So my Thanksgiving vacation was lovely, except for the parts where (a) it combined the scheduling problems of big-city travel with the scheduling problems of family vacations* and (b) I have returned with an Authentic New York Cold. But apart from an idle desire to clear my sinuses with an ice pick and an energy level slightly below that of Jell-O, I'm fine. Really.

Being sick has even given me ample time to catch up on my Nethack mastery light reading, since anything more demanding exhausts me instantly. It turned out that my Winter 2005 copy of Reform Judaism was in the mail we had held over Thanksgiving, so I flipped it open, and -- I have to ask: does anyone except me read denominational magazines? I mean, I am still technically a member of Temple Boondoggle so I get the Reform one, and we are both members of Congregation Beth Boondoggle so we get the Conservative one, but I find them fascinatingly out of touch on many levels. D. and I still giggle about the article in the Conservative magazine which insisted that all children should be learning Rashi script by third grade and Torah trupp by, I think, fourth;** we have also been struck by a certain shrillness in both the Reform and Conservative magazines of late reminding their readers that these movements attached to Israel, Oh Yes We Are, For Real, And Look How Many Of Us Are Making Aliyah! (Note to magazines: "data" is not the plural of "anecdote.") And then there are all those ads for synagogue insurance, which suggests that the projected readers of these periodicals are really synagogue professionals, not average Jews.

But the star of this post is Reform Judaism, which spends so much time talking about social justice and tikkun olam that I think the editors must have a random-justice-related-platitude generator -- along the same lines as They Fight Crime, only with prophets. This is unfortunate, because I am fond of both concepts -- especially the wacky Lurianic cosmogony -- but I cannot quite stamp out the temptation to hunt through the magazine and count up the number of times those two phrases are used versus the number of times "God" or "commandment(s)" pop up. Fortunately for all of us, that would be too much like grading I am too sick to do anything requiring actual sustained thought.

There was not much sustained thought involved in reading the "Letters to the Editor," though, and that was where I came to grief. You see, back in the summer issue, Reform Judaism published a brief article which -- mirabile dictu! -- I agreed with entirely. It was called "Hillelophobia", and for those of you not ready to read it online, I will simply say that it pointed to the importance of introducing Reform Jewish children and adolescents to the prayers, rituals, and customs of other branches of Judaism so that Reform Jews can be more comfortable in transdenominational Jewish settings. It so happens that I had more or less the exact experience Leonard Saxe writes about: I showed up at my college's Jewish services ready to enjoy meeting other Jews (hey, that was an Event where I come from!) and in short order found myself embarrassed at my inability to follow prayers (ones I could've sworn I known), ascertain customs (now I know all the hefsek stuff, but if anyone asks me why nobody is talking after hand-washing, I will answer them regardless), and decode the strange practices of a bunch of mostly-Conservative Jews from so far north that they thought intermarriage was novel.

Of course, I grew up to be an extremely stroppy Jewish educator, but that's probably not the best way to get there. It's not just me, either. I heard a story the other day about a local Reform shul which took its Confirmation class on a trip to a far-off Hasidic community; while there, the rabbi stepped away for a few moments to arrange some logistics and returned to find that her students had been cornered by an extremely rude Hasid who had favored them with the opinion that they were not real Jews and traumatized them pretty thoroughly into the bargain. (This probably had less to do with the Hasid's view on Reform Judaism and more to do with the fact that several of the students were observably Asian, but I think patrilineal descent got dragged in there somewhere too.) I was aghast when I heard this story, not so much because there are rude and bigoted Jews out there as because the students were -- everyone tells me -- the students were shocked. Um. You mean these kids made it to tenth grade without anyone explaining that, hey, the entire Jewish world isn't as tolerant and inclusive as your congregation? That they are real Jews by the Reform Movement's standards, but that some Conservative and Orthodox Jews might be concerned about their legal status? That if they grow up and want to marry a non-Reform Jew, or want to worship in a non-Reform congregation, these issues just might come up and they should think about how they want to respond?

Oh, and it turns out (because I interrogated a couple of the people responsible for their curriculum) that this was the students' first formal taste of non-Reform Judaism. Just because they live in a community with synagogues of every major and most minor Jewish movements (including some extremely friendly Hasids***) didn't mean that they had, you know, been encouraged to visit these places, or learn about their customs. Yup, if there's anything that signals a fine Jewish education, it's the total lack of awareness about other branches of Judaism, except possibly for the ones with the really cool clothes. (Sadly, this is not a problem confined to the Reform Movement by any means, but I suspect that's another post.) So, in conclusion, it's safe to say I was on board with the "Hillelophobia" author.

And then we come to the current RJ issue, and to letters in response to "Hillelophobia." The first, from a Hillel director, pointed out that Hillels ought to be careful to introduce every prayer and provide transliteration -- which is a great idea unless you have volunteer students leading the prayers from whatever siddurs are available as they do every Hillel I've been in, but still, yeah, definitely. The second letter, however, took the cake -- and probably ate it on Yom Kippur. "Did I read this right?" it opens. "Before I instruct [my children] in the ins and outs of archaic rituals I don't subscribe to," it continues, "I think I ought to teach them to be autonomous, self-respecting young men and women." (Sure, but let's pause to contemplate the amusement value of "autonomous" Jews. Still with me? Good.) "My children don't need to learn how to pluck a kosher chicken" (well, no, you don't do a lot of that at Hillel), "auction off their first born" (ditto, but I think there's some confusion about how pidyon ha-ben actually works here, since the price hasn't risen for millennia), "or recite the proper prayer pleading to God for rain. They need to learn how to be kind, faithful, and ethical." (The Deuteronomic and rabbinic traditions linking faithful and ethical behavior with rainfall seem to have been rather lost here -- and yeah, that is the paragraph of the Shema that the Reform Movement cut out altogether.) "They need to learn how to make the world a better place for having been here." (Certainly. I wasn't aware that making the world a better place and praying for rain were mutually exclusive, or that drought had ceased to be a problem across the world, for that matter.)

It gets better, as the letter urges "progressive Jew[s]" not to "turn ever more inward" (bwuh?) but to "reach out and be a beacon of hope, a light unto the nations." (Just not, apparently, other Jews. Glad we straightened that out.) The punchline, however, is in the signature. The writer signs himself as both a Ph.D (I can only hope it's in something unrelated to Judaism) and -- wait for it -- a fifth-year rabbinical student at HUC. Oy. Hey, speaking of those well-lighted nations, is anyone familiar with the phrase "shanda fur di goyim" -- Jewish embarrassment at a fellow Jew doing something Really Stupid in front of non-Jews? Well, I have full-on shanda fur di... maskilim? Reformerin? No, actually, "Yuden" covers it pretty well. This guy is going to be a rabbi next year, in a movement I grew up in, and I am deeply, deeply embarrassed on behalf of pretty much the entire Jewish world.

I actually wondered whether or not to post this, because it makes the Reform Movement look bad, even if it's only this one guy -- after all, it's one guy they apparently admitted to rabbinical school -- and I am still fond of and proud of many of the things Reform Judaism has done. Reform Judaism is like family to me; I can insult it, but I bristle when non-Reform Jews do so. Come to think of it, I still believe that I am a sort of (halakhically conscious, ritually aware) Reform Jew, although the handful of Reform services I've been to over the past year have been pretty jarringly out of line with my preferences (does anyone else want the prayer leader to stop talking and get on with the prayer?), and one or two more letters like that one will inspire me to rethink this position pronto. But Reform Judaism has accomplished so much good, has done so many things that made me proud to be Reform, has been so vital a part of American Jewish life and of my own Jewish life... that I can't keep this to myself, but I also can't enjoy it too much.**** What it comes down to is this: I would like to see Jews learn more about each other; I would like to us them appreciate each other more; I would like to see us break down the barriers of prejudice and simple ignorance that we have erected between ourselves.

I think it might have something to do with tikkun olam.

* -- Yes, that means I didn't get to enough bookstores. I did, however, pick up translations of both Shaare Teshuvah and the Kitzur Shulchan Aruch. I had some idea about spiritual improvement, I suppose, but reading certain parts of these classics out loud to my husband had the unfortunate effect of inspiring us to think up the single action sequence with maximum potential for divine punishment, although in fairness we will probably never put it into action (lacking several necessary animals elements).
** -- Not that any of that is a bad idea; just that implementing such a program outside a highly selective day-school environment is about as likely as instant peace in the Middle East.
*** -- Although the notion of making Hasidism (of whatever stripe) one's Reform Jewish ideal is... a little skewed. But, then again, my Confirmation trip involved a ten-hour bus ride to Cincinnati. Yeah, I know. Arguments with Hasids would've been a lot more exciting.
**** -- OK, I enjoyed skewering that letter, but I left the writer's name off in an effort not to get too deeply into lashon hara. That counts, right?

Over the past several years, I have used the mighty power of the Internet to locate entertaining-to-visit shuls in all sorts of places across Europe and North America. Perhaps this is because I do not customarily vacation in places with vast quantities of potentially visitable synagogues.* Where this system breaks down completely is in dealing with ginormous Jewish communities, especially the ones with a wide enough spectrum of observance that I can't simply triage by "likely to let me sing out loud and sit close enough to the bimah that I can see what's going on." New York City, for instance. If anyone has a comprehensive listing of NYC-area synagogues and minyanim (yes, yes, I know) that lists details beyond movement affiliation, I would love a URL -- people online keep saying "I go to [mysterious initials here] in [mysterious Five Boroughs neighborhood designation]" and I keep mentally going "Huh? What? So?."

More to the point, I have a couple of questions for my New York-based readers. Given that we will be schlepping around NYC the Shabbat after Thanksgiving, when Kehilat Hadar (my first choice) will apparently not be meeting, where does a girl go to daven for something mostly traditional (new melodies are fine; skipping the Aleinu not so much), preferably egalitarian (at a minimum I need mixed seating), and most definitely participatory (listening to cantor-with-choir deals bore me) in... oh, let's narrow it down to either Manhattan or Riverdale? And as long as I am planning a spot of mild Jewish tourism, does anyone know where in those same locations one could reasonably purchase (a) nifty used Jewish books and/or (b) kosher beef (or turkey, or buffalo, if they make it) jerky? (Bonus points for operating hours past Friday noon. I don't know exactly what we're doing for dinner Friday night -- I expect it involves my husband's family somehow -- but I am Not Responsible, and therefore I am Going Shopping.)

Meanwhile, I have a ton of grading, two more class meetings, and enough miscellaneous items on my to-do list to choke a small brontosaurus before I can skip town -- which of course explains why I am idly Googling my way through Jewish New York. Procrastination Research is a wonderful thing, nu? Except that possibly I am Responsible for dinner tonight....

* -- Earlier today, I dumbfounded a student by being able to describe the available synagogues in eastern North Carolina and the South Side of Chicago sequentially and off the top of my head. It so happens that in both cases there's a fairly limited sample size, provided you're east of the Triangle and south of the Loop.

This morning I dressed for lunch. That is, I don't have any classes today, but I do I have a lunch meeting of some importance in my ongoing efforts to give my career a twist, and we are eating at one of Boondoggle's few kosher lunch joints -- one in a fairly frum community. For reasons having to do with both my company and the surroundings, I wanted to blend in with just the right mixture of casual and professional. So I wore a long skirt over tights instead of slacks (it's chilly today, so I'd really prefer slacks), layered a cardigan over my short-sleeved top instead of the dressy jacket I would normally wear with a skirt (to shul, say), and wandered into my husband's home office to kiss him on the head and ask him if I looked sufficiently -- well, slightly to the right of what I am, I suppose.

The problem, I realized, is that there is no good word for what I am trying to convey. "Frum" isn't quite it -- as a child, based on context, I assumed that it was related to "frumpy," but I gather that it can actually refer to "anyone who believes in the Torah and is observant of its laws," in which case it rather depends on what you mean by "believes in," "observant," and "laws." I know Orthodox, Conservative, and Reform Jews who would assent to that definition of "frum." Now, by my own definition I am not frum (I will never, ever wear sneakers with a skirt), but by some definitions I am observant; by others I am not. I observe all that yummy seafood going by -- no, seriously, I keep some of the Torah laws in ways that would make sense across the Jewish community, I keep others in ways that parts of the community would accept and other parts reject; a few I fail to keep and know that I am doing so. Depending on when and how they meet me, various people around Boondoggle have assumed that I grew up Reform, Conservative, Orthodox, or not at all Jewish (one can only drop "Rosh Hashanah" and "my bat mitzvah" into so many coversations). It's no wonder I pay attention to my outfit: that's a lot easier than figuring out who will be impressed, who will be appalled, and who will be simply baffled by my ability to daven musaf.

The thing is, I am reluctant to identify people to the right of me as "observant" when I might actively disagree with some of what they see as observing Torah and I see as distorting it -- and when there are plenty of people to the left of me who are also consciously and carefully observant in their own ways, with which I might also disagree. The same problem pops up with other words. Even if there weren't U.S. Jewish movements by those names, some of which live up to their names better than others, not everyone Jewishly to the right of me is more "orthodox," "conservative," or "traditional" than me IMO. In some areas, I am following one line of tradition and they another; in other areas, I feel that I am actually following an older and/or more authentic tradition. I do not particularly care for the implicit rhetorical assumption that they are really "right" in matters of belief or practice, and I am simply misguided; however, I am equally reluctant to characterize them as misguided in most cases (so, y'know, "scary nutcases" is Right Out).

So I have a question for the blogosphere -- especially, but not exclusively, its Jewish sector: what do you call Those People Religiously To The Right Of You? And while we're at it, how about Those People Religiously To The Left Of You? (There are certainly Jews out there who don't consider me Jewish; I occasionally regret that I am so seldom able to return that favor.) Me, I have to bop off to lunch and try to decide whether or not to wash my hands publicly.

(Note To The People Who Get To This Blog By Googling Non-Family-Friendly Search Strings: this post is not what you want. Our youth lounge has sofas, but the door doesn't lock. We now return you to the real post.)

Does anyone else play Bimah Bingo? You know, the game -- well, not so much a game as an inadvertent mindset -- where you count or categorize the numbers of certain people or things on the bimah or simply on people sitting in front of you?* When I was a kid during High Holy Days services, sitting too far back to get at the chumashim (which were what I usually read to entertain myself), I counted kippah colors and styles: black, white, metallic, lace, embroidered. When I moved around frequently and consequently did a lot of inadvertent shul-hopping to random Hillels and places on either side of the Reform/Conservative divide, I'd count tallitot: big, little white/cream, little colored, and so forth -- it tells you a lot about the congregation. When I attend the Local Women's Orthodox Prayer Group, I count a bewildering variety of headwear options; when I attend Temple Boondoggle, I count a bewildering variety of ways to avoid saying "God." And when I attend Congregation Beth Boondoggle, my current primary affiliation, I count the number of women up on the bimah during the service.

It never occurred to me to count women anywhere else -- when I was a child, I was too irritated by the rabbi's insistence on Being In Charge Of Everything for it to register that he was male (and it helped that nobody discouraged my plans to become a rabbi); when I have attended other synagogues, many of them have had female rabbis, and in any case I never stayed put long enough to start analyzing patterns. Or perhaps it was the shift from Temple Boondoggle -- where I was the right-wing traditionalist, and where the senior rabbi as well as the majority of ritually active congregants were female -- to Congregation Beth Boondoggle, where the opposite is true. At CBB, which is less than five years into being "fully egalitarian" (i.e., counting women towards a minyan at every service), I have not been the first woman to do much of anything in a service, but I have been in the first five to do many things, and I can tell you the names of the other four. I can also tell you that two of us grew up Reform and two of us converted to Judaism as adults. The women of CBB are significant forces at the shul when it comes to fundraising, governance, education, and events planning, but they are significantly outnumbered at most services and for the first half of Shabbat morning. And while the group of people who read Torah and lead services during the week is pretty evenly divided along gender lines, all the rabbis and cantors and full-time ba'alim koreh ever at this synagogue have been male.**

I go back and forth about this: on the one hand, it's not noticeable most of the time; on the other hand, I can't stop myself counting. At morning minyan, there are always more men in the room, but every person counts, and I am (if anything) one of the more useful people because I can play almost every role in the service; I seldom feel especially gender-conscious there. And Haftarah readings are pretty evenly divided, either because one of the four above-mentioned women assigns them or because we just have a large critical mass of competent readers. But on Shabbatot and holidays, when assorted honors are assigned on the spot by the floor gabbaim, the ones with the greatest prominence and/or the ones requiring most specialized knowledge are much more likely to be assigned to men. This is not altogether the fault of the gabbaim: they (sensibly) tend to assign honors to people who show up early and whom they know are willing to carry them out, but since there are many older women who decline solo aliyot for various reasons, and since most of our congregation's women show up later than their male counterparts... well, you get the idea. On many Shabbatot, it actually requires a bit of thought -- not too much, but a little -- to find enough eligible and willing women to alternate aliyot between men and women, as several of our gabbais tend to do unless specific people need those aliyot.

It's not all about timing, though: we could have more men (not just as part of couples) opening ark doors, and more women carrying the Torah around the sanctuary (any healthy adult can manage it). Also, CBB does traditional duchening on the festivals nice and late in the service, but I have yet to see a Bat Kohen duchen or a Bat Levi get up to help the ducheners wash. For that matter, the aliyot would be a lot more evenly divided if it weren't such a rare event for a woman to take either the Kohen or the Levi aliyah. Part of this is, again, timing -- I know most of the women who would qualify, and very few of them arrive early -- and part of this (I hope) is a laudable desire to honor our handful of somewhat creaky but regular-as-clockwork male Kohanim. The remaining part has to do with some spectacularly wrong-minded and entirely unofficial policies along the lines of "don't call a woman for the first two aliyot in the upstairs sanctuary, but it's OK to do it for a downstairs or chapel service or if no eligible men are present or if it's a special occasion." (I trust you all appreciate the strict halakhic nature of this stance.) Equally halakhic -- and equally unofficial, as I have checked with both our rabbi and synagogue president on the sly and both disclaim all knowledge of it -- is the "policy" that forbids calling up women for Saturday-morning aliyot if they happen to be wearing -- wait for it -- trousers. Yes, trousers. Dress pants, presumably. The root of all... oh, look, it would be hilarious except that some people actually mean it. They -- and some of these people are female -- seriously don't see a problem with applying standards to women which they do not apply to men.***

Sadly, I do. I say "sadly" because I am not quite sure what to do about this: on the one hand, these quote-policies-unquote offend me both ideologically and personally (while I prefer skirts to pantsuits, my husband is a Levite and I want my hypothetical daughter to have the same chance for an aliyah that my hypothetical son would have); on the other hand, this is a pretty minor thing on many levels, and if I call the people involved on their "policies" (by, basically, mentioning it to the rabbi in a formal setting) I risk losing a friend. But we are in Genesis, a notably fertility-obsessed section of the Torah, and right now I am concerned about my hypothetical daughter. If we should someday have one who is old enough to want to help with duchening, will she feel welcome? Will she feel singled out if I ask her to wear some sort of kippah to services?**** (Yep, I count those too. Only some of the adult women, and hardly any of the little girls who file in for Adon Olam, do. All men and boys past toddlerhood are required to do so.) If we stay here long enough for her to reach Bat Mitzvah age, will she feel strange laying tefillin? (We're up to four women who do it occasionally or regularly -- five if you count our erstwhile rabbinic intern.) Will she inherit my habit of scanning the bimah during High Holy Days services and sighing at the lack of female faces (or perhaps the lone female board member decorating the bimah in a tasteful hat), or -- worse -- will she accept a row of white-garbed male figures as the norm for those special services? And what about our hypothetical son? Will he even notice?

Sometimes I wonder whether I am inventing problems for myself, in view of the strictly imaginary nature of these children, but other people have children, too. There's a bright, inquisitive eight-year-old whose family joined our congregation this past summer; I wonder whether she will ever -- even just for a few hours -- want to be a rabbi. Are women up on the bimah Doing Stuff often enough for that to be realistic for her? And I wonder whether there's something I should be doing to speed up the pace of progress at CBB, so that the next generation won't notice any significant disparity in men's and women's public ritual roles. There's nobody I want to fight here, because it's not that I suspect anyone of plotting a rearguard action against the forces of egalitarianism; it's just that many of my fellow congregants (male and female) have grown up seeing male ritual leadership and participation as the norm, and they can't quite get their heads around the idea that egalitarian worship means that women are as acceptable -- or unacceptable -- for ritual participation as men, for the exact same reasons.

I could just wait -- a lot of this is generational, and none of it is personal -- but I have a deadline, because we have, after all, given some thought to when we might want non-hypothetical children, which then allows me to estimate when these non-hypothetical children will be old enough to start playing Bimah Bingo. On the other hand, I really and genuinely prefer not to offend anyone. And, sure, I could just keep on keeping on, being publicly present and Doing Stuff, but that leaves me an exception rather than a rule. (Also, frankly, sometimes I'd like to just sit there and pray instead of getting up and Setting A Good Example For The Next Generation.) So... any suggestions? I mean, besides buying a pantsuit for the next time I read Haftarah?

* -- I bet this is how the Brisker Method got started. :)
** -- We did have a female rabbinic intern once, but I got the sense that was a little weird for all concerned.
*** -- When I asked about the bat-kohen aliyah issue, in fact, I got a garbled response about the fact that b'not kohanim married to non-priests can't eat terumah, which is fine except that (a) I wasn't aware we were assigning aliyot in imminent expectation of eligibility for tithes during the Third Temple; (b) if we are, by that logic we should be assigning kohen aliyot to wives of kohanim, which I believe the Conservative Movement rejected awhile back; and (c) moreover, by the terumah standard, we should also inquire carefully as to a kohen's status vis-a-vis ritual purity before we award that aliyah -- fun times for all, especially the attendants for the in-house mikvah we don't have.
**** -- If any of my daughters want to rebel, I guess they can always wear those goofy quartered-and-bobby-pinned doilies. And since I am committed to egalitarian roles in worship, if any of my sons want to rebel, the doilies would also work. ;)

Are we all over the holidays yet? Does it count if my sukkah is still sort of up? When do people usually get around to taking those puppies down, anyway?

It's taken me a full week to calm down -- admittedly, the week included a fly-by visit from some Coast City relatives (cue panic about whether my kitchen's utensil separation is Really Kosher Enough) and midterm grading and some random Nostra Aetate (fortieth-anniversary-of) stuff. High on last week's list of Things I Didn't Say Out Loud: "From a Jewish standpoint, Nostra Aetate is really not the best thing since sliced bread. Or even, like, sliced year-old matzah. But if you're coming from Hebraeorum gens... oh, wait, we're not studying that? My bad."

Then there was Halloween, which I view not so much as a holiday and more as a stellar opportunity to wear even more orange than usual, inflict major damage on gourds, and hand out candy to small, adorable children. We had nasty weather, which gave us suboptimal numbers of trick-or-treaters (and too much leftover candy), but we also had the Cutest Trick-Or-Treater Ever: an eighteen-month-old dressed in a tiger costume who didn't bother with "Trick or treat" but managed to climb over the doorstep and plunder the candy bowl inside my hallway while his father kept urging him to say thank you and I stood there holding the door open and laughing myself silly. Oh, yes, then he gave his one candy bar to his dad, turned around, and repeated the procedure. Toddlers in tiger costumes can pretty much get away with anything -- it's just as well most of the U.S.'s major elected offices have a minimum-age requirement.

I have a few serious posts in mind, but one of them keeps mutating on me, and I have a few dozen tests to grade, so, y'know, later. Possibly after Shabbat, since it's Marcheshvan, and there's nothing at all after Shabbat. Mmmmmm -- no holidays.