goods do more or less what I tell them to do, they provide near-immediate gratification and positive reinforcement, and they smell good. Possibly we do not, after all, need a pet.
Or possibly I really need to take a day off. This year I am having more trouble than usual forgiving myself for being imperfect. I am having more trouble than usual coping with goals left unmet. I am getting really, really upset when my honey cake inexplicably decides to fall a little in the middle, even when it tastes just fine (I blame the oven for that one). And so the fast couldn't come at a better time.** If I have offended anyone, or failed to respond adequately to anyone, I hope you will forgive me. And if any of you are fasting (Yom Kippur, Ramadan, whatever***), I wish you an easy fast and a really tasty break-fast. With, of course, good desserts although not quite as good as mine and good company. G'mar tov!
* -- What sanity we had in the first place, at any rate. For future reference, note to self: when overworked, the phrase "I could floor gabbai if you need me" should under no circumstances fall from your mouth.
** -- Except for the part where I had to fix dinner for tonight last night (along with the break-fast food) because the holidays are late and Kol Nidre starts frighteningly early. Bleah. Stupid sundown. Early evening services are not my thing, and early evening services where (by definition) you can't go back home and eat supper are definitely not my thing.
*** -- Is anyone else hoping that tomorrow's Google logo features a growling stomach or a person impatiently waiting for the sun to set or something? No? Just me?
This year, Elul ran late. Where and when I grew up (south, just before the Endless Adamantine Reign of A/C descended upon the earth), Elul was the graceful end of summer: the days and nights were no cooler (or not much) than before, but we had all grown accustomed to the heat. In that time and place, Rosh Hashanah was -- still is, I suspect -- the first hope of autumnal weather, the first time you even think about sweaters, even if odds are you'll only bring one to ward off the arctic air-conditioning at the service. This Jewish calendar year, however -- 5765* -- is a leap year, and a late leap year (relative to the Gregorian calendar) at that. And so it is still Elul, but the mornings are just slightly cool, and I am beginning to think it will eventually be a good time to make soup.
Last Elul I had a plan for Improving My Spiritual Life: wearing tefillin (which I kind of started) and learning the grammar of rabbinic Hebrew (which, not so much) This Elul I am, as usual, running late. I wore my tefillin to morning services a good handful of times (all the times I made it to morning services, you understand) and even led more of the service than I could've imagined last year, but I have no great new ritual accomplishments to report this month. And I know exactly what ate my time instead: we bought a house, and packed and mnoved and unpacked and put up mezuzot and arranged tchotchkes and otherwise tried to create something like a home -- someplace where one could, in fact, make soup without opening half a dozen boxes. Occasionally I think that might count as an accomplishment. Other times I want to scream, ignore the house, and order takeout continuously for a week, not necessarily in that order.
Today, luckily, is one of the former occasions -- luckily, because I haven't got enough time for the requisite rant against Balabusta Syndrome, and also because takeout won't do for Rosh Hashanah. Instead, I have to run give a test, then go home and put together the final essentials for the holidays: round challah and honey cake and apple sorbet.** But first I want to wish a happy New Year to all my readers. May it be a sweet one. With plenty of opportunities for soup.
* -- If you have trouble remembering the Jewish year, as I do, getting married and ordering half-a-dozen things emblazoned with said year is a great memory aid.
** -- My mother-in-law is making the soup.