Why I love my community, part Many in a Large series

[xiphias]

At the Yom Kippur Mincha service:

PHIL, OUR NOT-A-RABBI¹: For our Torah portion this afternoon, we have a list of people you shouldn't have sex with.
A VOICE FROM THE CONGREGATION: By name?
PHIL: . . . It's a long list.
A DIFFERENT VOICE FROM THE CONGREGATION: Dang. That would have been useful to have . . .

1: Phil is the spiritual leader of our congregation. He's not a rabbi, and, to the extent that he has "rabbinic training", it's entirely on-the-job. His day job is a professor of philosophy, so he does have some of the mentality which makes a good rabbi. But he's not a rabbi, never intended to be a rabbi, never trained to be a rabbi, and never planned to have rabbinic duties. So why does he do it? Because, a bit over twenty years ago, Morry Kleiman told asked him to lead services, and nobody's told him to stop, yet. All of you on my friends list who are involved in Jewish communities? Let this be a lesson to you. Actually, this holds for fannish communities, too. How do you get stuck doing whatever it is that you're not sure how you got stuck doing it? You failed to say "no" quickly enough, and you're competent, so nobody wants you to stop.

Comments

[sarianna.livejournal.com]

Ow. Tea. Nose.

Freaking AWESOME.

[ailsaek.livejournal.com]

If you guys weren't do far away, I'd switch to your shul.

[metahacker.livejournal.com]

Wouldn't that be a different list for each person?

[xiphias.livejournal.com]

First: It's G-d, alright? If G-d wants to write in the Holy Torah a list of names which every person hears as the correct list for him/herself, G-d can DO that.

Second: in any case, I'm pretty sure that we can come up with a baseline list which would hold true for everyone. Carrot Top and Tom Green, for instance.

[metahacker.livejournal.com]

1) That would definitely be cool. ;)

[jehanna.livejournal.com]

I've often told people in conversations about my being a Bad Jew that yours is the only shul that would probably get me to go on a regular basis again.

[xiphias.livejournal.com]

Hey, Temple B'Nai Brith is one of a half-dozen shuls in Boston who form a larger community that is all like this. The Tremont Street Shul, Congregation Eitz Chayyim, B'Nai Or, and Havurat Shalom are all places kinda like this . . .

[sarianna.livejournal.com]

Anywhere in the Amherst area you might recommend, then?

[jehanna.livejournal.com]

...all of which are, alas, too far away right now.

I am going to guess that the local Main Line whatsit isn't anything like this at all.

[redbird]

The person doing the afternoon service at the Hav announced the page number in the prayer book to follow along with that portion, then "Oops! We're not going to do that one!" (We never do that one, as far as I know.) Everyone laughed, and we did the alternate reading about giving food to the poor and not cheating anybody in business or in court. The political muttering was unusually muffled, by Havurah standards.

[redbird]

That was from adrian_turtle, not me. I didn't log out of LJ on her machine yesterday.

[bikergeek.livejournal.com]

One useful rule: "Never sleep with anyone crazier than you are."

Also, the story of Phil explains a lot about how cons are run.

[sarianna.livejournal.com]

:-\ I always get into trouble by not following that rule.

[bikergeek.livejournal.com]

What a coincidence. So do my partners. :-)

[sarianna.livejournal.com]

*grins* But it's so much more fun to sleep with friends!

[browngirl.livejournal.com]

/*giggles and says nothing*

[flouritephoenix.livejournal.com]

Damn! I think I got the mistranslated version of that commandment. For years I've been only sleeping with people MORE crazy than I am!

That's what I get for not going to the source texts myself.

[vito-excalibur.livejournal.com]

No, no, no.

Some people can sleep with people who are crazier than they are. They have sanity to spare.

Other people do not have sanity to spare for a partner. They need someone who can lend them a bit.

It's okay to be whichever one you are, really; but you MUST know which one it is, or you will get yourself in a shitload of trouble!

[metahacker.livejournal.com]

So the sum of sanity(you, partner) must be greater than 0?

[mattblum.livejournal.com]

Wait, but...if everyone followed that rule, then people could only sleep with people exactly as crazy as themselves. That sounds like making things difficult.

[cellio]

*snort*

Nicely done. :-)

[pekmez.livejournal.com]

hee. I came later and missed most of the mincha service. Guess I should have been on time to not miss the good parts!

--also, d'you suppose there was a side reference to Charlie's list of people to thank in there? Probably. Less funny to those who missed Charlie's famous speech a few years ago though. ;-)

[delerium69.livejournal.com]

*laughs* Nothing like audience participation.

[browngirl.livejournal.com]

I love the way you talk about them, but it's a subset of the wonderful way you talk about everything.